Edible Remembrance

by Mara @ What's For Dinner? on January 22, 2010

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I mentioned yesterday that it had been three years exactly since my grandma passed away, and that she, along with my mom, are two of the main reasons that I learned to cook and love food. I decided some time ago that today, the Friday evening after the anniversary of her passing, that I would recreate some of her dishes as sort of an edible memorial.

I can never remember a time, growing up or otherwise, when I went to my grandma’s house and there wasn’t some sort of food waiting for me in some form. I’m told that as a toddler, I would walk around with little crustless peanut butter sandwiches. Later, I remember there always being a plate of something out: hummus with crackers, slices of banana-chocolate cake, little Stella Doro alphabet cookies… or at lunch time, there was always tuna, or egg salad, and always a small green salad with cucumbers, radishes (even though I never ate them), feta cheese, and grandma’s fantastic Greek dressing. The questions when I walked in the door: “How are you?”, “How is school?”, “How are your friends?”, and “Can I get you something to nibble on?”

Grandma was one of the first people I remember that regularly had diet soda in her house (and yes, we call it soda.) Among the varieties always present were original Diet Rite, a flavor of Diet Rite like tangerine, black cherry, key lime, or white grape (which always bugged me, as I HATE grape). She also usually had some of the elusive Diet Canfields sodas,

which we drank in iridescent 6 oz. juice glasses full of ice and a splash of milk. If dinner was the meal w’d come for, there were usually a few things on the menu, but the quintessential “Bertha” dinner (yes, my grandma’s name’s Bertha) was a roasted chicken with reduced pan sauce, asparagus steamed in my favorite uni-tasking pot, maybe some garlic roasted potatoes, and an amazing dish called “fillets” (pronounced “fill-its”). There was always a family debate as to whether or not “fillets” was singular or plural… after making it though, I”m thinking its most definitely singular!

Since it’s mid-winter here, asparagus are hard to come by for under a small fortune, so our menu tonight was a whole roasted chicken and fillits. I’d intended on a decadent chocolate dessert as well, since she was the most intense chocoholic I’ve ever known, but time got away from me, and we were out of butter.

(Whole chicken photos coming up, just a warning for my meat-sensitive readers)

Back to dinner. I roasted the chicken simply. I rinsed it thoroughly after removing the bag-o-guts, and, with my mom on the phone instructing me, I sprinkled the inside of the bird with herbes de Provence, a bit of garlic powder, and a little seasoned salt. Then, I stuffed the cavity with small chunks of onion and lemon wedges. The outside of the chicken was seasoned with the same stuff as the inside, and then I drizzled it with a little olive oil. I roasted it at 350* for about two hours and then took it out to let it rest.

While it rested, I heated the metal roasting pan (don’t try this with glass!) on the burner of my stove, and brought the juices to a boil. I added about 2 cups of water, and then scraped all the burnt bits off the bottom. I reduced it by about half, strained it into my separator, and allowed it to sit for the fat to separate from the delicious pan juices.

Then, using a large knife, I carved it into edible pieces, but I have to say that I didn’t do a perfect job. I left a good amount of meat on the bones so that I can make homemade chicken soup on Sunday! Once carved, the chicken looked like this:

It tasted perfect; a complete throwback to meals at grandma’s, meals at mom’s… it was amazing! Now, for the fillets…

Sorry. I’ve been sworn to secrecy! We have very few strictly family recipes, and I’m honored that my mom shared the recipe and procedure with me so I could make it. It wasn’t perfect in texture, but the flavor was just right.

I can, however, show you my final dinner plate:

Fillets on the left, roasted chicken with pan juice gravy on the right. A taste of nostalgia, of sitting in a yellow vinyl-covered kitchen chair that turned 360 degrees, and swinging around JUST ENOUGH so as not to hit the chair on the edge of the table; of countless holiday meals; of my grandma.

To make the meal complete, I bought some fuji mums to sit on the table… they were my grandma’s favorite, the last thing I bought for her, and what I carried on our wedding day…

I’m going to make this an annual tradition, and I can only hope that one day, my meals can mean as much to my children and grandchildren as they mean to me now…

Have a great weekend!