I soaked up the quiet rhythms of the kitchen
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- May 3, 2024
- 411
Last weekend was pure bliss — lovely warm weather for getting outdoors, catching up on yard chores and kicking the ball around the already overgrown backyard.
I didn’t do any of that. I was in the mood to cook things. Instead of enjoying the weekend weather, I soaked up the quiet rhythms of the kitchen, sharpened some knives and welcomed any excuse to make something. Everyone else in the house was either jetting Hot Wheels cars across the living room or watching true crime mysteries on the tube.
I’d been given a batch of the most delicious salsa I’ve ever eaten, so I needed some chips. I’d already been to the store and didn’t feel like clambering back into the car again, so I made a batch of flour tortillas and then fried them into chips dusted with salt and mixed with a little lime zest.
On that same forgetful trip, I failed to pick up bagels. The last time I made bagels was in the late teens, so I also made those. I’d forgotten how simple it is to make a decent batch, and that was wrapped up in no time.
Perhaps the reason I forgot to get so many things at the store was due to being hyper fixated on things I needed to make the dinner I was planning. The second dish I made from a Julia Child cookbook, after monkfish, was split Cornish hens roasted with a ton of garlic, mushrooms and Swiss cheese.
The whole thing starts by making a rich brown poultry stock, which only made things more interesting. I’d been saving chicken scraps and wing tips in the freezer, so I made triple the amount of stock the recipe needed so there would be some to freeze for later. To get a really nice chicken stock, it makes a big difference to brown the scraps and vegetables in clarified butter up front, then cover with water and a little white wine to simmer for a couple of hours. It’s important to keep the liquid to a very slow simmer. A rough boil results in a cloudy stock that doesn’t look great and tastes a little gamey.
With the stock simmering, I got an entire bulb of garlic and a pound of mushrooms ready. The birds are roasted in white wine with the garlic cloves strewn about and basted every 10 minutes or so. The covering of grated Swiss cheese makes for a slowly developing browned crust on the skin side. The quartered mushrooms go into the pan for the last 20 minutes of cooking, which reduces them to small, flavorful bits by the time the birds are done. After 40 minutes I gave them a little time under the broiler for a little more color.
I remembered making this dish before for my parents when I was nearing the end of my high school years. There was so much to learn from this recipe, things I took away and used ever after.
To make the natural sauce, you remove the birds to a platter and bring the roasting pan to the stove top to deglaze with wine. Then all that now-soft garlic is pushed through a sieve and into the bubbling wine and stock. A few knobs of what Julia described as enrichment butter and everything was ready. The hens are served on a bed of shredded potatoes, fried in more clarified butter to form a plate-sized nest, which was another thing I’ve remembered and used countless times.
By the time we were ready to eat and the kitchen was cleaned up and back in order, I was happily pooped out and ready to sink into the couch once that murder mystery stuff was done. We’ve passed through a particularly stressful few months, so a day of pleasant distractions was as welcome as the spring weather. Whatever you do to unplug and relax, make sure you do some of it whenever you get the chance.
The Cornish hens are found in Julia’s “Menu Cookbook.”