Kasha Varnishkes

For the last year or so I've been saving up chicken skin and fat in a bag in my freezer. I don't eat much chicken, so don't worry... its just a small ziplock bag. Today, as a celebration for the Jets winning their playoff game, I decided to use that skin/fat for one of the most classic, yet seldom made, Jewish foods --- Kasha Varnishkes.



The main idea with this dish is to complement the kind of dry, grainy nature of kasha (cooked until tender) with the firmness of bowtie noddles, and the softness of onions slowcooked in chicken fat.
In my version, I wanted to make the dish, which is often a side dish, into a whole meal. As such I decided to, near the end of the onion/chicken fat cooking, add some sliced chicken breast, and half a bag of frozen spinach.

The recipe / preparation is as follows:
-Boil a large pot of water and, when rolling, add some salt and a little over 1/2 pound of bowtie noddles. Cook until done, but not too soft and then drain.
-Meanwhile, boil 2 cups of water in a medium saucepan and when boiling add 1 cup of kasha and turn down to simmer. Also add a fair amount of salt to flavor the kasha. I cooked this for about 15 minutes, and near the end I actually added some of the liquid which the onion / chicken pot (see next part) had created.
-In a dutchoven (I used my meat castiron) render a cup or so of chicken fat / skin / odds and ends. This means just cook it until the fat liquefies. Then add in a bunch of onion. I used two large onions and this worked out well. You should probably start this cooking before the pasta and kasha since you want to let the onion caramelize and the chicken skin get crispy (mine didn't get as crispy as I would have liked). Near the end, add in some chopped chicken breast and then some thawed and drained frozen spinach. Cook until the chicken is done and the spinach has really mixed in with the onion. The spinach not only add nice color and nutrients, but also really soaks up the chicken and onion flavor well.
-When everything is good and cooked, add a fair amount of salt and pepper and then mix the three components together.
-Eat.

Like I said, the spinach is not conventional, however I think that it really adds to this dish. Sometimes kasha varnishkes can be a little dry -- however if you add a LOT of onion and spinach you'll avoid this problem.

OK, I'm going to go sneak another spoonful of this from the kitchen before putting it away.

Still pretty bad at roasting chicken

One of my favorite food memories while growing up is the Friday night chicken my mother would prepare. It was, for a number of years, almost always the same and it was consistently great. In an attempt at being healthy, my mom would remove the skin from all of the chicken --- that is except the wings for which skin remove was nearly impossible. The skinless chicken would get a little mustard and ketchup and maybe a few other spices. I never eat the skinless pieces though. For me, there were wings --- juicy and skin covered. So every Friday evening I would tempt nose burns while trying to get as many whiffs of the roasting chicken. These memories are a large part of why I don't think I could ever become a vegetarian (though I seldom eat chicken and almost never eat red meat).
I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty bad at cooking any type of meat. I think its the pressure. If I mess up some zucchini - no big deal. But if I mess up my chicken and make it too dry, or under-cook it, to me, this is a disaster. So with all of this pressure I over think things, doubt myself and usually end up doing the same, non-spectacular preparation of chicken.
The above mentioned preparation is essentially cooking the chicken with some garlic chunks, onion and potato in a deep cast iron pan, on the stove. What usually happens is that some pieces I cook are too large (like breasts) and others too small (like wings) and I end up needing to cup the breast open to cook the inside. This, of course, lets all of the juiciness of the meat out, and I end up with slightly dry dinner.
Last night I tried to oven roast the chicken, but impatiences, an oven which has no other settings than super hot, and an overly reactive smoke-detector cut this idea short. I needed to finish cooking my food on the stove top.
Perhaps I should look at a recipe book? Still, I'm afraid that a lack of control over my ovens temperature would make it nearly impossible to cook a thick piece of meat without charring the outside. Maybe I should try using my crock pot...
Anyway, I tend to learn from failures, but its been at least a year that I keep stove cooking my chicken and I haven't really learned better.