Recipes from our Grandparents

[Dirk Chesterfield]

Grandma's Chicken Cacciatore.
6 Chicken Thighs (or 3 leg quarters, Leave skin on and bones in.)
1 tsp oil
2 Medium Yellow Onions (One diced fine, One diced coarse. Reserve coarse onion for later addition)
1 Can Diced Tomatoes (soup can size, about 2 cups)
2 Cups Water
1 Pinch Italian Herb Seasoning (my pinch is 1/8th tsp.)
1/4 Pinch Black Pepper.

Set electric skillet to 250 degrees (med/low if on electric or gas stove)
Add oil, finely diced onion, sweat onions for 2 minutes.
Add diced tomatoes including the juice, water, Italian herbs and pepper; allow to boil.
Add chicken, cover and cook for 1.5 hours turning and stirring occasionally.
After 1.5 hours of cooking add coarsely diced onion and cook uncovered 20 additional minutes.

Serve chicken with spaghetti. Drizzle lots of sauce over spaghetti. Serves 6.

This dish requires slow cooking until the chicken is fork tender, but not so long that the chicken is falling off the bone, adjust time accordingly. The onions are added in two phases as the initial finely diced onions dissolve into and slightly sweeten the sauce. This is a delicate runny sauce akin to a highly flavored broth.

Yes, this dish has lots of fat. It is a comfort food and the fat is necessary for the transmission of fat soluble flavors from the herbs and pepper. To reduce fat remove skin prior to cooking but you must use bone in chicken thighs / leg quarters or this dish will not taste as good as the original recipe. Boneless skinless breasts will not work well for this application. Rabbit also works well if it is deboned and a Tbsp of chicken fat is added

This dish is also easily converted to a very pleasing soup if the chicken is deboned and diced after cooking. I serve the soup version with broken spaghetti as noodles.

 

[kcsunshine]

Yum - sounds good, Dirk. Thanks for sharing, I'll have to try it.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

MawMaw Callais's Chicken Gumbo:

Before I explain how to make real Cajun gumbo, I must first tell why my grandmother's gumbo is better than most....she started the previous day, by baking about 4 Lbs of de-boned, skinned, chicken meat until it was really nicely browned and there was a crust on the bottom of the baking pan. She would pick up the meat in the fridge and put water in the baking pan to use all that crust in her stock and she would also save that water.
She would also begin frying a pound of smoke sausage, until it also was browned good and drained of plenty greese and pick it up in the fridge.

Now for the gumbo...
4 Lbs chicken meat
1 Lb smoked sausage
1 cup veg. oil
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 gallon water
1 pint oysters with water

You must first start with a roux.....this is a browned mixture of cooking oil and flour. We use about a cup of oil with about 1 1/2 cup of flour and stir almost constantly until it is slightly darker than a dark brown construction paper (it will be smoking and its easy to burn, so be careful)
Now add 2 cups of chopped onions and cook in roux for about 3 minutes.
Add water, including retained water from baked chicken and cook for an hour (at least).
Add meats (except oysters) and cook for 45 minutes with desired seasonings. (salt, peppers and perhaps Cajun Seasonings).
Add oysters and cook for 10 minutes......serve over rice.


This is normally offered with potatoe salad.
Please note that contrary to popular belief, Cajun food is NOT expecially spicy.
I have read recipes for gumbo and seen pictures of gumbos, that no where look anything like what our people eat. I even saw one with corn in it. I don't think so.