Gizzard Paprikash

While I was home over the holidays, we got together with some friends and butchered a number of chickens -- hens who'd stopped laying, roosters with asthma, roosters in general. Nobody else was particularly interested in the organs and feet, so I took those. Gracious. Those old roosters grew dragon's hide on their feet! I dunked the feet in boiling water for five minutes, clipped off the toenails, and then my mother and I painstakingly peeled off the outer layer of scaly skin before making stock of them. That dragon stock was gorgeous. You could have walked on it and not fallen in.

But this is about the gizzards and hearts. Gizzards and hearts are delicious dark, dark meat -- almost blue, they're so dark -- but they take a little stewing to become tender. The gizzard is a powerful disc-shaped muscle in the chicken's neck, which grinds seeds and grass. To get the partially digested food out of the gizzard, you have to split it open and peel the lining out, which is why gizzards have that clam-shell shape when you buy them.

When considering what to do with my bucket of gizzards and hearts (besides make an enormous pot of gravy), I recalled a delicious dish of zúza paprikás, a.k.a. gizzard paprikash, I had one evening in Budapest. And I recalled a page or two I'd spent an entire day translating from a Hungarian cookbook, and from these two recollections I made a very delicious, convincing gizzard/heart paprikash for supper. It was boldly orange, piquant and creamy.

Back in San Francisco, I wanted to compare my recipe to that in a book of mine called Cooking with Love and Paprika, a 1966 cookbook by Joseph Pasternak. To my alarm, he makes a distinction between Hungarian paprikash and Transylvanian paprikash; according to him, my recipe is Transylvanian because it includes sour cream. How perplexing. Well, the zúza paprikás I had in Hungary most definitely had sour cream in it, just like practically everything I ate there (oh sigh!). Also, a good bit of Transylvania used to belong to Hungary, so maybe it's a moot point.

Many Hungarian dishes start with rendering some minced smoked pork fat in a skillet. Unfortunately, I cannot walk two blocks to the nearest market hall and ask for a kilo of smoked Mangalica fat from the butcher. (Nor can I ask for a kilo of goose gizzards, or a quart of pickled peppers ladled from the brine vat, or get my jug filled up with raw milk for a handful of forints -- sigh, sigh, and sigh.) So I would recommend frying a few slices of bacon at a fairly low temperature for a long time, so the fat renders out without burning at all. Pour the clean fat into a jar, eat the bacon, and clean the sticky stuff off the skillet before putting the fat back in. This will give you good fat with a nice smoky flavor.

You may chop the gizzards or hearts before cooking them; when cooked, a whole gizzard tends to be a bit more than one mouthful. You can also remove the "hinge" in the middle of the gizzard -- this is the most sinewy part -- and then the gizzards will become tender much sooner. I lazily left my gizzards whole.

Mince a large onion fairly fine, and let it cook in the fat in Dutch oven till soft and clear. Push the onions to one side of the Dutch oven and briefly brown about a pound of gizzards and/or hearts on the other side.

Add salt and a large peeled, crushed tomato (or a tablespoon of paste), and a ton of fresh sweet paprika, 2-3 tablespoons.* Pour in enough chicken stock** to cover the gizzards, cover the pan, and let it simmer for about three hours, until the meat is tender. Undercooked gizzards are unpleasantly squeaky on the tooth. If you trimmed the gizzards, they may only take an hour or so to cook.

If the dish seems too liquid (soupy, not stewy), remove the lid and let it boil down for a bit. When it's done cooking, add a couple of cloves of finely minced garlic and turn off the heat. Swirl in sour cream or creme fraiche to taste -- at least half a cup. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Paprikash is traditionally served over little egg noodles (tojásos tészta). As you can see in the picture above, I sometimes enjoy it on potatoes.

You can also use this recipe to make straight-up chicken paprikash. Break a small young chicken down into drumsticks, thighs, wings and breasts. It will only need 45 minutes or so of cooking time, and you can let the chicken pieces make their own stock as they cook. Add the breasts towards the end of the cooking time so they don't get overdone. Old stewing birds will take about three hours, just like the gizzards.

*About the paprika: it really needs to be good if you're not just sprinkling it on deviled eggs for pretty. Fresh means less than a year old. Sweet means it's made from sweet peppers, not spicy ones. It's hard to find non-sweet paprika in the United States, so you probably don't need to worry about it.

**You probably expect me to say "or water" here. But I won't do it. If you were making a custard that called for milk, would you use water instead? Only a very slight exaggeration. Vegetable stock also doesn't work. Neither does most of the "chicken broth" you can buy in stores. Unless the stock is made from bones and tendons, there will not be gelatin in it, and gelatin is necessary for that silky feeling on your lips. And that silky feeling on your lips is necessary for happiness. Okay, fine, you can use water if you're really in a pinch, but don't make a habit of it. Also, if you've gone to the trouble of tracking down chicken gizzards, you're probably in close proximity to some chicken backs or feet, too. Just simmer them for a few hours before you make supper.

