Not Quite Frozen Dinner

If there’s one thing I never eat, it’s frozen dinners. Neither Lean Cuisine nor Amy’s Kitchen grace my table. It’s not that I’m a fresh food snob. Some of my best friends eat frozen dinners. It’s just that I like to cook even when faced with an empty fridge. Sometimes I roast whatever vegetables I have on hand and eat them with cheese and crackers. Other times I cut up some carrots and make a yogurt dip. It's nearly as easy as nuking a plastic tray.

I do, however, keep a freezer well-stocked with odds and ends that might make a good meal. Throughout the winter, I had chicken stock, leftover pasta dough and boneless chicken breasts in the deep freeze. Are you thinking soup? I thought chicken meatball and noodle soup. This isn't exactly fast food, but the soup comes together pretty quickly if you remember to defrost everything four to six hours in advance.

I work with different ingredient amounts each time I make this, so I can't share exact proportions. Eye it. Bring the stock to a simmer in a big soup pot. In the meantime, make the chicken meatballs. (You could, of course, use pre-ground chicken, turkey, veal, pork or beef if you like. I've got an overstock of chicken breasts.)

Run the chicken breasts through a food processor until ground but not pureed; mix with some bread crumbs, an egg, a few tablespoons of chopped parsley; add a good shake of salt and black groundpepper. I also like to add crumpled feta cheese.

Shape the meat mixture into meatballs that are about 1 inch in diameter, place them on a foil-lined tray and refrigerate. Roll out the pasta dough as described here. Finely chop and then sauté a carrot and a small onion in olive oil in a skillet for about 10 minutes until soft. Add the carrots and onions to the simmering stock.

Add the noodles to the stock and cook about 2 minutes, stirring to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Carefully add the meatballs and simmer until the chicken is just cooked, 3 to 4 minutes. Adjust the seasonings. Serve the soup in big bowls. I like it topped with chopped parsley, dill or scallions, and sour cream.

Chicken Stuffed with Crepes

This is what I made for Valentine's Day dinner:

I know you're thinking, "The hell?" Hear me out. For months, a certain someone has been telling me that his parents make roast chicken and turkey stuffed with crepes.

Could I make him some chicken with crepes? I thought this sounded beyond weird; so I pretty much dismissed his requests. One day, I tasted his mom's chicken stuffed with crepes. The chicken itself was fine, but it was the crepes, rich and soaked in delicious chicken juices, that made it so memorable.

What better time to stuff a chicken with crepes than Valentine's Day? This was to be my gift. Truth is, I don’t know exactly how his parents cook this sort of thing, and there’s little chance of getting step-by-step directions from them. So I decided to keep it simple. I made a bunch of crepes, stuffed them into a chicken, sewed up the cavity, and roasted the chicken like I always do.

How was it? The chicken was all right but the crepes were a bit dry. I suspect that I either roasted the chicken too long or didn’t use enough oil when frying the crepes. The certain someone later told me that you're supposed to shred the crepes before stuffing the chicken. Well, thanks for letting me know after the chicken was out of the oven. Still, this was a pretty good dinner, especially when I served the crepes with gobs of sour cream.

If you think chicken with crepes sounds strange, check out this recipe (in Russian, but with photos) for a deboned chicken stuffed with stuffed crepes. Someday I will make this.

Cooking Rules I Broke While Making This Chicken Stew

Cooking rules I broke in making this chicken stew (served with mashed potatoes):

1. Didn’t use a whole chicken; only chicken thighs. Why do stew recipes call for a whole chicken, anyway? Does anyone want to gnaw on a wing or eat a dry breast?
2. Used cheap old wine. For the sauce, I finished off two bottles of red and white wine that I’ve had in the pantry for ages. I have never been able to tell the difference between good and crap wine when used in cooking. The sauce was delicious.
3. Thickened the sauce by sprinkling a bit of flour in it, and stirring quickly. It worked, but that’s not how you’re supposed to do it, right?
4. Used russet potatoes instead of the preferred Yukon gold for the mashed potatoes. They came out fine.

Be a rule-breaker, like me:

Brown six chicken thighs in a skillet for 10 minutes on all sides. Place in a Dutch oven. In the same skillet, sauté some coarsely chopped onions and carrots. Add a couple of garlic cloves; salt and pepper to taste.

Add vegetables to Dutch oven. Deglaze the skillet with 2 cups of wine—use whatever you got. Simmer until the wine reduces, but if you want to thicken it, you probably shouldn’t just sprinkle in flour willy-nilly. Read some Mark Bittman or Julia Child, etc., on how to do this properly.

Add the sauce to the Dutch oven with a couple of bay leaves; bring liquid to boil, then it turn down to a simmer. Cook until the chicken is very tender; 25-30 minutes or so.