Over the course of this year I plan to explore a number of comfort food recipes graciously supplied by my family and friends. Most of these recipes memorialize beloved dishes made by grandmothers and great-grandmothers. We’ll travel to Trentino-Alto Adige in Northern Italy to cook Strangolapreti, a delicious spinach and ricotta gnocchi. We’ll make an Armenian beef and fermented cabbage stew called Tutoo. But first, let’s start this new series of posts with a braised chicken recipe mentioned in passing here, that my wife’s family affectionately refers to as Grandma’s Chicken. This dish embodies the type of simple comfort food that I look forward to sharing with you in the months to come.
The grandma of Grandma’s Chicken-fame was born in 1890 and lived on a dairy farm located about 30 miles west of Milwaukee. Clara Lucinda Dreyer Solveson raised three beautiful daughters, and the youngest, Joy, brought the recipe with her to the West Coast. Clara’s recipe epitomizes straightforward homey fare. Accomplished cooks can likely approximate this family favorite dish based solely upon these instructions: dust a sectioned chicken in flour; brown; add vermouth, herbs and spices; braise until tender. But why leave something that tastes so good to chance? Here’s the family’s recipe.
½ cup all-purpose flour
3 to 4 pound chicken,
sectioned into 10 pieces
3 tablespoons canola oil
½ to ¾ cup dry vermouth
3 tablespoons freshly
chopped Italian parsley
Salt
Freshly ground black
pepper
Cayenne (or paprika)
1. Put ½ cup flour into a bowl
and dredge the chicken pieces, with skin on, in flour to lightly coat. The
chicken skin adds fat, and thus flavor, to the dish; the flour thickens the
sauce.
2. Warm a heavy 12-inch
skillet over medium-high heat for a minute or two. Add 3 tablespoons of canola
oil to the skillet. When the oil is hot (but not smoking), add the chicken
pieces to the skillet skin-side down. Do not crowd the pan otherwise the chicken
will steam and not brown. You may need to brown the chicken in batches. Take
care not to scorch the chicken; your goal is to create a golden, light brown
chicken skin.
3. When the skin is
browned, turn the pieces over and brown the other side. Don’t worry if flour
(or even bits of the chicken) sticks to the skillet. These will help to flavor
your sauce. Rotate and turn the chicken around the pan to uniformly brown the
pieces.
4. After browning the
chicken, add ½ to ¾ cup of dry vermouth to the skillet and cook for about 2
minutes or so. The amount of liquid at this stage in the cooking process determines
if the final sauce is thick or thin. Use a wooden spoon to carefully mix the
vermouth into the browned chicken. Scrape any browned bits to incorporate this
flavoring into your sauce. Once done, reduce the heat to achieve a gentle
simmer. Add the parsley and season the chicken with salt, freshly ground pepper
and a pinch of cayenne (or paprika).
5. Cover and cook at a
gentle simmer until the chicken is tender. This should take approximately 45
minutes to 1 hour. Occasionally check in on the braise to make sure that the
heat is just right and that the sauce is neither too thick nor too thin. If too
thick for your taste, add a splash of water or stock.
Once the chicken is tender, serve with rice or buttered
noodles. You should have enough chicken to feed 6 people (or 2 to 3 hungry
nephews).
