cortado

Hello beautiful darling, 

This is the last post for the year, I think. It is all so strange and magical. So full. 

The Christmas lights are up again, but I just keep thinking about last New Year’s Eve, and how I left the parties and went and ate a cheeseburger alone in a park, and stared at the skyline and decided that this would be a year where I would do what I want. 

I tried. 

Sometimes, it was lucky. 

I am so grateful. 

There are no recipes for you now-- I’m working on another project that will hopefully come to fruition this spring. I’ll tell you more later.

New Year’s Eve is approaching again. 

I don’t know what to do with that.
Everything is coming and going so fast. Everything is scary and too much and too sad, yet, I have a good feeling about the coming year.

But then again, deciding on optimism is really the only thing to be done. 

“2015 is the Quinceañera year!” I tell anyone who will listen, but I don’t think anyone else likes this idea as much as I do. 

I don’t know what else to say. 

I hope you’re eating well and treating yourself to some nice coffee drinks. 

Lately, I like cortados. 

I think I’m going to go get one right now. 

Before I go, I just want to say-- 

All I feel is hope 

and 

I love you. 

xoxo

m 

rice crispy treats

Time is passing, and it scares me. 

Thanksgiving is always a marker of this: the old people move slower, the young people move faster, have babies, get married. 
Everyone still eats green bean casserole. 

Jordan asked me if the drive back from Oklahoma "felt cinematic?" 
Sometimes it has. But this time it didn't. It just felt long. 
The year feels tired. 



The other day, I remembered this line from a Jorge Luis Borges poem that Julian read to me once, and there is a line that goes, "and you plant your own garden instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers." And I thought about this, because without even thinking, I bought an amaryllis bulb and put it in a turquoise pot filled with dirt. 
It has grown five inches since I planted it. 
So far, things look promising. 

The past few months have been so very quiet. Quiet months after a very full year. 
I came back from Thanksgiving and opened my windows to drifts of gold leaves that finally fell after the cold snap and hoped that this would make for some kind of momentum.

I do not know how you know when you are growing up. 



I've been making rice crispy treats with chocolate chips for the two boys I babysit. 
"Bring me one thousand hundred more next time!!!" They order me.
I've been trying to make pinto beans the way my mother does, only mine are never as good. 
A few months ago, I would come home tipsy from nights out and peel off my party clothes and stand in front of the stove, stirring a skillet of scrambled eggs, which inevitably burnt, because who has time for heat that isn't turned all the way up? 
And also, there was a rat in my kitchen last night and I didn't even know what to do. 



And maybe it's because of these things, or in spite of them, I feel so hopeful right now. 
Hopeful in my bones. 

I asked my grandmother, I said, "Grandma, if I decide that I'm going to have everything I want, do you think I'll get it?"
"No." She said. 
But I'm going to believe it anyways. 
And maybe the best part, when I really think about it, is that there are so many things-- gold leaves and the end of school and even drunk burnt eggs and sticky little boys who love rice crispy treats--  
I only want "one thousand hundred more" of all of this too. 

I'm going to believe it anyways. 

I love you. 

xoxo
m 

Rice Crispy Treats

3 Tablespoons butter
40 (about a bag) Marshmallows
6 cups rice crispy cereal 
1 cup chocolate chips (optional) 

In a large pot on stove, melt butter. Add marshmallows and toss to coat. Over heat, stir the marshmallows until they are completely melted and well blended. 
Add cereal and chocolate chips immediately, mix well. 
Press into a greased 13x9-inch pan. 
Cool completely. 

Bulla Soup

My Danish great-grandmother used to make this soup for my mother, and my mother used to make it for me. Last week, when Jacob was staying with me, he felt sick, and so I had to call my grandmother, who knew my great-grandmothers recipe, and told me how to make it over the phone, and so now I am sharing it with you. 

This soup is called Bulla Soup, and I don’t know exactly how to describe it to you, but it’s like dumplings. Really rich, floury, wonderful, boiled dumplings. 

