Hallelujah! The Welcome Table_ A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes - Maya Angelou [44]
Smothered Chicken
SERVES 8
Two 3-pound fryer chickens
Juice of 2 lemons
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
½ cup vegetable oil
2 medium onions, sliced
1 pound button mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups chicken broth
Wash and pat dry chicken. Cut into pieces, and put in a bowl with lemon juice and water to cover. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Wash lemon water off chicken, and season with salt and pepper. Dredge pieces in ¾ cup flour.
In large skillet, fry chicken parts on high heat in butter and ¼ cup oil until dark brown. Remove from skillet.
Add remaining flour and oil to skillet. Cook flour until brown. Add onions, mushrooms, and garlic, stirring constantly. Put chicken back into skillet. Add chicken broth and water to cover. Turn heat to medium, and cook for 25 minutes.
Serve with Buttermilk Biscuits (p. 41).
A DINNER WITHOUT MEAT can satisfy. Prepared with skill, it can even delight. But I did not know that when I was a child. I grew up during an impoverished time and in a poor part of the United States.
The Depression, which assailed the entire country, hit the South with a particularly heavy blow. Poor people who lived in a cotton economy and who were happy to have fresh meat once a month were challenged to find enough work to put the sparest vegetarian dinners on their tables.
Those who were used to eating fresh meat at least twice a week were challenged to find the resources to buy it twice a month.
I belonged to the first group, and although we did have chickens and cured meat, vegetables dominated our meals, whether we wished it or not. Inventive cooks found ways to use the cured meat that was included in their cooked dishes. Each pot of greens was stewed with as much smoked or cured meat as the cook could afford. Country ham slices and boiled bacon slabs were offered at least once a week, and one could be assured that it was definitely chicken on Sunday.
After I grew up and away from the days of poverty and the southern place of need, I found that I often wished for a meatless dinner of crunchy vegetables and an oven-roasted Irish potato, or pasta with a fresh tomato sauce. However, until I met Valerie Simpson and Nick Ashford I had never thought it could be exciting to be creative in cooking vegetarian food. The songwriting couple came to visit me in North Carolina, and within hours they had taken my heart. I could think of nothing more pleasing than to please them. Valerie would eat chicken and fish, but Nick was a definite vegetarian. I bought the prepared dishes made of soybeans from the supermarket. They were concocted of mushrooms and oats and rice. I tasted them and they were horrible. I decided I would simply try to cook vegetables so well that the diner would prefer my dish to a standing rib roast. I know that was wishful thinking but I also knew that good veggies well prepared could please any palate.
First I offered a dish called chakchouka in North Africa and ratatouille in France. Then I served a tomato soufflê with snow peas and celery gratin as side dishes. Nick loved it. One day I offered a salad that Nick liked so much I named it the Ashford ’96.
When I served another mixed salad with feta and golden raisins, not only did Nick decide that I was one of the best cooks he had ever known, he had to know the exact measurements in all my salad recipes.
The Ashford-Simpsons were a bright and beautiful couple, quick and funny, and I had long admired their talent, but their shared laughter, love, and gentle personalities won them to my heart. I gave the recipes to them a number of times, but they swore they could not replicate the dishes.
When they visit me in North Carolina and when I go see them in New York, they look at me with such large, longing eyes that without being asked I will go to the kitchen and make one of “Nick’s green