Reply To: The Random Post Thread (Game Potential)
For which.. onion soup, chicken bog, or milk toast? These are foods for when you have nothing else: who has the luxury of a recipe? But FYI:
Onion Soup (and more): Water, quartered and sliced onions, with the rings separated, 4 bouillon cubes. Boil it until the onions are clear and eat it.
What’s also good is if you have a plastic baking bag, some money and some Vidalia onions, peel the whole onions and cut the tops and bottoms off (roots and stems). Slice them vertically about 3/4 of the way through. baste the onions with red wine (the kind you drink, not red wine vinegar. Onions have enough bite as it is). If you’ve got time, actually soak the onions in the wine first. Put ’em in the bag, spice ’em with whatever you’ve got. A little salt, a little mint. A little butter on each onion. Close the bag and bake at 325 for one hour (until they’re soft but not falling apart).
Chicken Bog Rice: We ate this down in Charleston where I was born… a LOT. This is the purest case of “there ain’t no damned recipe”. Not if it’s authentic. But here goes anyway… you need chicken parts. I used cheap cast-offs from the chicken factory. If you’re not living next to a chicken factory just get a whole chicken and cut it up. Now you have a choice. You can either boil the chicken until it comes off the bone, then fish those damned bones out, or you can just boil the parts until they’re done, but still on the bone, and let the diner worry about the bones. That’s usually my preference. Season the water as it’s cooking (again, with WHATEVER YOU’VE GOT… pepper, season salt, herbs, definitely some onions. Some people prefer some “heat” in it, in which case you could use a little chili powder or hot sauce. I don’t recommend that… let them add it later to taste). Add some margarine (about “this much”. You figure it out. It’s going to depend on the amount of fat that rendered out of that chicken) and add rice. This is the tricky bit, in that you need to add enough rice to completely soak up that water without getting dry or (worse!) not getting completely cooked. When you’re done the rice should be somewhat soggy, but should hold together without dripping, and it will have expanded to completely surround the chicken parts. You COULD measure it out in advance, I suppose, in which case you’re going to want more water than you’d usually use to make rice, since it’s going to boil away. But measuring is for wussies. With practice you do it by eye, which is how I learned. But you’d probably be pretty close with 3 cups of rice and 8 cups of water.
Serving the stuff is something of an archaeological expedition. You dig out the parts along with the surrounding rice “matrix”. NEVER DRAIN THE FAT. If you’re looking for a fat-free recipe, I’ve got a real good one for dry toast.
Milk Toast: Milk. Toast, torn to pieces. Sugar. Put toast in bowl, sprinkle with sugar to taste, add milk, eat.
BONUS RECIPE: You’ll need a steak (a cheap thin cut is good, this isn’t for gourmets), shredded Swiss cheese, mushroom stems and pieces).
Broil a steak (if you broil you don’t have to thaw first… very handy). It’ll probably take about 7 minutes on a side, depending on the thickness, but turn it frequently if it’s a thin cut or it will curl. Season it with salt and pepper. Cover with mushrooms and put it back under the broiler for a few minutes. Then cover with shredded Swiss cheese, and back in it goes… just a minute or two, so that the Swiss begins to brown. Remove it, garnish with some fresh shredded Swiss and maybe some greenery if you’ve got it.
(FYI, Mom never had a recipe for anything. If you wanted to learn it, you just had to be there and help. Her measurements ran something like, “half a palm”, so if you wanted to get it right you had to know the size of HER palm. Cooking time was determined by smell (if it smells great, it’s done) and all seasoning was to taste. Sorry for the lack of specificity… That’s how I got it, so that’s how I impart it.)