Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (30 page)
Read Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins Online
Authors: Ellen Sweets
We now had a birthday dinner to prepare.
The day before the dinner we headed to Central Market for chicken thighs and jumbo fresh shrimp with the heads on, the better for making shrimp stock. Then it was off to Fiesta (our local ethnic supermarket) for ground dried shrimp, a crucial ingredient.
On to Half Price Books for cards and cookbooks, often the gift of choice for friends.
Off to Sweetish Hill to buy a birthday cake.
Then to buy candles. The ones that won't go out. You blow and blow and blow, thinking they're done but they keep coming back.
Wait.
What to drink?
Champagne.
It's a birthday party.
We were becoming giddy with anticipation and hoping it wouldn't turn into a Stan-less dinner like the Leonard Pitts fiasco.
Stan did join us. She had no idea that the gathering had morphed into a birthday party in her honor. There were husband-and-wife attorneys Bob Ozer and Janet Dewey, Doug Zabel, Elliott Naishtat, Molly, Malcolm, Stan, and me, seated around that wonderful round table.
Molly made a simple green salad with various baby lettuces tossed in a garlicky lemon-based vinaigretteâshe rarely used store-bought salad dressings.
Our centerpiece was a honking great pot of chicken simmered with onion, tomato, mint, ginger, and the secret ingredientsâcoconut milk, dried ground shrimp, and chunky peanut butter.
The fun of the meal was getting people to identify the ingredients. Tomatoes, onion, sweet potatoes, and chicken were no-brainers, and Zabel, who knows his way around a kitchen, discerned peanuts, not, mercifully, by going into anaphylactic shock. Some truly observant person volunteered bay leaves, another no-brainer, especially since one had ended up in his bowl. Nobody got mint, dried shrimp, or coconut milk.
As our “guess what's in the stew?” game wound down, Molly brought out the cake and we burst into song, with Molly's distinctly atonal voice soaring over a robust, champagne-enhanced chorus of “Happy Birthday.”
Stan was stunned.
“It was so unexpected,” she said. “I was just excited that I was actually going to meet Molly Ivins, actually going to her house as a dinner guest, and here she greeted me like she had known me all along and was pleased that I was there. Then to find out the dinner had become a party for meâI was pretty darned overwhelmed.”
It was one of the happiest dinner parties Molly and I had, and we had quite a few of those spontaneous theme-in-search-of-a-movie meals.
AFRICAN CHICKEN
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Ingredients we had to scrounge for a decade ago can be easily found today. I think beer is the best accompaniment for this dish, being a Red Stripe beer gal myself. Ask the store's wine guy for a wine recommendation. I serve this over yellow rice in a shallow bowl. Try to make it a day or two before you plan to serve it; it's another one of those dishes that improve with resting. A simple green leaf salad tossed with hearts of palm in a light vinaigrette rounds it out nicely.
INGREDIENTS
10 to 12 chicken thighs, skin on, but excess fat trimmed
2 large bay leaves
2 large yellow onions, one pureed, one chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
6 cups water
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried mint
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon ground ginger
¼ cup dried ground shrimp
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails removed
½ cup
unsweetened
coconut milk
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Long-grain rice for 6, cooked according to instructions, with ½ teaspoon turmeric added for color
DIRECTIONS
In a large stockpot (preferably a cast-iron enameled one that can go from stovetop to table), place chicken, bay leaves, pureed onion, and garlic. Add water. Bring pot to a boil, then immediately reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.
Remove chicken to a platter to cool.
To the same pot add tomatoes, mint, thyme, ginger, ground shrimp, and chopped onion. Simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing sticks. Add a cup of water if necessary.
Place peanut butter in a small bowl. Ladle about 1½ cups of liquid from the stockpot and gradually stir into peanut butter, diluting it until it thins. Whisk into pot. Add sweet potato. Simmer for 10 minutes, covered.
When chicken is cooled, discard skin, pull meat from bones in large chunks, and add it to the pot. (If preparing the dish in advance, at this point remove the pot from heat, cool, and refrigerate.)
To serve, slowly heat stew and simmer on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes or until sweet potato is cooked through. Add shrimp and cook until they curl and turn pink. Reduce heat and stir in coconut milk. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately over yellow rice. Serves 6 to 8.
