Fussy Recipes

If I'm not using one of my slow cookers,
I'm using one of my cast-iron pots.

People often ask me for my recipes. Then they tell me, “Yeah, I’m never going to make that. Your recipes are so fussy!” They’re content to enjoy the dish once and maybe never again, unless I make it for them. I don’t understand that attitude. If it tastes good, why not put the effort into it?
 

I follow America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) slow-cooker recipe for “Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup.” You don’t start with hatching an egg and raising it into a chicken, but very nearly. (Kind of like reading Michener’s Hawaii, where the novel begins at the dawn of time with the creation of the islands and eventually gets to the part where something actually happens.) The recipe includes browning chicken thighs, wrapping the breast in foil so it’ll cook more slowly, pre-cooking veggies, throwing things into the slow-cooker, eventually deboning the meat, and cooking the noodles separately. It’s not your fix-it-and-forget-it style recipe. 

And people love the results.

I have a few recipes that meet the “5 Ingredient” limit many people insist on. They’re fine. But oh, that noodle soup! So good you’ll slap your granny!

Sometimes, while viewing an episode of ATK, even I marvel at the lengths to which they will go to add flavor, texture, crust, a little dash of something at the end of the cooking to “brighten” the taste. I watch pots and pans and dishes and utensils pile up at an alarming rate, knowing my kitchen help is limited to a man who loads the dishwasher because he thinks I toss the dishes in from across the room. He doesn’t wash dishes by hand because the sink is exactly the depth that makes his back ache. This is my father’s excuse also, and he’s shorter than I am. Do they teach this in man school?

So I watch the entire episode, dish piles and all, and enjoy it immensely. And sometimes even I say, “Yeah, I’m never going to make that.”