Chicken and Dirty Rice

I'm sipping on an apple cocktail.  It's deleeeshous! And strong.  It took some stocking up of my non-existent liquor cabinet in order to make, but once as I bought the basics and made the thyme simple syrup, it was bottoms up. Okay not exactly bottoms up, since, and this is worth repeating, the drink is strong stuff.  It's not the most quick-and-easy of cocktails, but the making of a cocktail is a nice little ritual, isn't it? Plus, I feel ever so sophisticated. I fool everybody. And by "everybody" I mean my husband and the two pugs, the only living beings who are around while I engage in all this fine measuring and ice-and-liquor shaking and whatnot.

FYI--I've discovered that you don't need a real cocktail shaker to make cocktails. I used an old jam jar.  

Is there anything like the sound of ice gently clinking against glass?  It's such a happy, light tinkling sound.  Although when I hear the word "tinkle", I think of #1, and that's not what I mean in this instance.

By the way, this is not a sweet cocktail. While it has apple cider and the thyme simple syrup, don't be expecting Martinelli's (which I happen to love) with some alcohol thrown in. 

Onward to the point of this post...

As I mentioned, I've been starting to use my slow cooker and recipes from Slow Cooker Revolution by America's Test Kitchen.  You're like, oh my god stop mentioning ATK I can't take it anymore. And I'm like I can't. I just can't stop.

One of my favorite recipes so far is this Southern Style Chicken and Dirty Rice. Prep for slow cooker recipes can be super easy or pretty involved.  This recipe is an in-betweener.  But very worth it.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 8 ounces of kielbasa sausage, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 onion, minced
• 2 celery ribs, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups of low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed 
• Salt and pepper
• 2 cups instant rice
• 2 scallions, sliced thin (I completely forgot these when I made the recipe, which renders them "optional")

Serves 6 to 8.

Heat oil in skillet on medium to medium high heat.  Cook kielbasa until well-browned, about 5 minutes.

While kielbasa is browning, prep your aromatics.

Add the onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, chili powder, thyme and cayenne to the kielbasa until veggies are softened and onion is lightly browned, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Add flour. The two-word simplistic beauty of a command sentence.Which I just ruined with my rambling.

Stir for about 2 minutes to incorporate and cook flour.  Then whisk in broth, making sure to scrape up tasty bits on the bottom of the pan. Transfer mixture to slow cooker.

See? Those are the bits that you want to scrape up.  I am so helpful.

At this point you're wondering how the slow cooker makes life any easier, because this sure doesn't sound any easier than a regular recipe, and I wondered the same thing. I think this recipe is a great example of how the biggest benefit of the slow cooker comes after the prep, when you're letting it sit there doing its thing.  Be patient!

Anyway, season your chicken thighs with salt and pepper on both sides.

Place the chicken in the slow cooker and move it around a bit so that it's covered in the sauce.  Cook on low for 4 to 6 hours (I did 5 hours).

After you've gone to get a massage (or 3) and return to your slow cooker deliciousness, break apart the chicken with any utensil, or just look at it really, really intensely--the meat falls apart quite easily. Stir in rice and 1 tsp salt and cook on high for 30 minutes.

I know, you're like, why would I use instant rice?  Well, that's what the book said and we all know that ATK cooks things every which way, and they mentioned that using regular rice could lead to uneven cooking.  I don't know about you, but the last thing I wanted was for this thing to be cooking for 5 hours only to find that the dish would be ruined by misbehaving rice.  So Minute Rice it was.

This dish is really quite good, and I highly recommend it.

Ta-da!

Chicken Enchiladas

There's been a whole lotta America's Test Kitchen recipes in our household lately.  Do you ever go through phases with your recipe inspiration? 

My sister alerted me to this recipe years ago. I don't cook much Mexican food, so when I realized there was a recipe that I could actually use to create some delicious enchiladas at home all by lonesome, I pretty much lost all my senses. I gave the recipe to a friend, saying it was so "easy". She kinda gave me a dirty look after she had used it and mumbled that it wasn't so easy. That's what I call LAZY.

