Home Ec 101

Today I am offering a lesson in home economics.  Mom, please don’t laugh.

Once upon a time I lived in China.  I taught English in a school which in September of 1992 was in the countryside surrounded by rice paddies and by March of 1993 it was bordered by a superhighway on one side and a shopping center on the other.  As my chinese students were so fond of saying, “China is a developing country.”  The point being that during this feverish burst of infrastructural development the water and electricity at my school were often interrupted for something like three or four weeks at a stretch.  When the school officials finally decided that that they could no longer ignore the fact that the entire student body and faculty had no water, they arranged to have a truck bring water in every afternoon.  Everybody lined up and was allowed one bucketful of water per day.  Bear in mind that the students and faculty lived at the school so this one bucket of water had to suffice for drinking, cooking, cleaning house and personal hygiene.  So- first I took away about a liter of water, boiled it and bottled it.  That was for drinking and brushing teeth.  Then I took away the couple of cups of water necessary to make the evening rice.  The water that was left was divided with the smallest possible amount to rinse the dishes and the other part was used as bath water.  (Bath being a relative term since we’re talking about three liters of water here.)  Rather than dump out the bathwater, I used it to rinse out my clothes.  I hesitate to use the word wash as there was only enough water to sort of tickle my laundry rather than actually clean it.  The challenge was in getting as much use out of my five liter bucket of water as possible and organizing things so that I could actually reuse the “gray” water without ending up with hepititis.

Just I learned to use and reuse that one bucket of water, I’ve learned to use and reuse a chicken and can get three nice meals out of just one chicken- with absolutely no threat of hepititis.

The first meal is a nice whole roast chicken, stuffed or not as you like.  This is how I make mine:

You will need a chicken

some sage

some rosemary

and a couple of bay leaves.

Rinse and pat dry the chicken.  Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper both inside and out.  Shove the herbs up the…er, umm ..place the herbs in the chest cavity and put the chicken in a roasting dish just large enough to contain it but not so large that the juices will spread out and cook away.

Roast in a hot oven until your meat thermometer tells you that your bird is cooked.  After your family has thoroughly demolished the chicken  put the carcass back in the roasting pan until the next day.  The next day, pick off any remaining meat, place the carcass in a soup pot with a carrot, an onion, a potato, salt and a few grains of whole pepper.  Make a nice chicken stock which you can then strain and freeze for future use.  This stock makes a great base for minestrone, creamed vegetable soup, risotto or even just soup with dumplings.  That would be meal number two.  If you look in your roasting pan where you roasted your chicken you’ll find the drippings and quite a bit of chicken fat plus the leftover meat which you picked off the bones.  Heat up the pan so that the fat separates from the drippings.  Skim off as much of the fat as you can, add some cream, season with salt and pepper.  Whisk everything together until well blended.  Cook over medium low heat for just a few moments until the sauce starts to bubble a bit.  There won’t be a whole lot of sauce and it will be quite thin but it should be enough for about four servings of pasta.  Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and toss in some pasta (spaghetti is a nice choice with this sauce).  When it is al dente strain the pasta and put it in the roasting pan.  Toss well with the creamy gravy and bits of chicken, stir in lots of grated parmesan cheese and serve.  Meal number three!

Buon Appetito.

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Tags: chicken, china, pasta with chicken, roast chicken