November is the time for soup. 

In New York,  when I was very hungry, I would go to this crazy dumpling place where you could get eight fried pork dumplings for three dollars, and I would walk and eat all the dumplings just dripping with soy sauce, and I felt so young and so free and so good. 

It’s food like that, that makes me feel the richness and glory of the world. 

Bulla are not pork dumplings, you have to sit down and eat them in a soup, with a spoon. You do not get the romance of walking through grimy streets alone, while taxi cabs howl at you when you cross the street before the little flashing hand signals you can go. (I was always crossing streets at the exact wrong time.) 

But bulla are a quick thing to make. Very simple, and satisfying. 

Here is how to do it: 

First, you heat some broth, such as chicken broth. Make sure it just about boiling. 

Then in a separate pot, heat a cup of water to a rolling boil, add 1/2 cup butter. 

You heat these together, and then, all at once, stir in 1 cup of flour. Stir rigorously over the heat, until the mixture forms into a ball. Remove from heat. Then, thoroughly beat into the flour/water mixture, four eggs, one at a time. 

Next, take a spoon,  and grab a rounded scoop of the mixture, gently lower it into the boiling chicken broth. 

And then you wait for the bulla to rise to the top. 

And when it has risen to the top, you know it is finished. 

The simplicity of good food, occasionally speaks for itself. 

So I'm not going to say anything beyond, "These really do it for me." 

I hope you’re so well. 

Talk soon. 

I love love love you. 

XOXO

m 

Swedish Meatballs

Life is good, mostly great. 

But today, and lately, lately being most of October, I've had the blues. 

I'm not alone in this, everybody I know is a little tired, or a little weary right now. A little lonely despite being a little too busy. 

I don't know what it is. 

Often, Barbarajo says to me, "You couldn't pay me to be 21 again." 

I think about this often. 

Maybe it's just the time of year. 

Maybe we all just need to drink more.  

On Sunday night, I stood in my kitchen, and made Swedish meatballs. 

I thought about everyone I know, and wondered where we are all going to go.  

And the splintering effects of the final year of college, and how maybe you don't get some things back and other things you just pray and pray that you do, and also the hope that you can have a beer on a Tuesday night, and finish the thesis and everything else on time, maybe, if the magic happens, because I guess it's all happening all the time anyways. 

And I thought about-- it is so terrifying, and so good, to be this young. 

So I made Swedish meatballs. 

They are great. 

They are the flavor of comfort. 

Despite the October blues. 

I love you I love you I love you. 

xoxo

m 

Swedish Meatballs
from The Gourmet Cookbook

3/4 cup fine fresh bread crumbs

1/4 heavy cream

1/4 club soda

3/4 pound ground beef round

1/2 pound ground veal

1/4 pound ground pork

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 large egg, lightly beaten

2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Stir together bread crumbs, cream and club soda in a small bowl. Let stand for 20 minutes. 

Put racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 400F. Oil two large baking sheets with sides. 

Combine beef, veal, pork in a large bowl. Ad onion, breadcrumb mixture, egg, salt, and pepper and blend with your hands just until well combined; do not overmix. 

Form level tablespoons of mixture into meatballs and arrange about 1 inch apart on oiled baking sheets. Bake, turning meatballs over and switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until browned, about 20 minutes total. 

With a slotted spoon, transfer meatballs to a platter. Set baking sheets on top of stove or a heatproof surface. Divide 1/3 cup water between pans and deglaze, off heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits with a wooden spoon.
Drizzle pan juices over meatballs. 

Chia Seed Pudding

I go grocery shopping on Saturdays now. 

And I cook a lot on Sundays-- sometimes spiced sweet potatoes, always brown rice, once, a disgusting and heavy loaf of bread. 

Life is strange. 

I think about that a lot these days-- mostly because it's unbelievable that we are lucky enough to be alive at the same time-- but also how little control I have, really. 

