Comfort Post
Crazy-Town Chicken Soup & Brownie Recipes
TODAY’S RAMBLINGS
1 Minute Read + Cooking Time
Happy Friday, and it appears there will be no jackbooted and masked stormtroopers in my beloved SF.
Yet.
Until then . . .
So many have begged for more on the evils of Dear Leader. More on my upcoming bestselling novel Ride of Your Life. More about the wonders of AI. More on America’s exciting new political party, REAL. More about high speed rail and/or hating on cars.
Some have gone as far as demanding more of these:
Well, I’ve always been a rebel, so sorry: Today, it’s cooking, and for good reason.
These are the best chicken soup and brownie recipes in the world.
Drastic? Exaggerate? Moi?
No. I often say with regard to music listen and learn; in this case, it’s cook and learn.
10 Seconds of Seriousness: These are incredibly wonderful, and I hope you’ll try them this weekend or soon. The first is from Food & Wine, the second from the New York Times.
Fun Fact: Both are very easy to make.
Chicken & Wild Rice Soup
Serves 6
Though made with heavy cream and chicken stock, this soup is lighter and more refreshing than expected. Shredded pieces of chicken, an array of finely chopped vegetables, and toothsome wild rice round out the nourishing and faintly nutty soup.
Ingredients
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
½ cup finely diced yellow onion
½ cup finely diced carrot (about 1 medium carrot)
½ cup finely diced celery (about 3 small celery stalks)
½ cup finely diced fennel bulb (from 1 small fennel bulb)
½ cup finely diced leek (about 1 small leek)
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
8 cups chicken stock
1 cup uncooked wild rice
1 tsp. fine sea salt
2 cups shredded chicken from 1 rotisserie chicken
2 cups heavy cream
½ tsp. black pepper
Thinly sliced fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
Preparation
1. Melt butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high. Add onion, carrot, celery. fennel, leek, and garlic, cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Add stock, and bring to a boil over medium-high, stirring occasionally. Stir in wild rice and salt. Bring to a simmer over medium-high. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and cook, stirring occasionally. until rice pods have opened and are almost tender, 35 to 40 minutes.
3. Add chicken, cream, and pepper. return to a boil over medium-high, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Garnish with parsley and serve
Katherine Hepburn’s Brownies
Makes 12 brownies
Much like its author, this recipe is a no-fuss classic. It calls for just ¼ cup of flour, which yields an incredibly rich and gooey brownie, and it’s super easy to make. So easy, in fact, that baking a batch of these might just become part of your weekend routine.
½ cup cocoa
½ cup butter (1 stick)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
¼ cup flour
1 cup chopped or broken-up walnuts or pecans
1 tsp. vanilla
Pinch of salt
Preparation
1. Heat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Melt butter in saucepan with cocoa and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a large bowl. Whisk in eggs, one at a time. Stir in vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, flour, nuts and salt. Add to the cocoa-butter mixture. Stir until just combined.
4. Pour into a greased 8 x 8-inch-square pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Do not overbake; the brownies should be gooey. Let cool, then cut into bars.
Pro tip: line your baking pan with parchment paper, and then lightly grease that - it makes for a neater finished product.
FROM THE UNWASHED MASSES
Hunter Deuce weighed in with unusual clarity regarding my gripe about enshittification on Wednesday.
Great post.
Big ticket excursions like ball games, concerts, skiing, flying, etc. have always given us pause and made us think : “Do we really want to spend this?”
And we exhaust the options available to us to do it cheaper.
Thank you for reading this newsletter.
KLUF
Comfort? You want m-f’ing comfort? Listen to this brand new jazz record, and you are so very welcome. And talk about listening and learning . . . Greg Foat is putting out some of today’s best modern jazz.