It’s time to fire up your oven…

When the first cool days of autumn arrive, I am immediately in the mood to turn on my oven. This is not because I need to warm up the house (my mother reminded me on a recent chilly morning that my paternal grandparents used to light their oven on cold mornings to jump start some warmth in the kitchen as the rest of the house slowly warmed up)—but rather because I can finally enjoy the delicious things that can come out of my oven…without the nagging irritation of making my house suffocatingly hot.

Recently (after first enjoying the luxury of baking a cake in the middle of the afternoon) I made a baked chicken and rice dish for my dinner. It was very simple: just chicken thighs (crisped and rendered in a little butter and olive oil), baked on top of a basic rice pilaf seasoned with some Persian-inspired spices, and finished with some toasted nuts and golden raisins. I served a little garlicky sautéed zucchini on the side. It was delicious…and just the thing for a cool evening on the cusp of summer and fall. And I made the whole meal with things I already had in my pantry.

As I was enjoying my dinner it occurred to me that this idea—chicken and rice with whatever vegetables and seasonings you happen to have on hand—would be a great thing to talk about in my next newsletter.

Cooking with a template: “Theme & Variation”

As everyone who cooks for one or two knows, one of the difficulties is the purchasing. Things are in large quantities…or big pieces. So you buy for one recipe…and then you have some of whatever vegetable you bought left over. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, soon you are drowning in odds and ends of vegetables. Having some recipes that are basically templates that can be altered to suit your mood and your pantry is extremely helpful. (This is one of the reasons I love things like pasta and pizza so much—they are basically blank canvases that can be used with almost anything I have in my pantry and fridge.)

Chicken and rice is just such a template. Once you understand the basic idea, you can use what you have…whether that’s half a bell pepper, a chunk of butternut squash, half a box of mushrooms, or the end of your clamshell of baby spinach or super greens (that would really be best consumed in a wilted state)…to make a delicious dinner. Julia Child said that French home cooks had a gift for this idea of “theme & variation” in the kitchen. I think good cooks the world over anchor a lot of their everyday cooking in this concept.

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