A House That Stands on Chicken Feet

I had a pop-up book when I was young, with terrible witches and misers and mysterious cats popping out all over. The text was a translation of the start of a Pushkin poem, and I can still recite most of it by heart. My favorite page featured the pop-up house of Baba Yaga, with dark pop-up pines leaning in close.

On chicken feet there stands a cottage,
No doors, no windows, bare and lone.
Upon the sands of hidden pathways
Lie tracks of creatures unbeknown.

Unbeknown? Whatever it takes to make it scan in English.

Oh, it was magical. The book didn't go into any more detail about the hut; I had no idea it was a central part of the Baba Yaga lore. It was just a chilling gratuitous puzzle, and I studied those pop-up feet intently.

This is all to say that chicken feet are witchy. They are also extremely practical, adding lots of velvety density to your chicken stock. But oh! The Quetzalcoatl reptilian skin! The toenails! Such things call for cauldrons, and upon such things my house should stand.

Well, my house does stand on chicken feet. Because my house stands on cookery (as well as books and love), and chicken stock is a firm foundation for my cookery (with a few other things, like good butter), and the stock made from chicken feet is a strong stock, indeed.

Chicken Stock from Feet

Put at least a pound of chicken feet in a large pot. Fill with water to cover. Add an onion, peeled and cut in half, a carrot, trimmed, and a stalk of celery, trimmed. Bring to a simmer and turn the heat to the lowest possible flame, so the feet just steep. Let them steep for at least four or five hours, or as long as twelve (they can cook that long if the heat is very gentle).

Strain through a colander. You can freeze the stock or keep it for a week in the fridge. Use it for everything -- even plain brown rice cooked in stock suddenly becomes attention-worthy.

Chicken Noodle Soup from Scratch

This is a Little-Red-Hen, chicken-scratch kind of recipe.

In the morning, put a couple of pounds of chicken feet along with any miscellaneous saved bones in a large stock pot, cover with water, and bring to a simmer. Add some peppercorns, cover, and simmer all day long while you gad about in toy stores and gourmet grocers, and other places you have no business being (except to buy glow-in-the-dark stars and that grey sea salt you've been jonesing for).

When you tire of the blustery wind and people who say, "Oh, does he like yummy yummy cheeses? Does he? Oh yes, daddy's little soldier loves yummy yummy cheeses. He'll have a good palate when he's a big boy," come back home and drain the stock through a colander. Reserve half of it for later use (I freeze it) and put the rest back to simmer with several tablespoons of that fancy-ass sea salt. Then make the noodles.

Build a little cinder cone from 1.5 c. white whole-wheat flour on a clean countertop. Put 3 eggs in the crater and a pinch of salt and beat the eggs gently, incorporating some of the flour until it's too thick to stir. Knead till glossy-smooth, shape into ball, and hide under a bowl.

Chop two onions and whatever veggies are on hand (carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, celery, etc...). Add them to the simmering stock according to their respective cooking times and throw in something green, like thyme, and maybe a couple dashes of curry.

Uncover the dough. Cut it in half and shape into two balls. On a lightly floured surface, press one ball into a circle and roll from the center out till it's less than an eighth of an inch thick. Cut into half-inch strips. Gently stretch each noodle lengthwise before hanging it to dry (I find this easier than rolling the whole dough super-thin, and makes noodles of more even thickness). The noodles certainly don't need to dry all the way -- throw them into the soup pot as soon as you've shaped them all and the veggies are done. Go ahead and make noodles out of the other dough-ball, to use tomorrow or next week (those should dry all the way, hanging over a chair or a wooden spoon handle), but don't forget about the noodles in the pot. They should swell significantly but stay chewy.

This made enough for three people. If more people want some, garnish each dish with chicken feet and feathers. That'll teach 'em to freeload from the Little Red Hen.

Chicken Potpie

Chicken potpie occupies a spectrum of pastried poultry ranging from a thick stew with rich dumplings to an honest-to-goodness two-crust chicken pie. Mine, directly descended from my mother's, lands somewhere in the middle: a creamed chicken casserole with biscuits baked on top.

To somewhat maintain their individuality, I like to prepare the ingredients separately. I roasted two well-salted, skins-on chicken quarters at 400 till they'd rendered some fat, then added two chopped onions and a generous splash of chicken stock. I let the chicken brown while I chopped cauliflower, green beans, parsnips, carrots, and potatoes (something like two quarts of each). The potatoes I seasoned and roasted alongside the chicken, but only for 20-30 minutes to keep them from getting bitter. I steamed the other vegetables till just tender -- this meant the carrots had to be chopped much finer than everything else.