Often I wonder, how it is that anyone gets so that they have work, babies, house and garden full of fireflies? 

Is it always just falling and falling into things and people?

I guess. 

I like making chia seed pudding on Sundays too-- it's so simple and luxurious-- like eating a sweet caviar, or frog eggs. 

I like it also, because when I was in New York, I would take the F train to Midtown, stop at the same quick breakfast spot and buy a banana and chia seed pudding and hope that the iced coffee would prevent me from sweating through my business casual. 

It was such a lonely, lonely summer. That’s the thing about loneliness --you think-- this is the worst it will ever be, and then, one day, you are lonelier. 

So I took the F, and listened to soul music the whole way there, and ate my chia pudding, surrounded by glass and iron and felt small but often good.  Usually, when the workday was over-- I would walk the long way home-- eat $3 Indian food and sit in a park. 
I wondered a lot about work. 

And how I don’t know how to add value to the world yet. 
And how I don't know how to get there.

I like to think it begins with going grocery shopping on Saturdays, cooking on Sundays. Eating pork-belly sliders and drinking vodka with your sister friends on Thursday night, and then going out on Friday and Saturday too. Or maybe staying in, tucking small children into bunk beds-- waking up early, walking. 

Maybe, after a time-- when the work is more done, and more years passed and everything more known, somehow maybe one day, you go home to a garden of fireflies. 

After just falling and falling and falling into jobs and people. 

And chia seed pudding. 

Ideally, hopefully, chia seed pudding is part of how you get there too. 

Chia Seed Pudding 

via TheHealthyFoodie.com 

1/4 chia seeds

3/4 cup full fat coconut milk

1/2 cup coconut water

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

maple syrup to taste

In a small bowl or half pint Mason type glass jar, add coconut, chia seeds, coconut milk, coconut water, and vanilla. Stir until very well combined. 

Place in refrigerator and allow to rest overnight. 

Eat. 

Curried Lentil Soup with Tomato and Spinach

I spend a lot of time in bed these days, staring at the massive pecan tree just outside my window. 

I think about the future a lot.
I often wonder if everyone else is in their bed too, thinking about whatever it is that comes next, and staring at their respective trees. 

When the future makes me lonely, I think about Georgia O'Keefe who lived alone in a tiny adobe house in the red desert of New Mexico. When she couldn't sleep she would make yogurt and knead loaves of bread and sweep her floor in the middle of the night. Then I think about the food writer, MFK Fisher, who liked to leave peeled oranges on her window sill, especially in the winter, until the clear orange membrane became dry and crackly, and so when she bit, the orange was only a cold punch of crunch and winter and citrus. 

Sometimes, I think about a boy I knew only briefly, who once cooked me a dinner that mostly consisted of boiled carrots and brown rice, and how kind it was, but how much it needed salt. We  later went to a party, where everyone was older, and speaking languages I didn’t understand. We sat in a corner, and he told me about his lovers, while a tiny French man sang and danced along to "Like A Virgin." The little man danced up to me, "Whenever I feel sad,” he said, “I just listen to Madonna! Like a virgin! Like a virgin!!!" 

And often, I think about my friend Mary Margaret, who was the most beautiful old person I’ve ever known, and she died too soon, but she would throw these parties that were catered by Torchy’s Tacos, and the old-school literati and glitterati of my hometown would go, and there was always this man who wore his cowboy hat inside, he would sit and play groovy ragtime licks on her baby grand piano for hours. 

So lately, I spend a lot of time lying on my bed, staring at the tree outside my window. 

Lately, it rains. 

The other night I made this pot of lentils, and added potatoes and all the remaining odds and ends in my refrigerator.
And the simplicity of the lentils reminded me of all these tiny beautiful things; dancing to Madonna, cold oranges, and tiny houses in big deserts and cowboy hats. 

And how small it all is, and how perfectly beautiful. 

