January 21 2003, 06:34 PM Adventures in Culinary Wonkery

Three things.

We were gifted over the holiday with a presentation box full of mustard. They all look pretty good, and we like mustard fine (at one rather shameful point, we had a shy dozen pots of mustard in the door of the fridge, some of which we'd made). The one we have open is the spicy horseradish, and we thought that would go well with roast beef. We bought some very nice roast beef indeed, and a very nice swiss to go along. We put these with the mustard on baugettes from the local bakery (it isn't French, but it's Good) along with slices of tomato and very thinly sliced raw sweet onion. It wasn't bad at all.

Try this, then: whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. Any recipe involving two sticks of butter and two and some cups of flour will work; swipe one off the back of a chip bag. When I make them, I usually add a little bit of cinnamon (1/2 tsp) and fresh ground nutmeg (because otherwise what's the point? 1/2 tsp) to liven them up a bit. This time, though, I added 3 tablespoons (yep) of malted milk powder (I need to try it with just malt). It's quite something.

This is the third thing: we decided to make a chicken pot pie.

What follows is not a recipe. There are better ways to do this.

Start with a pair of chicken breasts; trim off anything that seems untoward. In a skillet, get a dash of olive oil going, and fry the chicken until nicely browned over medium heat. Cover to help the chicken cook, and to keep the grease down a bit. Near the end of that, dump a bit of sage and taragon on the chicken. If the herbs are fresh, chop 'em up fine. If dried, just rub them a bit.

While the chicken is dealing with itself, preheat the oven to 450F or so, and clean a pound of sugar snap peas (don't ask me how we got them). Cut up into pea pod shaped chunks: 3 large peeled potatos, 3 turnips, 4 large carrots. Put all that stuff in a roasting pan. Then chop up a large onion and 8 or 9 large button mushrooms, and put the onion and mushrooms in a bowl.

Get the chicken out of the skillet, and put it on a plate to rest. Note with some interest all the yummy gunk on the bottom of the skillet. Into that same skillet, put a little bit more oil and dump in the onion and mushrooms. Toss the bowl in the sink. Drizzle olive oil all over the stuff in the roasting pan, and shove that in the oven. Wait 10 minutes, stir the stuff in the oven and the stuff on the stove. Wait another 10 minutes.

Get a bigger bowl. When the chicken is cool enough, shred it, and dump it into the big bowl with the stuff from the oven and the stuff in the skillet.

Look around; you'll need a 2 quart casserole, which is bigger than you might think. Hmmm.

Have the Other One deal with the roux (happily she makes it in the skillet with all the yum stuck to the bottom!) while you ponder the biscuit topping. Read some cookbooks. Try calling Mom (Mom does not have call waiting, and the line is busy). Remember previous experiences with biscuits and decide not to sweat it; cooking them on a big pile of goodness won't harm them none, hopefully.

There's a big pile of food here. Call a friend to help eat:

- Hi! We're making way too much food.

- Again.

- Well, yeah.

- Say! I've got about 2 tablespoons of rendered pancetta fat. Need it?

At which point it is good to look down at the biscuit recipe and read "2 tablespoons of Crisco". And swear.

- [CENSORED]! [CENSORED]! [CENSORED]! fine bring it come on over.

So the cassarole dish is already packed with all of the chicken and other assorteds, and the sauce (4 tablespoons each of flour and butter in the magic skillet, into which 2 cups chicken stock are drizzled, slow, madly whisking, madly) has been poured over and mixed in and then the pancetta fat shows up and in it goes into a bowl with two and some cups of the softest flour you've got and a teaspoon of baking powder and a quarter that of baking soda and a little salt and that's worked over with fingers until it's a fine meal and then goes in a half a cup of good buttermilk and that gets stirred and folded and kneaded in the bowl with a rubber scraper just a little bit 'cause it's BISCUIT TOPPING made with PANCETTA FAT and things are obviously getting a LITTLE BIT OUT OF CONTROL NOW but it all comes together and it gets glopped over the top of the rest of it and into a 425F oven for 20 minutes.

The thing of it is, chicken pot pie was a mainstay comfort food of my youth, in winter; I think we did it proud. In actual fact, I have never had a physical experience battle so fiercely for supremacy with the powerful sweetness of nostalgia.

I shan't say what won.