Summing Up The Struggles of March
March is gone and with it my lethargy, so that’s a bonus. I feel I wearied there a bit in March; towards the end I didn’t want to think about food, scarcely wanted to eat it and only begrudgingly cooked it.
Then the new issue of Cook’s Illustrated arrived yesterday and revivified my flagging spirit. Intriguing recipes for Chicken Enchiladas and Bolognese Sauce did the trick. Plus, I was happy to have put off buying a new skillet because the new issue devotes an article to the subject. Seems like an All-Clad pan is almost overkill for a skillet—no reason to have clad sides when you don’t cook on the sides—and a Calphalon Tri-Ply Stainless 12-Inch Omelette Pan with 9 ¾” of cooking surface might be the better way to go, for some $60 less.
And what did March yield for me? Very little—and yet I would say the two absolutely indispensable, fool-proof things I mastered made it a worthy March. They were:
1. Homemade “Stewing Hen” Chicken Broth
2. Perfect Baked Potatoes.
I may have failed to blog about the potatoes. I learned the little tricks of scrubbing, drying, coating with oil and Kosher salt, puncturing, and then baking in a hot, hot oven, 450 degrees, until tender. Plus, the secret of slicing them open right away so that the steam inside doesn’t make the skin soggy. This requires good timing, but that’s cooking a meal. No way around it.
March also yielded:
3. Lemon-grass Ginger Soup: A tangy templefood delight and a great use for the broth produced in #1 above.
4. Chicken and Dumplings: Great flavor, soft dumplings, but the stew was too soupy and I need to work on developing a slightly thicker consistency. Until I do, good enough to eat as is.
5. Cook’s Illustrated’s Best Chili: Was I too busy eating this experiment to write about it? Quite possibly. At the opposite end of the consistency spectrum this stuff was nearly as thick as oatmeal, but that problem is easily remedied, the flavor was all that was promised and my little boy kept asking for more. I'll make it again soon and blog about my second effort. Quite often it's the second effort that determines whether or not a recipe is worth keeping.
6. Raw Beet Salad—still fresh in my memory, still lingering in the fridge. A perfectly harmless way to eat this previously revolting vegetable. And if I start eating a lot of them now I may still have a shot at living to be 100 years old—but I have a completely anti-oxidant-deprived youth to make up for.
4:01:50 PM 
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