Curried Lentil Soup with Tomato and Spinach

from The Gourmet Cookbook 

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup finely chopped onion 

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 cup lentils, picked over and rinsed

2 1/2 cups (20 ounces) chicken stock or store-bought low-sodium broth

2 1/2 cups water

2/3 cup chopped drained canned tomatoes

2 cups coarsely chopped spinach

fresh lemon juice to taste

salt and black pepper

Heat oil in a 4-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add curry powder and cumin and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add lentils, stock, and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until lentils are tender, 20 to 25 minutes. 

Stir in tomatoes and spinach and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. 

Jambalaya

I just moved again, my fourth time moving in the past four years. This is exhausting only because there's constant re-adaptation to a new kitchen, which is actually a real thing. I don't know how electric burners work?? Why does the oven light go on and off?? Just how cold IS my freezer? Also, because I've always lived with other people, everyone else always provided all the culinary hardware, which means that I've been getting inventive. 

Did you know you can actually shred cheese with a vegetable peeler? 

(Like a fool, I forgot to take pictures, so here is my brother and some nice pink skies.) 

Anyways, I made some jambalaya so fine that I thought I had been kidnapped as a baby because actually I MUST be Cajun.

This explains everything!

The real thing about jambalaya, is that you can adapt it to all your personal cravings.
After reading several recipes it appears that most people don't put shrimp in it?
But my mama always puts shrimp in her jambalaya, so I did too.
You can make it on the stovetop, or in the oven or both (I did both.)
You can add okra, or not.
You can add sausage or not.
You can make your own cajun seasoning or not.
It's great.



Mostly I liked making jambalaya, because it made me feel at home, and feeling at home is suddenly a rare and special thing. 
Lately, I find myself asking questions such as, do other people make a place a home?
Is home just where you feel safest? 
Sometimes, when these questions are too much, I sit in my small green bathroom, and watch a trail of tiny black ants crawl from the east end of my bathtub near the faucet to the west end where I keep my shampoo. 
I like the ants, because the ants are not concerned with questions of home or place or belonging. 
They just keep walking. 

The point is. 
This jambalaya is worth you time. It will make the air smell thick and rich and spicy. 
It will bring you back to the tactile, real version of yourself. The part of yourself that only exists in the HERE NOW.  
But mostly it tastes really good. And fills you up. 

You will love it. 

And I love you. 

XOXO



Jambalaya 
via AllRecipes.com 

These are guidelines, adapt as you please. 

2 tablespoons peanut oil, divided
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
10 ounces andouille sausage, slices into rounds
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 onion, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (16 ounce) can crushed Italian tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 1/4 cups uncooked white rice
2 1/2 cups chicken broth

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil in a large heavy Dutch oven over medium heat. Season the sausage and chicken pieces with Cajun seasoning. Saute sausage until browned. Remove with slotted spoon, and set aside. Add 1 tablespoon peanut oil, and saute chicken pieces until lightly browned on all sides. Remove with a slotted spoon, and set aside.

2. In the same pot, saute onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic until tender. Stir in crushed tomatoes, and season with red pepper, black pepper, salt, hot pepper sauce, and Worcestershire sauce. Stir in chicken and sausage. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Stir in the rice and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed. (I actually ended up putting my Jambalaya in the oven at 375 F, for about half an hour because my electric burners didn't seem capable of cooking everything evenly for a long period of time.)

Best Ever Yellow Birthday Cake with Best Ever Chocolate Frosting (and raspberries)

I first baked this cake on graduating high school. 

I baked it in two layers, frosted them as individual cakes for a party, drank a glass of champagne, went swimming, and then promptly went to college. 

I hadn’t made this cake since then. 

Recently, I made it for my father’s birthday. 

Here he is, looking mildly pleased. 

 

What I can’t get over, is how much has changed between then and now. 

My last year of university is about to begin. “Season four begins.” My friends and I joke, because somehow, the entire three, now four years, has managed to feel like a bizarre, high drama miniseries, or at least, one that’s heavy on the taco-eating/beer-drinking/library-gossiping side of life. 

