Chicken Tetrazzini

I have found that I am less and less likely to buy and read cookbooks. I have a shelf-full of them, but I mostly find recipes online (or scan them into MasterCook) and look there. I have lots of recipes I haven't converted yet from the old MasterCook version; I think I got to "C" or so, which means I have lots of chicken recipes but not a lot of pork ones.

So when I went looking for a chicken recipe, I found something that I didn't remember making before, and it sounded very tasty, but not very healthy. So, of course, I made it.

Tetrazzini is not an Italian dish, oddly enough; it's American. The recipe I have is from Gourmet Magazine.

Gourmet's Chicken Tetrazzini

4 pounds chicken—cut in pieces
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 pound mushrooms—thinly sliced
3 tablespoons medium dry sherry
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
nutmeg—to taste
1/2 pound spaghetti
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese—grated
2 tablespoons flour

In a kettle, combine the chicken with enough salted water to cover it by 2 inches. Bring water to a boil, and simmer the chicken for 20 minutes or until it is tender. Let chicken cool in the broth, separate the meat from the skin and bones, returning the skin and bones to the broth. Cut the meat into strips and reserve. Simmer the broth until it is reduced by half, strain through a fine sieve, discarding the solids. Skim off fat. Boil the stock until it is reduced to about 2 cups.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, cook the mushrooms in 2 tbsp butter over mod-low heat, stirring, until they are softened. In a kettle of boiling salted water, cook spaghetti until it is al dente. Drain it well. In a saucepan melt remaining butter over mod-low heat. Add flour and cook the roux, stirring, for 3 minutes. Whisk in the reserved broth, cream and sherry. Bring the sauce to a boil, whisking, and simmer it for 5 minutes. Season with nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste.

Stir half into the mushrooms with the spaghetti and transfer it to a well-buttered 2-1/2-qt. baking dish, making a well in the center. Add the chicken meat to the remaining sauce, combine well. Spoon this into the center of the spaghetti and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake in the middle of a preheated 350F oven for 25-30 minutes or until pale golden in color. Serve immediately.

Now, I left out the nutmeg as I object to it except in pumpkin and squash pies and confectionary of that nature. The rest of the recipe, though fiddly, is rather good. I am a great believer in making chicken broth if you're going to use it. Unfortunately, it's so much easier to use chicken powder or bouillon cubes that I don't do it often. This worked perfectly, and I have some left over in the fridge for, perhaps, chicken orzo soup.

I didn't use Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry, as that's a bit too tasty for cooking. I also didn't use cooking sherry, as that's vile stuff that should never grace a cupboard. I used Tesco's best dry sherry, won at a church raffle. It was nice, and it gave me an excuse to have some Harvey's on the rocks. I do have Chinese rice wine, which is sherry-like in flavour, so if you have some of that you could use it rather than make a trip to the package store.

I didn't have a ceramic or glass baking dish big enough for this, so I used my metal pot. Just right. I greased the sides with a bit of butter on a paper towel, wiping it around the sides the the bottom. Worked a treat.

HWMBO loved the dish and took some to work the next day for lunch. The dish has a creamy, buttery, cheesy taste that brings me back to the days when we could eat cream, butter, and cheese to our hearts' delight. As long as you don't eat it weekly, or dishes like it, you too can relive the days of the 1950's, when Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook was the King of Cookbooks.

Syria

You will undoubtedly have read and heard about the situation in Syria. I won't rehash any of it.

This last week the UK Parliament dealt a blow to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, by voting against joining with the United States and other countries in striking Syria with missiles as retaliation for the barbaric use of poison gas on its people. I agonised about this for days, eventually deciding that a military strike was not a good way to get this behaviour on the part of Bashir al-Assad and his government and army to stop. So, I'm glad that my government and armed forces will not be participating.

However, the United States, with the assistance of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys…er…their oldest allies, the French, and other countries, seems ready to go for bombardment. It will undoubtedly happen.

I wonder what it is that the bombardment will achieve. Will it achieve the goal of toppling Assad and his government? Probably not. Will it kill or take out of commission key members of the government or armed forces of Syria, or its Hezbollah allies? Probably not. Will it shake the resolve of Russia to continue to supply Syria with arms? Probably not. Will it assist the rebels to overcome the Syrian Army and seize control of Syria thus beginning the process of turning it into a democracy? I would be quite surprised if it did.

What it will achieve is two-fold. In Syria, it will create more instability and upset, and lead to more loss of life. In New York, it will emphasise the principle that the United Nations, as currently constituted, is unable to act as the conscience and enforcer of decency in international relations. No resolution condemning Syria will ever pass the Security Council.

The post-war system of world power, where five nations—the victors in World War 2—ran the world and the rest of the nations (and colonies) were just minor onlookers. is now obsolete. The veto is no longer reflecting the reality, where instead of around 50 nations there are more than 200, spanning the globe. Britain and France are no longer world powers with a network of colonies; Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and is powerful only as far as its oligarchs and natural resources will go; China is now an economic superpower but does not have the political will or the military reach to be a political or military world power. The United States is both an economic and military superpower, unique in the 21st century, but is seen by many to be overbearing, imperial, and too willing to propose military solutions to world problems.

What's to be done, then, about Syria? The UN is no longer the way to settle international disputes. One side or the other will block any action. Unilateral military action will be counterproductive in the long run (see: Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam).

As a person with religious beliefs and views, my first option is prayer. It doesn't directly help Syrians, but it helps calm my mind and heart.

My second option is to embargo Syria as far as weapons supply goes. Some way would have to be found to keep weapons from flowing into Syria. I don't know how this will be done, but our sending lots of arms to the rebels and Russia sending lots of arms to the government of Syria will not solve the problem.

My last option is to expose the flaws in the UN yet again. World government is not the answer, but a world governance body like the UN but without the veto needs to be created or assembled. So the question I pose is: how can this be brought about?

Syria, I fear, will continue to sink into the muck created by its government, and containment of its land borders and a refusal to have any relations with it as a state is probably the best we can do.