Unlike this most recent weekend, which was one of those stretches where Atlanta has some of the best weather in the country, the previous weekend was rainy and dreary the whole time. Fittingly, Sunday is my comfort food day, usually Italian, but for whatever reason I had the itch to make a heapin’ plate of buttery Southern food that would make even Paula Deen blush.
Aaron was on-board and kicked things off by preparing a corn soufflé while I put together the rest of the menu. I had just purchased two whole chickens at Costco and knew I wanted to do something with one of those. Amazingly I’ve never cooked a whole chicken so I had to look up how to cut one up here. Then I found a chicken recipe that I could loosely use – Chicken in Riesling. I planned on roasting the carrots, but not roasting potatoes as I was doing mashed Yukon potatoes with cream, baked and topped with fontina.
I also planned a mac ‘n cheese, using both white and yellow sharp cheddar, a lima beans side dish, and vegetarian gravy.
The great thing about the potatoes, the corn soufflé, and the mac was that they could be prepared ahead of time, as they all get finished in the oven. They went in around the same time as the chicken, then we whipped up the beans and the gravy, and served. It was all relatively low stress and easy considering how much there was going on. I gots plenty of pics for ya.
Starting with the mac ‘n cheese. First I sautéed some onions in butter, then added flour and heavy cream to create a roux, added a few drops of hot sauce, then whisked in the cheese. It smelled awesome.
Then we just poured the cheese over the pasta in the baking dish and set it aside. Try not to taste-test too many pieces.
Steamed some Yukon cubes, skin on, then added some milk and heavy cream and whipped them up. We set it aside with the shredded fontina.
Chopped leeks for the chicken dish. I didn’t realize how much I like leeks. They look nice too.
Once you sauté the leeks in butter, you then pan cook the chicken in batches to try to give it a crispy outside before you bake. I didn’t crisp up the chicken well enough so there isn’t great color going on. Once the chicken is done baking, you whisk the cream and lemon into the sauce, which at this point was quite thin. I should have set the pan on top of my stove and cooked it on low heat for a couple of minutes to let it reduce.
The vegetarian gravy looked, well, like gravy. There was too much flour and soy sauce in my opinion, and I had to keep thinning it out with vegetable stock, but it was decent considering it was meatless gravy.
Above is the corn soufflé after baking…
… and the mac n’ cheese too.
Final plating. Quite ridiculous and it satisfied my craving perfectly. The mac was pretty awesome, the slight touch of hot sauce really shone through. I recommend giving this recipe a shot.
The chicken turned out good, but not great, though the flavor of the leeks was awesome. The sauce was much better when reheated the next day. Aaron was worried he had messed up the corn my adding too much sour cream, but it was super sweet and tasted great to me. The potatoes were fairly standard (but good), and the limas were a welcome touch of non-starch to this monstrosity of a dinner.
I paired this meal with the fairvalley chenin blanc and the ever-popular Pine Ridge chenin blanc/viognier blend.
The fairvalley was my first Chenin Blanc from South Africa, where the grape is quite popular. It was fairly dry, not too floral, a ton of stone, and quite hot on the finish, with some unpleasant plastic. It’s an unoaked, easy drinker, at a good price. It actually paired pretty well with the creamy chicken and leek sauce. Available at Green’s for $9.26.
I’ve had the Pine Ridge before, but not this vintage. Compared to the Chenin Blanc, this nose was bangin’, very floral with tropical fruits galore, melon, it showed a lot of the viognier characteristics with some minerality from the chenin blanc. There wasn’t as much acid as the fairvalley, but I enjoyed this one more overall. Available at Costco for $10.49
For dessert, Emily was kind of nice to fly in and head to directly to our house with a few tubs of Graeter’s ice cream from Cincinnati. I’ve never had this before, but apparently it’s an institution up there, and it did not disappoint. They have a featured selection of “Signature Chip flavors”, including their all-time best seller Black Raspberry Chip. There’s a reason this is their best seller, it’s absolutely outrageous. Thick, flavorful, with the largest/tastiest hunks of chocolate I’ve ever seen in ice cream.
I’m slightly comatose just thinking about this meal right now.
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