Chocolate Chips and Chicken Carcases

A recent rainy Saturday found me in the midst of all kinds of projects in the kitchen.  First and foremost importantly was to make, for my darling husband, in honor of his birthday, his absolutely favorite cookie of late Chewy Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies.  To say he is fond of these cookies is likening my interest in food as passing.  He like them.  A lot.  I figured if I was going to bake cookies, I might as well make a whole boat load of cookies. And I did.  Seven dozen to be precise.  And seven dozen cookies got me two things, a happy husband, and an extended period of time in the kitchen while they were baking, cooling and waiting to be baked. So why not make stock.

Making stock is really a lost art form as most people tend to these days prefer quicker cuts of boneless meat.  It's also a tendency to think of making stock as some antiquated laborious process that really it's just not.  The thing about stock is that yes, it IS time consuming, but not YOUR time.  I found myself recently with a late evening and a shopping list to Costco, to which was promptly added, a rotisserie chicken for supper that evening.  Which found me the following day with a picked over cooked chicken and the plans of slowly simmered stock soon to follow.    Throw your carcass into a pot with some aromatic veggies and herbs cover it all with water over a low flame, and wait.  For hours.  On end.  Active time of max 10 minutes, hours of a delicious smelling house and a final product that is leaps and bounds above what you can buy in a store. 

In the beginning

At the end

I also happened that very day to have a mess of roasted squash and eggplant from my CSA.  I thought I had roasted just about everything, but had never once even thought about putting summer squash into the oven to roast.  But now I have, and I will continue to do so, and not only when I am receiving an abundance of squash.  I chopped up onions, garlic, red pepper, and zucchini and yellow squash, - tossed it with some olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper and put it in a 425 oven for 20 minutes.  To that I added some chopped eggplant and roasted for an additional 20-25 minutes.

Quite heavenly on it's own, it became even more spectacular in it's PlannedOver form.  I made a roux with flour and butter and to that added some of the long simmered chicken stock and a touch of milk.  Boiled pasta and finely chopped the PlannedOver roasted squash.  Drained pasta and veggies were all added to the pot of sauce and tossed to coat.  Sprinkled with, of course, a dusting of Parmesan cheese.

Try your hand at making a stock, the 10 minutes of active work you have in it will pay you dividends of rewards in taste.  And you will have plenty of time to whip up a batch of cookies!

Happy Eating!