dragonlady7

around here, keep warm babes

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ah! yes! i did comfort foods at the beginning of winter… I innovated a new casserole since then!! I should share it!!

Well. It’s not insanely innovative. It’s just that I took an old family recipe from Dude’s family, which we’d made a few times, and combined it with an amalgamation of half a dozen things off the Internet, and have come up with an easier way of eating the recipe than the original one which was off the back of a packet of seasoning or something.

So, I present:

Modified Chicken Parisienne

The main important thing here is the sherry. It’s distinctive because of the sherry. I also like to flavor it with thyme. The original recipe had you bake the chicken in the sauce and then cook the rice separately, and then remove the chicken and thicken the cream sauce with sour cream at the last minute.

This seems silly to me when you could just bake the rice in as part of the dish. So I looked up chicken and rice casserole recipes, and am making that now! Since it’s fucking snowing out and the heat’s broken at work and I froze my ass off all day, here’s a good chance to share it!

So you can use basically any vegetables in this. For excitement, I took my bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and browned them briefly, skin side down, in a hot cast iron Dutch oven, in lard, while I got everything else ready, and then left them sitting on a plate to the side while I did the rest of this.

Start with aromatics. I used several small onions and two medium carrots. You could also use like, celery, fennel, celeriac, whatever. I put those in the hot fat for like 5-10 minutes while I chopped everything else.

I diced some garlic and threw that in. Then I cut up a whole bunch of fresh broccoli, dicing the stems really well and cutting the florets apart. I threw those in and mixed them around, and then threw in a cup or two of sliced mushrooms I’d bought special for this because I love mushrooms. You could also use spinach, kale, cauliflower, green beans, peas, corn, I mean, any vegetable you care for. (Ideal way to use up anything in your freezer you have no other plans for.)

I stirred all that around, and then put in 1.5 cups of white rice, and stirred that really well also. I then tossed in about 1/4c of sherry. Stirred that around some, and then put in 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup.

To that I added a cup of water and 2 cups of milk, and then put in a little extra water just to make sure. I added salt, pepper, oregano, and rosemary, because I’m almost out of thyme, which lends itself to puns but does make me sad.

On top of that I nestled my 2 chicken thighs. The recipes call for more chicken than that but there’s only two of us and so I don’t bother. I’d say put a piece of chicken (thigh or breast or leg) per person you’re serving. I don’t bother having enough chicken for the leftovers, as I find skin-on chicken doesn’t reheat appealingly. You could also shred cooked chicken into here if you’d rather, it doesn’t matter.

Then I topped the whole thing with ehhhh like a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, because the chicken casserole recipes call for it and I love cheese. It’s clearly optional here. I had the chicken thighs skin-side-up so I put the cheese around them, not on top of them, in the hopes that the skin will crisp a bit.

Into a hot oven I put the casserole, uncovered. Bake at 350-375 until the chicken is done, 35-45 minutes probably.

Serve hot. (Your picture was not posted)