Live the Live ™

My daughter likes to find new recipes on line for us to try. And although they might look like new ideas to her, the ingredients tell me these recipes came from somebody’s cookbook from the 70’s.

Hey, maybe I’m the exception to the rule, but I haven’t opened a can of cream-of-anything soup in at least 30 years…and that includes cream of mushroom for the classic Thanksgiving bean casserole. (I’ve never made one.) Maybe it’s because I wasn’t raised on Betty-Crocker-midwest-American fare. My parents were from Lithuania, and we had our own list of favorites that would probably raise a few American eyebrows.

But my daughter had friends coming over to hang out for a few hours, and I always like to cook something for them. (I learned from my mom and grandmother a long time ago that you don’t invite someone over without feeding them.)

This casserole recipe my daughter chose, originally called something like “Chicken Spaghetti,” had some good ideas, but wrong ingredients for a group of teenage girls who could be a bit finicky. For example, it called for 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup. I decided to ditch the mushrooms and I substituted one can each of cream of celery and cream of onion. The recipe called for green peppers. I chose to use peas and corn. And since it was all going into a casserole dish, spaghetti seemed like the wrong pasta. We went with smaller penne instead.

We made it a day ahead…keeping it wrapped in the fridge. But if we needed less than what this recipe made, we would’ve divided it into two smaller casseroles, freezing one of them (before cooking) for future use.

1 lb. pasta
1 can (10.5 oz.) cream of celery soup
1 can (10.5 oz.) cream of onion soup
1 cup chicken broth
2 to 3 cooked chicken breasts (about 3 cups shredded)
1/2 cup peas (frozen is fine)
1/2 cup corn (frozen is fine)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon seasoned salt (I use Lawry’s)
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
2 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar, divided

Homemade chicken stock is the best. If you don’t have any that you’ve made from the leftovers of previous chicken dinners, and you don’t have any store-bought stock in your pantry, here’s any easy cheat…

Get a pot and fill it with about 6 cups cold, clean water. Put the pot over high heat. Chop up a carrot, a stalk or two of celery, and 1/2 an onion and toss them in the pot. Then add the raw chicken breasts you’re going to use in this dish.

Bring the pot to a boil, then turn the heat down to medium until the chicken breasts are thoroughly cooked and the liquid in the pot has reduced by at least half.

Strain the veggies out, and what you have left is basic chicken stock.

If you’re going to cook this dish the same day, pre-heat the oven to 350.

Grease a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray. (Two smaller pans if you’re dividing the recipe.)

Cook the pasta according to the package instructions, but stop the cooking even before the pasta reaches the al dente stage. (It will cook more in the oven, so you don’t want it mushy.) Drain the pasta and set it aside.

Sauté the onion in a bit of olive oil until it’s translucent.

Get out a large bowl and add the can of cream of celery, the can of cream of onion, the sautéed onions, the peas and corn, the shredded chicken, the chicken stock, the cooked and drained pasta, the seasoned salt, the cayenne, and 1 1/2 cups of the cheese. Season with the salt and pepper, to taste. Mix well.

Pour the contents of the bowl into the 9 x 13 pan (or between the 2 pans if dividing), and top it with the rest of the cheese. This is the point where you wrap and freeze or continue to the oven.

Bake for 40–45 minutes, until it’s nice and bubbly. (If it looks like the cheese might burn, cover it with foil.)

If you’re freezing this recipe for later, wrap it tightly in plastic and foil before placing it in the freezer. A day before you want to cook, take it out of the freezer and thaw it in the fridge for 24 hours. Then cook as usual.

To give you a good idea of just how many people walk through the doors of the Guinness Storehouse at St. James Gate, in Dublin, Ireland, every year, the tour was listed in 2023 by World Travel Awards as the world’s leading tourist attraction.

It’s located on the grounds of the original Guinness Brewery, brewing in that location for over 250 years. Arthur Guinness himself signed and sealed a deal with the city in 1759 to lease the property for 9000 years!

If you’re looking for a simple brewery tour, this isn’t it! It’s more like a multi-media 5-story Disney walk-through than a brewery tour.

If you go to the website, you can see all the tour extras that they offer, all with an extra admission price, and you can customize the trip to your liking.

Some folks were disappointed to find that it wasn’t a simple brewery tour, but when you think about it, how could you possibly get that many people through the door any other way?

I thought it was a fun experience, topping it all off with a taste of a fresh pint of Guinness on the 7th floor at their newly expanded Gravity Bar.

The Gravity Bar is worth the visit even if you don’t want a drink, because it features the best 360° views of Dublin.

We say “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.” Guinness has us beat with a tasting every morning at 10!

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Scotland was to visit the Oban Whisky distillery. Oban is a lovely seaside town, about a 2-hour’s drive from Glasgow on a sunny day.

Oban

Unfortunately, for me, it was pouring buckets of rain, so my drive took a little over three hours. Nonetheless, the tour was worth it. 

Oban Whisky is owned by the giant alcoholic beverage company, Diageo, but they claim that the company really leaves them alone to do their magic. And so they do, seven days a week, 365 days a year, cranking out as much whiskey as this little old distillery possibly can.

The bar at the Oban distillery. A nice place to sit and sip while you wait for the tour to start.

There has been no expansion since they started in 1794, other than moving the bottling process over to another location. (The distillery predates the town, which was established in 1811.)

The tour begins with a taste!