Since I was a child, college has always the goal and the next “next thing.” Somehow, I’m now facing the beginning of the end of it, and panicking a little about what my next “next thing” is going to be. 

I’m hopeful that I’ll bake this cake again soon, because it’s such a perfect, perfect cake. But also, I’m hopeful that I’ll bake it again soon because I really want to celebrate all the tiny victories and birthdays and half-birthdays and weekends and Monday nights and people. Mostly I want to celebrate all the people. 

Everything is going by so fast. 

There’s a bizarre musical called Auntie Mame. The best and only memorable line from the whole show is when Mame shouts, “Life is a banquet! And most poor suckers are starving to death!” And then she throws on a different wig and dances on the table, surrounded by multitudes of her tap-dancing lovers. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. 

When I think about goals or dreams for the upcoming months, of course I want to work hard and study and graduate-- but more than any of this, I really want to bake this cake, throw on the wig, dance on the table, just for the hell of it. 

Because life is a banquet. 

Because it’s the beginning of the end, which means it’s a new beginning all over again. 

And I want to celebrate. 

Because I’m so excited.
I’m so wildly excited. 

XOXO

m 

Best Yellow Layer Cake
from SmittenKitchen.com 

In all sincerity, this one of the simplest and absolute best cakes you could ever wish that someone else would bake you for your birthday. 

Yield: Two 9-inch round, 2-inch tall cake layers, and, in theory, 22 to 24 cupcakes, two 8-inch squares or a 9×13 single-layer cake (I have yet to audition the cupcakes, shame on me)
4 cups plus 2 tablespoons (480 to 530 grams, see explanation) cake flour (not self-rising)
2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt
2 sticks (1 cup, 1/2 pound or 225 grams) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups (400 grams) sugar
2 teaspoons (10 ml) pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups buttermilk (475 ml), well-shaken
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper, then butter parchment. (Alternately, you can use a cooking spray, either with just butter or butter and flour to speed this process up.)
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just Incorporated.
Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. (I like to drop mine a few times from two inches up, making a great big noisy fuss.) Bake until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, then cool completely, about 1 hour.

Go-to Chocolate Frosting

from Allrecipes.com

Also this frosting makes me the happiest. It is so good. So so soooo good. 

1 cup butter, softened

4 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

1 1/4 cups baking cocoa

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup milk

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter. Gradually beat in confectioners sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Add enough milk until frosting reaches spreading consistency.

I wanted to make you a salad, but all you got was this blog post

I've been listening to a lot of Neil Young lately, and also the kind of funky, groovy R&B that makes me awkwardly gyrate and sway on the subway and street corners-- because the need to dance is so in me. 

I play the song "Harvest Moon" over and over again, and suddenly I am sixteen and driving alone for the first time and singing along, in order to forget how terrifying driving actually is. 

Listening to Neil Young pulls the curtain back, shows me all the wistful, swinging summertime sadness and dreaming that is often too difficult to express aloud, if you can even put words to it. "When we were strangers, I watched you from afar." 
Has a more perfect love story, ever been written in just one sentence? 

So I'm in the mood for holding other people's babies and in the mood for going swimming in the morning, talking the world over with a few beers and I want to dance until there are blisters on my heels. 

I think I'm a little in love with all the ordinary parts of being a person. Which maybe explains why I love things like weddings and birthdays and baptisms-- all marking the passage of time, and time lucky enough to be spent here. 

Mostly, I want to cook for you-- I wanna make fat salads with mountains of arugula and fresh mozzarella and sliced avocados, all with some sharp limey dressing, and some beverage so cold it hurts our teeth. 

Because I've been sickish, I didn't go to work yesterday, and instead ate a thick croissant egg sandwich with fries and talked to this barista. He was Moroccan, but grew up in Israel. He told me how he had done a 7-month long solo motorcycle trip across the US and most of Central America. All the way to Honduras and beyond. 