Okay, so it's not as easy as wrapping a tortilla around a package of taco seasoning, but in the universal scheme of things it's kind of genius and straightforward, and seriously good. You essentially make the enchilada sauce, poach the chicken in it, then separate the two by straining so the chicken part becomes the filling and the sauce part becomes...the sauce. And if you want, you can make the sauce and filling on one day, and save the assembly/baking for the next day. I mean, what could be easier than a 2-day recipe, I ask you? Note sarcasm.

I am clearly conflicted by this recipe. But not by the results, which are straight up good.


Adapted from America's Test Kitchen

1 onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbs chili
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
12 to 16 oz boneless chicken thighs, cut into ¼” strips
2 cans 8 oz Hunt’s tomato sauce (this is what you're supposed to use--I, on the other hand, read this as 2 cans of 14.5-oz tomato sauce and had to siphon off about 1 1/2 cups that I saved and later used in a chili recipe. Point being that put those literacy skills to work and don't be like me.)
1 cup water

½ c cilantro, minced
3 c shredded cheddar (or queso fresco)
4 oz jarred jalapenos, chopped (I couldn't find these and just used canned diced green chilies)

10 to 12 corn tortillas

Optional toppings (I took the "optional" part seriously):
sour cream
lettuce, shredded
diced ripe avocado


Serves 5 to 6

When you prep your ingredients, take a moment to contemplate the cilantro. Some people love this herb, others can't stand it. I am in the camp of the former.

Heat 1½ TBS oil in saucepan at medium-high heat. Add onions until translucent just beginning to brown (about 4 minutes), then add garlic until and continue to cook, stirring, for about 1 minute more. 

My onions are looking a little anemic.

Add spices and stir so they get nice and fragrant, about 1 minute.  

Add the tomato sauce and water. 

Stir chicken into sauce.

I know, another great picture of raw meat. MMmmm....

Bring to simmer and cook 8 minutes. While it's cooking, preheat oven to 300 degrees. Back to the chicken: strain mixture through coarse mesh strainer into large bowl. 

Transfer solids to separate bowl or plate, and mix in cilantro, cheddar & jalapenos.

Spray tortillas with oil and warm in oven for 4 minutes at upper and lower middle racks, on baking sheets. This dries them out a little so they don't get too soggy during the subsequent baking, but if you're going to cut a step this would be it.

Raise oven heat to 400.  Coat bottom of 9 x 13” pyrex pan with ¾ cup sauce. Place generous 1/3 cup chicken filling in middle of each tortilla, and roll that sucker up.

This kinda looks like I'm rolling but I am not--my tortillas curled up during the pre-bake. Funny little things.

Place the filled tortillas in pan, seam side down. Feel free to pack them tightly. Squash 'em and show no mercy.  

Pour the rest of sauce over tortillas, and sprinkle with 1 cup shredded cheese.

Cover pan with foil, and bake on lower middle rack for 20-25 minutes.

That's about as good as this picture-taking venture is going to get. Feel free to accessorize with lettuce, tomato, avocado, creme brulee, whatever! Ta-da!

Grilled Butterflied Chicken

You will see random pictures of splayed chicken in this post, in various stages of doneness, so be prepared.

My parents' grill was recently resurrected from what was a horrid, rusty, filthy grave.  They should be ashamed of themselves.  The savior was my sister, who took one look at the grill, sprinted back inside, and promptly ordered new grill grates to be shipped the next day.  Thank you sister.  (I, on the other hand, had completely avoided the grill, knowing what I was likely to find. Not a savior.)

There were some plump, good-looking chickens at the farmers' market, and we picked one up with the thought of butterflying the chicken and cooking it on the born-again grill.  I searched the internet for grilled butterflied chicken recipes, and mostly based my recipe on the one in this blog, which was adapted from Cook's Illustrated.  I liked the recipe not only because it gave directions on how long to grill a butterflied chicken, but it also called for brining the chicken beforehand.

For the chicken and brine:

• 1 whole chicken, about 4 to 4.5 pounds
• 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of water
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

I also used this dry rub recipe from Saveur, but it isn't necessary.  If you click on the link, you'll see that the rub recipe has about 15,000 ingredients.  This is something that would automatically go in my "no" pile, except that my sister made the rub, not me. I used it, but I didn't make it. 