One of the smallest distilleries in Scotland, only seven employees make Oban Whisky, which is a mind-blowing thought! All of the whisky comes from only two copper stills. The relatively small wooden holding tanks are all they have to make all of their whisky, including their very popular Oban 14, which is available in most of the United States.

All of the whisky made at Oban is single malt. That means it’s made at a single distillery using only water, yeast and malted barley. 

The process begins with the barley.

Our tour guide told us that the taxes in Scotland are ridiculously high on booze, about 75%! So it’s a better deal for them to sell their whisky overseas to make a larger profit, and Americans love their whisky!

Custom-made wooden holding tanks.

Oban uses peat more for flavoring than it does for heating, and so their whiskys are far less smoky than other Scottish brands. (They use biodiesel to heat their mash.) And they’re big on recycling: the spent barley goes to feed local cattle.

Two precious stills. They make all the whisky at Oban.

Most whisky distillers in Scotland have a relationship with American bourbon distilleries, because they reuse American bourbon barrels to start the aging process on their whisky. It’s pretty much the standard process throughout all of Scotland.

The good stuff…before it gets barreled.

That’s why being owned by a company like Diageo, which owns Bulliet bourbon, can give Oban a never-ending supply of bourbon casks. (Bourbon must always be aged in a brand new oak cask, so once the barrel is used, the Americans no longer have any use for it. The Scottish take it and reuse that barrel several times before passing it on to somebody else.) The Scots will also use rum casks, sherry casks from Spain, whatever it takes to add flavors and nuances to their whiskey over the many years of aging.

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In Ireland, it’s not called Irish whisky unless it ages for at least three years in a barrel in Ireland. To outdo them, Scottish law says the whisky must age 3 years and one day in a barrel in Scotland to be called whisky!

Either way, the end results at Oban distillery were enjoyed by all. Slàinte!

By the way, if you’re wondering why I spelled the word “whisky” without the “e,” you need to read my blog that explains it all. Check it out here:

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHISKEY AND WHISKY

These are even better than they sound!

A few months ago, I received chef Chetna Makan’s book, “Chetna’s 30 Minute Indian,” as a gift. The first recipe I tried was butter chicken, of course, because it’s so delicious. It was a big hit with my daughter and friends, and we’re looking at other recipes to try in the future.

Recently, we had dinner at a relatively new Indian restaurant in our area, Saffron, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Excellent food and service. We had a great meal. But what peaked our curiosity was their butter chicken wings. Wings! I thought that was genius.

So I took their idea, and using Chetna’s recipe, I gave it a shot. They came out fantastic!

Measurements in my recipe differ from the cookbook due to the large amount of chicken wings I used (5 lbs.), but the actual ingredients are the same. I also needed to change the way it was cooked, because the wings were large and had bones, where the original butter chicken recipe used boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into smaller pieces.

5 lbs. large chicken wings
5.3 oz. container (150g) plain yogurt
5 tablespoons mustard oil
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon Kashmiri chili powder
2″ piece of ginger, peeled and grated
4 garlic cloves, grated

I prepared the chicken wings by chopping off the tips. (But I do save them in a plastic freezer bag for future chicken stock.) Then I chop the wings at the joint to make two pieces from each wing. I set them aside.

The tips will be used later in for chicken stock.

In a large container that will hold all the wings, I combine the yogurt, mustard oil, salt, chili powder, grated ginger, and garlic. Mix it well. Add the chicken wings and make sure they are really well coated with the marinade. You can let it sit for ups to 3 hours at room temperature, or longer in the fridge.

Mix well.

A tip for fresh ginger: This is something I learned from a local farmer that raises her own ginger. I keep it in the freezer in a plastic freezer bag. When it’s time to grate, I simply take the frozen ginger and grate it, skin and all. The skin completely disintegrates and you don’t have to peel it. Then just put the unused ginger back in the bag and back in the freezer.

After marinating, spread the chicken wings onto a large sheet pan in a pre-heated 350 oven, and bake for 20 minutes.

While that’s baking…

2 tablespoons oil
100g salted butter
8 cloves
8 cardamom pods
2 cinnamon sticks (3″)
2 bay leaves
16 oz. passata, or pureed canned tomatoes
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 tablespoons Kasoori methi (fenugreek leaves)

Add the oil and butter to a pan over medium-low heat. Add the cloves, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves to the pan, and warm the spices for a few minutes.

Add the passata, salt, chili powder, garam masala and Kasoori methi to the pan, mixing well. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for about 10 minutes on medium-low heat. Don’t let it burn.

After 10 minutes, remove the lid from the pan and let it cook a few minutes more to reduce just a bit. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool to room temperature. Using a slotted spoon, remove the cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves.

You don’t want to crunch on these!

Pour the contents of the pan into a large bowl, big enough to hold all the chicken wings.

After the wings have cooked 20 minutes, pour off any of the fat in the sheet pan and place the wings in the bowl with the pan sauce. Mix gently, but really well to make sure the wings are really covered with sauce.

Place the wings back on the sheet pan (pour all leftover sauce on top)and bake at 350 for another 15 minutes, until the chicken coating starts to caramelize and get sticky.

2 tablespoons cream or half-and-half
2 teaspoons clear (and runny) honey 

Mix the cream and honey together in a small bowl. When the wings come out of the oven, let them cool for a few minutes, then drizzle the cream and honey all over.

I served the wings over plain jasmine rice, and some sautéed carrots from my garden.