When the chicken was fall-apart tender, I pulled it out and let it cool till I could comfortably pick the meat from the bones. I made a roux by adding half a cup of flour to 4 tablespoons sizzling butter, and stirring it about till the flour was all saturated. I added a quart of chicken stock and whisked it all till thick and bubbly -- but not too thick (it ought to be pourable, not gloppable). With the potatoes roasted, the veggies steamed, the chicken pulled, and the gravy thick, I was read to "make biscuit".

I'm particularly fond of crusty flaky layered cornmeal biscuits as the nicest counterpoint to the creamy filling. So I whisked together 2 cups white whole-wheat flour, 1.5 c. white flour, 1/2 c. cornmeal, 5 tsp. baking powder, and a tablespoon of salt. I grated 10 tablespoons of frozen butter, fluffed it about, made a well, and poured in a little more than 1.5 c. milk. With a few quick movements, I emptied the dough onto the counter, kneaded it with a half-dozen fold-turns, patted it into a round on a light sprinkling of cornmeal, and rolled it (from the center out) till half an inch thick. Mama cuts round biscuits. I like making rhombi (diamonds, slanty-squares, what-have-you), which tile nicely as in the picture and produce less scrap for re-rolling.

To finish it off: preheat the oven to 450 degrees, equally distribute the veggies and chicken between two #8 or 9 cast-iron skillets, pour over the creamy-gravy (which I did have to thin a bit with some milk) and top with biscuits. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or till crusty and golden. Serve one skilletful for supper and keep one back for leftovers. Counts as three good doses of religion.

Two Meals from a 3 lb. Chicken with a Tragic Past

A few miles from my old house is a hamlet called Singer's Glen, where Joseph Funk assembled the Harmonia Sacra and where my friend's grandmother made two suppers from a three-pound chicken (the recipes for which are in More-with-Less). Her daughter worked for a time in a local poultry barn and contracted something called Brown Lung -- a chickenshit-and-dander version of bronchitis. The long poultry houses smell like ammonia from yards away, and the dirty gray birds are overgrown broken-legged things that we'd commonly see smashed into tractor-trailers on their way to the processing plants. Sometimes a young one would fall off the truck, and you'd see it wandering by the side of the road looking for all the world like a white grocery bag buffeted by the wind from passing cars. We'd stop and take it home and raise it for a while till it got old enough to crow and attack us, and then we'd do it in -- and stretch it into two or three meals. Poor lucky bird.

The principle: Stew the chicken the first night, with the usual onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, peas or sweet corn, reserving the broth and some of the meat for chicken soup the next night. Complete the classically Mennonite simple meal with raisin-studded refrigerator bran muffins (which reminds me: the usual recipes for refrigerator bran muffins call for boxed cereal, like raisin bran. I do not condone the existence of boxed cereal, so I'm working on a recipe that doesn't depend on something so expensive, preservative-ridden, and disgustingly sweet).

When I had raisin bran as a child, Mama picked out half the sugary raisins to use in baking.

Wacky Cake vs. Chicken Shit

I come from a long line of women who wash their saran wrap and reuse coffee filters -- for coffee that's been cut with chicory. My take on this heritage of thrift can be economically expressed with the following Poor-Richardesque maxim: real privation breeds innovation, but miserliness breeds mold.

For example, there was a time when poultry and eggs were expensive commodities. So my foremothers raised their own or, when birthday time came around (11 times a year) invented eggless Wacky Cake. Innovation. Nowadays chicken is cheap because we've developed sufficient technology to cut our chicken with shit. Miserliness.

(A chef I worked for in Seattle refused to eat chicken because in culinary school he learned it could legally contain 7% shit by weight. I think he was full of it himself. Sure, a lot of chickens are treated unethically and taste bad, but chicken shit is fragrant enough you'd think we'd notice. And once I saw him pop a bite of chicken when he didn't think I was looking. But the Russians have weighed in on his side).

In any case, we've all got a couple of vegan housemates or Depression-era great-aunts who want their chocolate cake minus the eggs. And that's when you whirl into the kitchen and whip up Wacky Cake: the Retro-Vegan Wonder. My Mama used to make it for my birthday, decorated with a streublich-looking coconut cream cheese icing and wild roses. I also recommend it with peanut butter, but that goes for most everything.

In one large bowl, whisk together 3 c. flour (whole-wheat or spelt or whatever), 1.5 c. sugar (or your favorite sweetener -- I've used a smaller volume of agave nectar with success), 1 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. baking soda and cocoa powder to taste. My old recipe calls for 3 T, but that's borderline miserly. I like 1/3 c., or else melted dark chocolate added with the liquids.

Add the liquids to the bowl: 2/3 c. cooking oil (try coconut oil or even olive oil -- the tang tends to cook out just fine), 2 T. vinegar (yes, vinegar), and 1 T. vanilla. Pour 2 c. water on top and stir it all together. Toss it in a greased 9 x 13" pan and bake 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.