Pour a few cups of hot water into a container large enough to hold the chicken and at least a few inches of water above it.  Pour in the salt and sugar, and mix until the granules dissolve.  I added in a couple of bay leaves, just for kicks.  Place your chicken into the container.  I also read that you should put ice in the mixture so the temp lowers and discourages bacteria. So I did that. 

Pour in enough water (start with a gallon and go from there, depending on the size of your pot and chicken) to cover.  Then I covered the whole thing and put it in the fridge for about 4 hours.

Tip 1: you can start this process with a frozen chicken.  The brining thaws out the chicken very quickly.

Tip 2: don't quote me on this, but I wouldn't brine the chicken for more than 4-5 hours.  After that, the solution breaks down the meat too much and it may become mushy.

When you're ready to move on to the next step, heat your grill to medium high (if you have a charcoal grill, I get the impression that medium high means that you can hold your hand about 5 inches from the grill for about 4-5 seconds before your hand melts--this is why I use a gas grill).  

After brining, remove the chicken and pat dry with paper towels.  Discard brining solution.  Now get to butterflying that chicken.  I previously gave vague and unhelpful directions on how to butterfly a chicken in this post, so if you'd like to be unhelped again, please click on that link. (I did link to a different site that has more specific directions on butterflying, which is more helpful.)  Basically you take poultry shears and cut along each side of the backbone, remove the backbone, and flatten out that sucker chicken.  You may need to make a vertical slit/crack along the breastbone with your knife in order to help this along.

Some recipes at this point would have you cover the chicken with plastic wrap and pound with a heavy object to achieve an even, flat layer of chicken, but that sounded like too much work and shit, I just butterflied a chicken, isn't that enough.

Season well on both sides with salt and pepper. I used the infinity ingredient dry rub, which had salt and pepper in it.

Slap the chicken, skin side down, on the grill.  It should sizzle a little.  Mine didn't. Apparently we were running out of propane, which caused all kinds of issues, like dinner taking about twice as long as it should have to cook.  C'est la vie.  Turn the heat down to medium.

Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, until the skin is nice, crispy and golden.  Flip it over.

My chicken start to try and shimmy out of its skin.  This may have had to do with some inadvertent mistargeted butchery on my part.

Cover and cook for about 12 more minutes, or until the breast meat is about 165 degrees and the thigh meat is 185 degrees.  Or, you can be like me and ruthlessly hack into it with a paring knife to see if the juices are clear (done) or still pink (not done).  Cutting into meat at this stage is typically a no-no because the juices run out but when it comes to E. coli, I choose hacking.

It was at this point that the propane, unbeknownst to me, really started to run out, and the chicken was just not cooking that well.  I severed the thighs/legs from the rest of the body to speed up cooking, but hopefully you won't have to engage in this sort of amputation.  If you do, though, just do it with love, okay?

Cook, you damn chicken, cook.

When the chicken is fully cooked, set it on a cutting board and let it rest for about 5-10 minutes before cutting into it.  This wait seemed somewhat symbolic at this point on account of the previously-referenced hacking.  See evidence below.

I spy a gouge in the leg, multiple stab wounds in the breast, and general gross dismemberment.

But it was tasty nonetheless.  The brine gave it a lot of flavor and juiciness, and the rub was excellent.

Ta-da!

Chicken Under a "Brick" with Lemon and Thyme

Chicken. Seems ho hum, right? But oh my friend you would not say such things if you've tried this recipe.  It's got crispy skin.  It's got lemony thyme flavor.  And it's got....POTATOOOEEESS! Yes, we are pleased.


I've made this recipe a few times and my main advice is to use a small chicken.  The chicken we used this time was a meager 2.75 lbs, but I tell ya, it was the perfect size. You have to be fitting this sucker into a skillet and flipping it at some point, and I had some major problems with the 4 lb chicken I once used, although 4 lbs is definitely doable.  If your manual dexterity skills reside at a higher level than mine, which they probably do, then go for the 4 if that's the smallest size you can get.


Adapted from Cook's Illustrated and My Husband Cooks.


