I wanted to see what the "foodies" read, so I opened the food section in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper (online it's SF Gate). There was an article sharing three chicken recipes called "Three Hens in a Pot." The author described how the smell of the rosemary and wild thyme emanating from the pot of chicken brought her a sense of "satisfaction and goodwill." Of course, it helped that the author was having dinner in a chateau in Provence, France while drinking good wine with new friends. Then I scrolled down to the recipes for Poule a Pot, Coq a Vin, and Poulet a la Creme.
Hmmm... could I make something like this? I started with Poule a Pot, which has 31 ingredients. Dang that's a lot of ingredients!
I stopped reading after ingredient number 10.
The other chicken dishes had fewer ingredients, but required items I couldn't afford (brandy and burgundy?).
Then I tried reading the article, which told all about the writer's experience with that amazing dinner in Provence and went on to explain some of the history of the dishes being prepared.
You know what? I couldn't care less.
Do I need to care about how chicken is cooked in Provence to be a good cook? Or is the mere fact that I don't give a rat's-ass about how chicken is cooked in Provence a sign that I will never be a good cook?
1 comment:
I hope you don't need to care about all that, because I surely don't. I tend to skim over the whole "history" parts, AND the parts where they swear up and down that without ALL these ingredients, the 'bouquet' won't be right or something.
Good food is good food. Doesn't matter if you used ALL the ingredients, or NONE of them, or just a FEW of them. And perfectly delicious stuff can be made BASED on those fancy recipes, but substituting more reasonable ingredients - after all, most of these evolved from momma's home cooking, right? Red wine and wine-based products, France, no-brainer.
If you want to try it, use whatever red you've got and cooking brandy - it's cheaper. (And you get to drink whatever wine you don't use in the recipe. Bonus!!)
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