Typically, scrumptious is apparent. You’ll be able to’t miss the charred curds on tandoori hen, the crisp edges on a lasagna, the ripe flesh of a peach. However what attracts us to a bowl of rice cooked in coconut milk? Or bread pudding?
Desirability will be more durable to identify when it’s one factor absorbing one other. However it’s these saturation factors — the place an ingredient that offers meets one which takes — that consolation. We fold heat, peeled potatoes by mayonnaise, sauce our noodles within the pan and unravel over a potpie with a squidgy layer of puff pastry soaked with what’s under.
Meals that’s lengthy on this form of satisfaction isn’t technical. Actually, whereas being an expert chef has given me technical capability, it’s a loyalty to my urge for food that makes the meals. My function at house — like several prepare dinner — is facilitator, right here to supply the situations that draw taste and juices out of 1 ingredient handy off to the subsequent.
This recipe for hen cooked with noodles is the other of flashy or groundbreaking.
Skimming the ingredient record, you may mistake it for hen Alfredo. However too usually hen Alfredo is a wasted alternative. Seared, sliced hen breast and creamy pasta are mixed solely on the time of serving — a romance with out rapport — however on this recipe, the 2 components are layered in a single pot with loads of water to make one thing deeper, lighter and intuitive.
There are various methods to let hen and noodles have at it: You’ll be able to boil the fowl and prepare dinner noodles within the ensuing inventory. You’ll be able to braise the hen to make a extra concentrated sauce, which is scrumptious over buttered noodles.
This recipe splits the distinction. It begins by roasting an entire, butter-rubbed, Parmesan-rind-stuffed hen and a head of garlic beneath excessive warmth. The pores and skin and butter brown, the garlic sweetens, the fowl infuses with the nutty flavors of the cheese. The pot is deglazed with water, lower than you’d use in a soup, however greater than for a braise. Then, the noodles prepare dinner in the identical pot to allow them to soak up all that flavored broth. In a ultimate act of generosity, the noodles share their starches with the broth, thickening it right into a sauce.
Good issues occur when components are given a heat introduction and an opportunity to know each other.