"What did you learn?" I asked him. 

He looked me right in the eyes, "I learned," he said, "that it is good to be alive." 

Chicken-in-the-pot

Last night when I couldn't sleep I started going through pictures of myself on Facebook, which is narcissistic, but also, I guess it's in the perpetual attempt to try and figure out where I actually am, versus where I actually was, and actually how is it that anyone gets from Point A and arrives at Point NOW? 

I don't know. 

I've been thinking about the past year a lot, because years always seem to sort of roll themselves over in the summertime for me, and also I've been thinking about the future. 

I think I'm supposed to be thinking about my "career" and "the job market" and other imposing, adult, grey-sounding words that make me want to bury my head in the sand. 

Instead though, I just daydream about being home with my little brothers and making chicken-in-the-pot. 

I want to make this chicken every day for a week, because it smells like the actual smell of heaven, and I want to make it with bright sweet potatoes and fat sticks of celery and thin, translucent slices of yellow bell peppers and the rinds of pickled lemons. 

I want to make this more than almost anything else right now, but at the moment, I don't have a kitchen. 

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with all the past selves, that linger on various social media platforms, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the future cubicle that real adulthood sometimes appears to be. 

I'm trying to trust that even when I can't fall asleep, everything is still okay. 

I think this is what they call "faith." 

Besides, the future isn't here yet, and the past went. 

So I'm craving chicken-in-the-pot. And for the time being, I can't have it. 

It's okay. 

So I guess I'm here, at Point NOW. 

And really, it ain't so bad. 

Chicken-in-the-Pot Makes 4 servings (but you can multiply the recipe easily)
from cookbook goddess Dorie Greenspan 

Approximately 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 heads of garlic, broken into cloves, but not peeled
16 shallots, peeled and trimmed, or 4 onions, peeled, trimmed and quartered, or 4 leeks, white part only, halved lengthwise
8 carrots, peeled, trimmed and quartered
4 celery stalks, trimmed and quartered
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
Grated zest of 1 lemon
16 prunes, optional (apricots or dried apples are also good in this dish)
1 chicken, whole or cut-up
1/2 small (2 lbs or less) cabbage, green or red, cut into 4 wedges (try Savoy cabbage)
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine, or another 1/2 cup chicken broth
About 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, for the seal
About 3/4 cup hot water, for the seal

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Set a large skillet over high heat and add about 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Toss in the garlic cloves and all the vegetables, EXCEPT the cabbage - you might have to do this in two batches, you don't want to crowd the skillet - season generously with salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are lightly browned on all sides. Spoon the vegetables into a large Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid - you'll need a pot that holds at least 5 quarts. Stir in the herbs, lemon zest and prunes, if you're using them.

Return the skillet to the heat and add another tablespoon or so of oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown the chicken on all sides. Put the chicken in the casserole, nestling it among the vegetables. Fit the cabbage wedges around the chicken.

Stir together the chicken broth, wine and 1/2 cup olive oil and pour the mixture over the chicken and vegetables.

Now you have a choice: you can cover the pot with a sheet of aluminum foil and the lid, or you can make a paste to seal the lid. To make the paste, stir the flour and water together, mixing until you have a soft, workable dough. Working on a floured surface, shape the dough into a long sausage, then press the sausage onto the rim of the casserole. Press the lid into the dough to seal the pot.

Slide the pot into the oven and bake for 70 minutes. If you need to keep it in the oven a little longer because you're not ready for it, don't worry - turn the heat down to 325 degrees F and you'll be good for another 30 minutes or so.

The easiest way to break the seal, is to wiggle the point of a screwdriver between the dough and the pot - being careful not to stand in the line of the escaping (and wildly aromatic) steam. If the chicken was whole, quarter it and return it to the pot, so that you can serve directly from the pot, or arrange the chicken and vegetables on a serving platter.