Making adjustments

I don't know about y'all but when I see a recipe I that catches my attention, I start planning the menu.

I don't have the cookware to prepare the chicken in the manner of the recipe so I decided to do my usual roasted chicken instead. The one change was that I would only season the chicken with salt and pepper as I felt the sauce would be where all the flavors would lie. Also, when I roast a chicken, I always put it on a rack in a baking dish so that the skin can get crispy all over.

Next was the challenge of the mushroom sauce. I went to the large store in the nearby fancy neighborhood. They carry Strauss whole milk yogurt so they've got to carry creme fraiche, right? Ummm. Wrong. Also there were no dried trumpet mushrooms. So I made do with sour cream and dried porcini. At this point I briefly thought, "Berkeley Bowl would have had both the creme fraiche and the dried trumpets." And then I had to remind myself that I no longer live in Berkeley. As such, it was time to start adapting instead of reminding myself of what could have been.

As I said, I always imagine a whole meal. So imagine my surprise when I started cooking and discovered that I only had about one cup of chicken broth to use for the polenta. But I had plenty of vegetable broth around so I used some of that as well. And then I threw in some Romano cheese.

The kale? Exactly what I had planned. I chopped it and threw it in a pan with some olive oil. Once it was almost completely wilted, I splashed it all with some balsamic vinegar. (I love the taste of balsamic with greens.)

While some things may not have ended up the way I originally planned, I was more than pleased with the end results. Because that's what it's all about. Starting with an idea and making sure that the spirit of the intention still exists at the end.

Oh, and Maddie, in answer to your question -- yes, I ate it all. Over the course of something like three hours.