Cooked chicken hearts have always been a favourite of mine.
We boys on the farm used to fight over the lone heart and gizzard when my mother and aunt made chicken, so the sight of a package of chicken hearts in the grocery store excited me.
My partner and wife, who has about as much liking for chicken hearts as Donald Trump has for Joe Biden, immediately asked: “What are YOU going to do with them?”
“Make soup.”
“No, not soup.” She recalled a previous disaster when my chicken heart soup would have qualified for Gorilla Glue.
We froze them until I came across some chicken heart recipes on my smart phone. She reluctantly agreed to let me make the chicken hearts with onions and mushrooms.
“If it doesn’t turn out we have coupons for the A and W,” she encouraged me so confidently.
Besides, I decided it was the 21st Century and time for me to get more involved in cooking. (I grew up in a home where males didn’t cook).
Under her supervision, I pulled together the pots and pans and all the ingredients to follow the recipe on my phone.
The first part called for mixing flour with vegetable oil to make something called roux — a sauce I guess — and cook for three minutes.
I didn’t study the recipe enough and put the sliced onions and mushrooms into the frying pan, then adding the flour.
It would be okay, just different, she assured me.
After the three minutes cooking my supervisor informed me I had too much flour.
“How much did you use?”
I showed her the measuring cup I used for the oil.
“That's a liquid measure. You need a dry measure.’’
It turned out the recipe called for one-third cup of flour, not the half cup. I misread while constantly consulting the recipe on my dumb phone.
Next was slicing the half pound of chicken hearts in half after cutting the fatty top off. That was time-consuming.
“Next time,” she counselled, “Make sure you have all your ingredients ready to go, maybe even boil the hearts first to make them more tender.”
It was time to put the roux, onions and mushrooms in a bigger pan and add the chicken broth.
The mixture smelled good but looked pasty. At her direction, I added some water — we had no more chicken broth — and it looked better.
The recipe called for six cups of cooked rice with the hearts dish.
She declared that was more than enough. She was right.
“You have enough rice to make two dozen cabbage rolls!”
“That might be my next project.”
“Not in my kitchen. We can go to Veroba’s for cabbage rolls.”
The meal was okay — bland and pasty tasting, and we had enough rice left over to feed four more people.
There sure was a pile of pots and dishes to wash. This cooking business isn’t as easy as it looks.
Next time I’d add more garlic salt, some green peppers, celery and less flour. Wonder how this would taste with beef stewing bits?
E-mail me if you want the recipe.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
