The Dinner Files

My dashing husband calls these concotions – of rice and beans topped with salsa and pretty much anything he can scrounge in the kitchen thrown in for good measure – “thunder bowls.” He picked up the term when we were traveling in New Mexico and West Texas. Why thunder bowl? My theory is that they are named after the thunderous clap of a fart such a meal can create.

He made me this thunder bowl for lunch the other day. He heated up leftover short grain brown rice that had been cooked in chicken broth and some chickpeas. While those warmed up, he threw together a salsa fresca from all the tomatoes sitting around and chopped a perfectly ripe and amazingly delicious avocado. It was a reminder that sometimes some crap sitting around in the fridge or on the counter can make a crazy delicious meal. It also reminded me of how perfectly lovely it is to have someone cook for you. As I like to tell people who express nerves or concern about inviting me to dinner or otherwise cooking for me: everything tastes better when you didn’t have to make it and people hardly ever cook for me, so it’s a total (and much appreciated!) treat.

Yum. This was a good one. I made the turkey mixture from this turkey taco recipe, put it on some toasted corn tortillas (fried would have been good, too), and topped the whole thing with this corn avocado salsa and some shredded lettuce. Perfect easy, fresh summer dinner.

I’m still sick enough to want soup for dinner, but I’m feeling well enough to make the soup myself. So I went back in time, just a bit, to my senior year of college when I ate a lot of egg lemon soup. A lot. It was cheap, easy, fast, and delicious. I could also stomach it if I happened to be hung over or completely stressed out or not eating dinner until 2 in the morning, and one or the other of those situations was pretty much the case for most of that year. (And yes, sadly, all three were known to create a perfect storm of nutritional need on a fairly regular basis.)

Back then I made it using bouillon cubes, for which I still have a sick fondness. But last night I defrosted some homemade chicken stock as the base, which does make it seem more nutritional, you know? But trust me, it works just fine with whatever form of salty cube or canned broth you may have hanging around your kitchen.

While I was flashing back,  I went ahead and doused the accompanying salad in avocado vinaigrette – another throw-back to college days when my various hippie classmates loved nothing more than finding new ways to use avocado, and a few – like this one – were worth remembering.

Grilled chicken is a tricky thing. Or so people would have you believe. When I was at Sunset there was a lot of interest in grilled chicken. To clarify: based on marketing surveys and reader feedback, the editors were convinced that the readers have an insatiable appetite for grilled chicken recipes. They were also convinced that grilling chicken was difficult, or at least that there were many “secrets” and “tricks” involved to make the chicken delicious. I would say, no, there are no tricks, just facts. You need to:

1. Buy good chicken–a creature that was allowed to be a chicken when it was alive, scratching and pecking and being outdoors now and again
2. Pre-salt or marinate said chicken
3. Grill it slowly (medium indirect heat for about 30 minutes for breasts, an hour or more for whole birds)
4. Let it sit 10 to 15 minutes (up to 30 minutes for the whole bird) before you cut into it

That’s it. Follow that advice and, quite frankly, you can even overcook it a bit and it will still be juicy. Whole chickens stay juicer than pieces; bone-in pieces stay juicer than meat left to fend for itself against the flames.

Oh! You wanted me to tell you how to make hormone-laced factory chicken taste good? Now that would involve some tricks. That you’re going to need to make taste like something besides chicken. The chicken flavor left that stuff a long time ago.

My parents followed my method method last night. The chicken was outstanding. I have never had a juicier piece of chicken. Never! I drizzled some steamed green beans with a mint-chili powder dressing and tossed the salad with an avocado vinaigrette (1 mushed avocado, 3 Tbsp. olive oil, 1 Tbsp. lemon juice, 1 Tbsp. red wine or sherry vinegar, 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard, plenty of salt and pepper) to have alongside the chicken. We also had a baguette my mom had brought up north, stuck in the freezer, and heated up before dinner. I always forget how well bread freezes. Very well, it ends up. Very well indeed.

As regular readers know, I live in San Francisco. As very regular readers know, I am in Minnesota for a few weeks. I’m at my family’s cabin on a lake in Northern Minnesota. This afternoon I stopped by the market in a nearby town before picking up Ernie from day camp. I was not surprised there were no fresh jalapeños to be found, nor that there was no tofu, and I guess, when I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised by this either:

But I thought you might be. Yes, you’re seeing right. That’s two kinds of 100% Minnesota-grown wild rice and canned cooked wild rice. This at a small market in a small town.

I did not partake. We had chicken and cheese quesadillas with a remarkably un-spicy avocado and tomato salad.

My family has a cocktail and it is the margarita. The whole extended bunch of us make them more or less the same: one part tequila, one part triple sec, one part lemon or lime juice. (I have uncles who will fancify it with Grand Marnier and other nonsense–makes them too rich for my taste.) This results in a strong drink, which is why we serve them on lots and lots of ice.

Ernie and I flew all day and arrived at our family cabin in northern Minnesota a bit before 7. Dad whipped this puppy up for me in no time (that’s a pint glass, by the way). Just the ticket after hours in transit. Then we tucked into some roast chicken and a big salad I made with avocado vinaigrette (2 Tbsp. olive oil, 1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, a dash or more of ground cumin all whisked together; add 1 chopped avocado and toss so the avocado falls apart a bit and thickens the dressing but there are still luscious chunks to bite into; toss with crispy romaine).