Chicken “Junk”
First let’s address the elephant in the room. This recipe could use a better name! This week I decided to make Chicken “Junk” - a chicken casserole that, at some point along the line, my mom decided was “*very good.” I have no memory of it, but it comes from one of my family’s most time-honored cookbooks: the New Beginnings Family Favorites Cookbook.
New Beginnings is the adoption agency that helped my parents find my brother, William, in November of 1988 (and earlier -adoption is such a long process!!). The Agency was a constant presence in our childhoods, acting as a bridge both to my brother’s birth culture and to other adoptive families in our area. To my eternal delight, a big part of that influence was food.
This cookbook seems to be comprised of both Korean recipes and recipes submitted by adoptive families to honor the foster mothers who took care of their children.
I don’t know much about my mom’s relationship with Will’s foster mother, but I know they kept in touch at least into our early childhoods. She would even send my brother traditional Korean clothing to wear (which we definitely have pictures of - I will look for them next time I am home).
So how was the casserole? It was good. A solid, easy recipe that really highlights each of the elements it is comprised of. But there are a few things that I would do differently (and which my mom probably did on her own) to achieve the “*very good” rating.
First, I would use a condensed cream of mushroom soup. I used Progresso because that’s what Steve grabbed at the grocery store (“I grabbed this one because it’s the biggest!” Love this man, so grateful for him all of the time), but I think it’s likely this recipe was expecting Campbell’s, which is thicker.
Second, I would be a little more bold with the wine. It is really highlighted in the dish, and playing it safe with a mild wine felt like a missed opportunity in the end.
To be honest, I kinda wonder when Mom labeled this as “*very good.” It’s pretty basic, especially for how talented she was as a cook. But if she wrote that label around when the cookbook was released in 1989, she was just 35 years old - 5 years older than I am right now. She was either still working full time as a manager at Sears or just finishing there, with a lot less time to cook and a lot less experience. It was just the beginning.
“We used Ruffino Il Ducale, a 2016 Pinot Grigio to cook the meal. Of course we drank the rest of the bottle!”