Ingredients


Lemon and Thyme seasoning

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 small shallot, finely chopped (about 2 to 3 TBS)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 TBS thyme leaves, chopped
• juice from 1 lemon
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Chicken and potatoes

• 1 whole chicken, anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 lbs (though I recommend the lower end), butterflied (either courtesy of you or your butcher)
• 1 1/2 lbs new potatoes, halved/quartered into 1-inch pieces (you can also use fingerling potatoes)
• 2 tsp vegetable oil 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Prepare the lemon thyme seasoning. You don't have to do this first, but I did, because butterflying the chicken by myself was daunting and I was putting if off as long as possible.

Chop/mince your shallot, garlic, and thyme. Them mix all ingredients together into a chunky marinade/sauce.

It may not be glamorous, but this is the stuff of heaven.

Now turn to your chicken.  Pat your clucker dry.  For butterflying your chicken, I highly highly recommend a pair of poultry shears.  Without them, I'm sure I would have had bits of raw chicken flung all over the apartment.

My Husband Cooks has good instructions on butterflying a chicken and you can find plenty of resources online, so I'll just summarize.

1. Place chicken on cutting board, breast side down.
2. Cut out the backbone by snipping closely along each side of the backbone.
3. Flip chicken back over, spreading chicken.  Press HARD on breastbone--you may hear cracking.  Revel in the violence.
4. Cut off the tips of the wings.
5. If you want, place a piece of plastic wrap over the chicken and pound the chicken to even that sucker out, but I didn't. I just smooshed it extra hard to get it as flat as possible.

And you end up with this.

I know you're all salivating and can't wait to bite into that raw chicken, but just you wait. Season your chicken with salt and pepper. 


In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium high heat, until shimmering.  Place chicken in skillet, skin side down.

See, I told you there would be more salivating. I mean wow, who wouldn't find this appetizing.  Chicken, thank you so much for your sacrifice, I want you to know that I ate you with love, respect and mucho gusto.

In order to maximize skin crispiness, place a heavy object (a pot works well) on top of the chicken and fill it with canned food (I put a barrier of foil wrap betwixt the chicken and pot.

While the chicken cooks, preheat oven to 425 degrees.  After about 20 minutes, you'll get a beautiful crust on the chicken skin.  Which, if you're like me, you'll maul a bit with a spatula as you're impatiently trying to scrape the chicken from the pan. Remove the chicken to a plate/baking sheet, skin side up.  Pour off chicken fat, leaving a few tsp.

See the bald spot on the thigh towards the bottom left of the picture?  It is my life's shame.

Mix the potatoes with 2/3 of the lemon-thyme mixture.  Place the potatoes in the skillet.

Place the chicken, skin side up, on top of the potatoes.  

Drizzle the remaining 1/3 of the lemon-thyme mixture over the chicken.  Cook about 30 to 45 minutes, until the chicken reaches about 160 to 165 degrees internally.  Alternately, like me, repeated take out chicken, take a paring knife, press down on chicken.  If juices run clear, it's done. If the juices are pink, stick it back in the oven.  Be incorrect and doubt yourself multiple times so that you swear not to make chicken again.


When chicken is done, remove to cutting board.

The recipe says to turn on the broiler and crisp the potatoes, but mine were pretty well done so I skipped that step.


As you guys know, at this point in my recipes I'm f&*#g hungry and don't really have the patience for photos.  So here is the chicken, which doesn't look like a chicken, completely sans delicious potatoes, with romaine dressed with lemon and olive oil.

Really? That's the best I can do?

Don't be discouraged by this disappointing picture. The chicken was awesome and so were the potatoes.

Ta-da!

Spicy Hoisin Chicken and Braised Celery

As you may have noticed, yesterday wasn't even Monday but I still labeled yesterday's post as "Monday". It was very kind of all of you to refrain from pointing it out, lest it burst my hazy semi-comatose state and kill me.  I'm all off-kilter.

I'm back, with a little coffee.

I've had all kinds of hankering for anything with soy sauce in it.  This spicy hoisin chicken dish hit the spot, and was easy and hands-down good.  

The original recipe called for chicken thighs with the skin, but I used skinless thighs instead and adjusted the cooking temp/time accordingly.  Also, next time I might cut down on the amount of hoisin and up the soy sauce, since I'd like to try making it a wee less sweet.

