A word about this: we've now been dissecting Nigella Kitchen since the beginning of the year. I don't know how you all feel about it, but I have been generally pleased with the experience. That said, it's coming up on June, and I'm running out of recipes that I want to make out of this book, in addition to the fact that I now have the Gwyneth Paltrow Bible, and Boy Scout regularly cooks from Barefoot Contessa's Back to Basics. The next few weeks are pretty insane in the membrane, but I think that come June 1, we'll extend our Mayhem into other venues. Oh, Nigella's still on the... menu. We're just expanding the choices.
In the meantime, Sunday night meant the trial of My [Her] Mother's Prized Chicken. Photographic evidence:
Yes, there is chicken under there. As is a serving of white rice.
This recipe was actually a huge disappointment to be. When something is called Your Mother's Prized anything, you know it's got to be something special. At least, that's my interpretation of that title. What this boiled down to (har) was a poached chicken soup.
You brown a whole chicken, add vermouth, carrots, leeks, and celery, over it with herbs and cold water and simmer for 2 hours.
That's it.
So yeah, I should have known it would have been awfully boring (In fact, I did... I added a huge glug of white wine with the cold water), but somehow I expected it all to magically pull together. The healthy dose of mustard prescribed for serving in the recipe along with salt and pepper saved us from bland-hell, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that if I wanted chicken soup, my own made-up recipe was better. And as far as fancy, long-cook Sunday dinners go, there are a lot better ones out there.
As Boy Scout said, there was nothing wrong with this dish, but there was certainly nothing spectacular about it, either.
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