ROSEMARY-ARTICHOKE CHICKEN
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I first had this dish in Nafplion, a seaside village in Greece. When I saw chicken and artichokes on the menu, I promptly ordered it. “No, madame, so sorry,” the waiter said. “The artichokes are finished.” I thought he meant the restaurant had run out of them. Instead he was telling me the artichoke season was over. There were no more. They were gone until artichoke season came 'round again. You can add canned ones to this dish if you don't want to cut and peel a zillion baby artichokes to get what you need. Substitute orzo for rice, and a Greek salad for green beans or broccoli. The variations are limited only by your imagination.
INGREDIENTS
6 to 8 fresh rosemary sprigs
8 chicken thighs
15 whole garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
8 lemon slices
1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 15-ounce can baby artichoke hearts, drained
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375°F.
In a shallow casserole that will hold the chicken pieces comfortably (they will shrink), layer the bottom with rosemary sprigs.
Rinse the chicken thighs and pat them dry. Place them in the casserole, scatter garlic cloves over and around them, and set aside, covered with a clean dish towel.
In a mixing bowl slowly whisk together flour, wine, chicken stock, and water. Pour mixture over the chicken thighs and top each with a lemon slice. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top. Bake, covered tightly, for 20 minutes. Uncover, add artichoke hearts, and continue baking until chicken is golden brown. Serves 4.
28
. . . and a Partridge in a Bean StewSOMETIMES MOLLY WOULD GET A WILD HAIR
and decide to tackle some ridiculously complicated dish for no reason other than because it was there.
Such was the case with cassoulet, a classic, centuries-old French dish said to have originated in the southwestern Languedoc region. There are two dishes that I think must be related to one another in some absurdist way: Paul Prudhomme's turducken and Julia Child's cassoulet. Anytime a recipe fills six pages in a cookbook I immediately start shopping for shortcuts. Both turducken and cassoulet take an inordinate amount of time to prepare, and both require patience.
Lots and lots of time; lots and lots of patience.
For years cassoulet, a hearty white bean stew, was considered a peasant dish. There are three major versions: Cassoulet de Castelnaudary, which features pork; Cassoulet de Toulouse, whose main meat is lamb and sausage; and the decidedly high-end Cassoulet de Carcassonne, made with partridge. The dish can contain duck, chicken, sausage, pork, ham hocks, veal, lamb, or a combination of two or three of those meats.
Beans must be soaked, simmered, and layered with meats and vegetables, then cooked slowly in a covered dish. Having an enameled cast-iron pot like those made by Le Creuset or Martha Stewartâomigod, here she is againâisn't mandatory, but it is ideal. A well-seasoned cast-iron Dutch oven will work well, too.
I first experienced cassoulet in England, where friends prepared it in a wood-burning oven that came with their homeâa big stone affair surrounded
by a wall that dated to the 1066 Norman Conquest. Honest. Henry and Paddy Goddard lived in a house that, when the last of their line dies out, reverts to the National Trust because of the Norman Wall.
When I related the tale of how my former husband and I met the Goddards, Molly promptly decided we should make cassoulet in tribute to them.
About meeting Paddy and Henry Goddard: my husband at the time, Eric, and I were out for a Sunday-afternoon walk and, as it transpired, trespassing on Goddard property. Their land was adjacent to a small national park, and we thought this rambling stone edifice was park property, especially when we saw the front door standing open. There was also a spread of outdoorsy magazines on a table in the entryway that seemed consistent with public property.
So in we went, snatching up reading material along the way. To our left was a great room with overstuffed sofas and more magazines. We promptly settled in to rest a bit. That was when we noticed the full bar against the wall opposite the sofa into which we had so comfortably sunk. Sets of cocktail and highball glasses were arranged next to an ice bucket. With tongs. Either this was an unusually hospitable park ranger or we were in a private home. The real clue came when we noticed that the magazines had labels addressed to “Patricia Goddard,” “Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goddard,” and “The Goddard Family.”
We were attempting a stealth exit when a voice trilled, “Hullo? Is someone there?” We stopped in our tracks. As the woman we would come to know as Paddy descended the stairs, showing no surprise at all, she said, “I say, were you looking for my husband?”
I suspect she thought we might be a husband-and-wife team looking for yardwork. When we apologized and explained, probably way too much, she laughed and offered to show us around.
It was the beginning of a friendship launched with a cassoulet dinner baked in their three-hundred-year-old wood-burning oven. Their son eventually visited my mother in St. Louis.