Chicken (or Vegetarian) Tagine

Oh dear. I made this two Thursdays ago, but never posted it. Oops!

It is, however, the Most Delicious Thing Ever, so perhaps I can be forgiven. I had to bask, you see.

...Right.

If the photos don't make it look like the Most Delicious Thing Ever, well, that's because I couldn't get a proper photo on Thursday, and had to wait till Friday to drag the not-quite-sorry leftovers upstairs and subject them to a photoshoot.

Please note that you can make this vegetarian if you so choose – or you can make a part of it vegetarian, like I did, especially if the vegetarian in question will eat chicken broth. (But if not, just use vegetable broth!) You can also make it gluten-free by substituting cornstarch for the flour.




Many more pictures if you read more...

Quick Chicken Fricassee

This weekend, I went home to my mom's house for the first time since Christmas (oops). Despite the Amtrak delays that seemed determined to thwart my journey home, and the couplet of blackouts on Saturday that nearly destroyed our Kinders-soaked steaks, it was relatively relaxing. My brother and I drove up to our local mountain – everyone should have a local mountain, don't you know? – and hiked about in the patchy yet miraculously low snow. My mom and I shopped a bit. I read a bit.

I also finally got a chance to look through the Cook's magazines I had left at home, to which my dad got me a subscription months ago, but which I keep forgetting to browse. I was missing out, ignoring them for so long! They do marvelous things with snow peas.

One recipe caught my eye immediately: Quick Chicken Fricassee. Even though I was supposed to be home relaxing, I just had to make it.

I apologize in advance for the abhorrent quality of the following photograph. We were all hungry, and had no patience to hold still and take pictures in the rapidly-fading light. This, sadly, was the best of the lot.

Chicken Noodle Soup (Usually)

Homemade chicken noodle soup is a beautiful thing, though it took me a long time to realize it. I grew up on the Campbell's stuff, and on the rare occasion my mom would make it from scratch, I thought it was inferior to its canned counterpart. Children are weird, I guess.

Apparently I grew out of it, though, because two weekends ago, when I was sick, I woke up in the almost-early-afternoon with a craving for homemade chicken noodle soup. Perhaps it was a part of my so-called "health kick," but even the tornado-noodled Progresso we have stashed in our cupboard didn't seem good enough for what I wanted. So I did a little searching for the most basic chicken noodle soup recipe possible, and found something perfect to build on.

Just a couple of days ago, I made it again, taking advantage of some of the ingredients we now had on hand. It proved once again to be just about the best thing ever. Even if the only non-frozen meat we had was leftover pork roast.