Adapted from Epicurious.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup hoisin sauce (I might try 1/4 to 1/3 cup next time)
• 1 teaspoon finely grated peeled fresh ginger
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 8 skinless chicken thighs with bones

Serves 8.

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  In a medium bowl, mix together the first 7 ingredients.

Place chicken thighs in large baking dish (this is a 9 x 13 dish) and pour sauce over chicken.  Turn to coat well.  By the way if you want easier cleanup later, you can line the dish with foil.  Or, if you want to stand in solidarity with me and do your share of soaking/scrubbing, and soaking/scrubbing, then some more soaking/scrubbing, please feel free.

You can either cook the chicken at this point, or you can cover and marinate for an hour (I didn't refrigerate the chicken during this hour because I wanted the flavors to infuse into the chicken as quickly as possible, but if that's some big health no-no, then don't listen to me.  You can also, of course, place the marinating chicken into the refrigerator).

Bake chicken for about 35 minutes.

While the chicken was baking, I made a side of braised celery.  I mentioned this dish in a previous post without going through the full recipe, which some of you lamented about.  Well, here it is, and you'll see how basic it is.

Ingredients

• Two bunches of celery hearts
• 2-3 tsp vegetable oil (or some other neutral oil) 
• pinch of five spice powder (optional) 
• 1/2 to 1 cup chicken or veggie broth (or water)
• 2-3 tsp of soy sauce

Trim the celery hearts and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces.  Then cut each piece lengthwise into 3 to 4 strips.  Or, if you're smarter than me, you'll do the lengthwise cutting first.

I love cutting celery. I love that crunching/ripping noise the knife makes when it breaks through all the threads.  I made that sound kinda violent. Hm.

Heat oil in wide saute pan or skillet over medium heat.  Add in the celery and enough broth to come about halfway up the celery.  This was extremely approximate.

Add in five spice powder, if using.  Cover and braise for about 5-10 minutes--keep checking to see when it gets to your desired texture.

When the celery is done, drain off a bit of the liquid (I put the cover on off-center by a smidgen and pour over sink) and add in the soy sauce.

You're done with the celery.

Take out the chicken...

...and serve with the celery and some rice.

Ta-da!

I would totally make this again, and perhaps cut down on the hoisin a little and add more soy sauce or a touch of black bean sauce.

Chicken Tetrazzini What Was I Thinking

So this is what happens when you don't read an entire recipe (again): in direct contradiction of your desire for easy cooking, you will decide to make something that seems simple but ends up taking ALL DAY.  Oh I read the recipe, at least the ingredients portion, several times.  In fact, I read the ingredients portion of not one, but two recipes--one from Giada de Laurentiis, and the other from Gourmet.  

I decided to be very creative and take a little bit of this and a little bit of that from each recipe. Giada's had a little more pizazz, while the Gourmet one used a whole chicken, poached, for the meat and the broth that would go into the final recipe.

What I completely failed to see in the Gourmet recipe (the cookbook version, it's not in the online version) is that the broth, with poaching time, takes approximately 4 hours. YEAH. Four STINKIN' hours.  It was a shitty day outside so staying in wasn't such a huge deal, but oh my GOD I was so bored by the end.  Tetrazzini is not supposed to be a hard dish. I mean, there are versions out there with rotisserie chicken and cream of mushroom soup--why oh WHY did I not take that route.

If you want something faster, I recommend the Giada recipe without any bastardization, or the one from Joy of Cooking, which I made a long time ago and which in my memory was not a marathon of death.

But made it I did, so you're gonna hear about it.  

Ingredients adapted from the recipes mentioned above:

Chicken

• 1 chicken, about 4 1/2 pounds, cut into 8 pieces
• 3 to 4 quarts water
• 1 tsp salt

Mushrooms

• 2 TBS butter
• 3/4 pound mushrooms, sliced
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp mined fresh thyme
• 1/4 cup dry white wine

Cream base:

• 3 TBS butter
• a little less than 1/3 cup flour
• 4 cups whole milk
• 2 cups of the homemade broth borne of your sweat, tears, and interminable time (oh you'll see)
• 3 TBS medium dry Sherry
• 1/2 lb spaghetti (I used fettucine because that's what I had leftover from another recipe)
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• plenty o pepa
• 1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

• 3/4 cup grated Parmesan for topping

Cut your chicken into 8 pieces.

