Chicken Tragedy

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     Just opened an old vegetarian cookbook my mother-in-law gave me in 1990, back when she was still alive and kicking. I re-read the dedication she'd written, and found myself remembering this important relationship. 

    

    Carol was a strong New England Woman, a true life version of that stern, hardy archtype. She had been a valedictorian of her city highschool, and entered college to study chemistry. After she married in the middle of her sophomore year, she swallowed her pride and abandoned her dreams and scrubbed floors and cleaned houses to support her husband who would eventually earn a Doctorate in Physics from MIT. As was customary, back in the 40's, their relatives on both sides left them to struggle through however they could.

    When her son and I married, we were both feckless teens, and there was not much genuine hope expressed by relatives on either side that our union would last, although support for continued education did arrive. I had married, knowing how to boil water, fry a burger, make fudge, but not much else other than English Literature, European History and how to set a table for a cream tea. 

    Now, I had to get serious about the gigantic undertaking that is marriage, and to prove the doubters wrong. I set about seriously studying the basics of what I believed a "proper" wife needed to know. This began with the venerable Joy of Cooking, a gift from my husband's maternal grandmother, which I dutifully studied, just like a textbook, from beginning to end. When cooking today, I still hear words of culinary wisdom from that old cookbook coming to mind.

    Several years later, my husband had graduated and was working his first job. While he was building programs for mainframes, I'd learned cooking, cleaning and baby care. One winter, I hosted a dinner for my in-laws, who came down from Lexington, MA to our ramshackle farmhouse. I was, as you might imagine, anxious about this, especially when the guests would be my scary, erudite father-in-law, my super home-maker mother-in-law, and my husband's three teen siblings. The kids-in-law knew I could make great cookies ("just like Mom's") but I'd never had to cook so much for so many, and do it on our household's supremely tight budget. 

    I settled on a recipe from The Joy, called "Hunter's Chicken." For so many guests, however, I'd need to get a larger chicken than the three pound version in the recipe, so I searched in my largest local grocery store, the one which had the most variety. The chicken was to be served over boiled spaghetti, but this was the Sixties, so I used cooked brown rice for the base. The chicken was browned, then simmered for 45 minutes in white wine, stock, fresh mushrooms, thyme, bay leaves, marjoram, salt, pepper, and tomato sauce. Afterward, it was placed on the rice and then baked. 

    The guests arrived, and the main dish smelled mouth-watering. I'd baked bread and made salad. For dessert, Carol's famous "Cowboy Cookies" and ice cream. I set the table with a cloth and linen napkins, and with all the silverware we possessed. My father-in-law, seated at the head of the table, volunteered to cut up the chicken, now sitting before him in an enormous cassarole dish. 

    After all that time cooking, I couldn't believe my eyes when his knife could barely penetrate the flesh. All this time and effort, and I'd produced a Rubber Chicken! The youngest child in the family giggled. My face burned with the shame of failure. 

    My father-in-law and mother-in-law leaned over to inspect the chicken, and Carol said, "You bought a fowl, not a roasting chicken. Fowl--old hen--has to be cooked for hours and then you cut it up for soup." 

    They were sufficiently good-hearted to be amused, although they were let down. The aromas in the house remained, full of that false promise.  This, it seemed, was a classic new cook's mistake. I thought I was going to die on the spot, but instead I said, while gesturing at the dish, "The recipe is called "Hunter's Chicken," but instead it's Chicken Tragedy."  Everyone burst out laughing, including--much to my relief--the stern in-laws. We dined on brown rice with the tasty mushroom/tomato sauce and lots of homemade bread and butter and finished with cookies and ice cream and coffee.  

    Twenty years later, I received the vegetarian cookbook, the one which began this reminiscence. 

    It is dedicated to "Juliet, who sure has come a long way from her 'Chicken Tragedy.'"

~~Juliet Waldron