I would show you how to do cut up a chicken into 8 pieces, but while I know the general directions, what I did to my chicken is not suitable for even adult readership. It was messy, it was violent, and I'm not sure exactly how many pieces I actually ended up with. Might have been anywhere from 7 to 12, who knows.

Put your chicken pieces, along with the backbone and breastbone (which you will have separated from your 8 chicken pieces), into a pot with enough water to cover by at least an inch and the salt.  I used about 3 quarts of water.

Cover and bring to boil.  Then lower heat, uncover, and simmer for 25 minutes.  Take pot off of stove, leave chicken in the pot, and let the chicken cool for about 1 1/2 hours, or until you can handle it with your hands (the chicken will continue to cook).

In the meantime, slice your mushrooms.

Prep your onion, garlic and thyme.

Heat 2 TBS butter in wide 4-quart saucepan over medium heat.  Add in mushrooms with a pinch of salt and cook until light golden brown, about 10 minutes.  

Toss in onion, garlic and thyme, and cook until onion is translucent, about 3 minutes.  

Add in wine and let wine simmer off, about 3-4 minutes.

Remove mushroom mixture to a bowl and set aside.

Is your chicken cool enough by now? Remove the skin from the pieces, and tear meat from bones in coarse pieces.  

Put skin and bones back into the pot with the broth.  Bring broth, with skin and bones, to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about 1 freaking hour.

Strain broth into large bowl.  Discard the spent skin and bones.

Skim the fat off the broth--folks, it was about this point in the recipe that I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, and also really wished that I hadn't always negated the need for a fat separator (like this one) by claiming there was no space in the kitchen.  So despite my deft work with a spoon trying to skim the fat off the top of the broth, there was quite a bit 'o' fat that stayed with the broth.

Put the broth back into the goddamn pot and bring to yet another boil, and boil until reduced to 2 cups, about  another 1 1/4 hours.  

See how concentrated and golden it is?  I would have been more proud had I not wanted to set it on fire in frustration.

Cook your pasta, shaving off a minute from the cooking time, since it is going to be smothered with sauce and baked in the oven.  Drain pasta.

Make the cream sauce. Yeah we're not done. Melt the 3 TBS butter over medium heat.  Sprinkle flour over the butter and cook for about 3 minutes, whisking the whole time to avoid clumps.

Well, in reality it'll be clumpy at the start no matter how much you whisk, but just keep whisking anyway. It'll look better when you whisk in the liquids.

Gradually whisk in broth, cream, and sherry.  

Continue to whisk and bring mixture to boil.  Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes, whisking occasionally.  

Oh wait, don't forget to let the mixture boil up and over the sides of the saucepan, down the sides, onto not only the surface of the stove, but underneath in the "drip pan", and then further down below in all the crooks and nannies of the gas-filled pipes which will require you to lift up the entire stovetop and use approximately 1 entire roll of paper towels, 1/2 bottle of Windex and a good part of your sanity and patience to clean.  Yes, don't forget about that part.

MotherF&*KER.

Ahem, anyway, this is kind of what the sauce will look like.

Add in 1/4 cup Parmesan, grated nutmeg, 1 1/2 tsp salt and however much pepper you want.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter/grease a 13x9x2 baking dish.

Combine the sauce with the pasta, chicken, and mushroom mixture.  I did this in two parts because it is a lot of tetrazzini and one bowl to mix together all those ingredients would have resulted in more spillage, paper towels, Windex, and this time very possibly big, salty tears.

Pour the mixture into the baking pan and sprinkle the 3/4 cup Parmesan over the top.

Bake until Parm turns golden, about 25 minutes.  Frankly, I was sick of this dish at this point and took it out at 25 minutes, although it still looked a wee bit on the anemic side. I don't care.

Ta-da! Now I am going to go pass out. Wait, no, I will make Kevin take me to Grom.