We are a household rich in mustard. I believe at some point in the last month there were five tubes of mustard in our cupboards along with two jars in the fridge. Hot, horseradish-spiked, tarragon-flavored or rustic, we've got 'em all. I used to think mustard was about as interesting as math class, until I wised (wizened? wose?) up and starting using mustard in my cooking, and now I can't imagine life without it.

Germany is a good place to live if you like mustard. Plain yellow mustard squirted on a Rostbratwurst is a classic; sweet Bavarian mustard dolloped next to a pair of Weisswürste is some people's idea of heaven. There are poached eggs in mustard sauce and mustard-roasted pork. And our neighbors to the south, the Austrians, have taken the art of mustard packaging and elevated it to an art form. You should hang out in the mustard aisle of an Austrian grocery store sometime. (And that Wiener Würstel mustard? Possibly worth the price of an airline ticket straight to Vienna. We practically ate it by the spoonful.)

I've mentioned before (a hundred times before?) that my pile of newspaper recipe clippings dates back to the early naughts. These days I bookmark the ones I want to try, but the binder of printed recipes is a thick one and well predates this blog. When I unpacked my book boxes back in winter, I shelved the binder and then, frankly, forgot about it. After all, my Bookmarks folder could keep us fed for, um, years. What reminded me was Molly visiting and telling me about Francis's pasta. I knew I had the recipe somewhere...but where? After rifling through the computer and a notebook on my bookshelf, I finally turned to the binder, that gloriously overstuffed binder. There it was. And, o ho, there was so much else.

This, for example, stunning little number from Regina Schrambling in the Los Angeles Times way back in 2002. It's Madeleine Kamman's recipe and is henceforth going to be my Last-Minute Dinner Party Secret Weapon because it is so delicious and so easy and uses so much mustard you will scarcely believe your own measuring spoon.

The original recipe is for duck legs, but I used chicken legs instead. And instead of herbes de Provence (which I sort of loathe because though they might be traditional, I find the mixture to be so over-used that it just tastes like dusty old cupboards to me), I used a mixture of minced fresh herbs from my balcony (a mix of thyme, marjoram, and sage). And instead of Dijon mustard, I used the rest of a truly fabulous tube of Austrian tarragon-scented mustard. It sort of killed me to finish it, I loved it that much, but sometimes dinner party guests must be deferred to over personal greed and that is when being the bigger person really is key.

So, after washing and drying your chicken legs and then rubbing them with chopped herbs and salt and pepper, you paint them lavishly with mustard. A full tablespoon per leg. Don't worry: it seems excessive right now but something happens in the oven heat where the mustard sort of dries up (in a nice way) and becomes part of the salty, savory crust and you might almost find yourself, at the dinner table, wanting to dip the chicken in more mustard as you go. Though maybe that's just me. Germany is in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, perhaps that explains my exuberance.

Panko crumbs were one of the weird things I discovered in my kitchen boxes after I started unpacking my things in Berlin, along with a half-used roll of aluminum foil and a few almost-empty jars of things like dried summer savory and mustard seed. I could have lived without the herbs and aluminum foil, but thank goodness I brought those panko crumbs. You need a handful of them to coat your mustard-swathed chicken legs and plain old breadcrumbs just wouldn't do here.

And that's basically it! A drizzle of melted butter over the top before you slide the pan into a hot oven and before you know it, you've got crisp, herby, mustard chicken legs to grace your table and convince your dining companions that you are a truly fabulous cook. Like I said, Secret Weapon.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more recipes to dig up for you. Oh! I'm totally re-inspired. It's going to be an exciting month.

Chicken Legs Roasted with Mustard
Serves 4

4 chicken legs (thighs included, about 2 1/2 pounds)
2 teaspoons fresh, minced herbs, such as a mixture of sage, thyme and tarragon or marjoram
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard or tarragon mustard
1/3 cup panko
2 tablespoons melted butter

1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. Rinse the chicken legs and pat them dry. Rub them all over with the minced fresh herbs. Season well with salt and pepper. Brush the mustard over the skin side of each leg to coat thinly. Lay the legs in a shallow baking dish, leaving space between them. Sprinkle evenly with the panko or breadcrumbs and drizzle evenly with the melted butter.

3. Roast about an hour or until the meat is very tender and the coating is crisp.

I have been doing a lot of stock-cooking lately. Beef bones, chicken wings, bay leaves, peppercorns - these all have moved to the front of the burner lately as I adjust to a life without ready-made chicken or beef stock base in my fridge. Who would have thought that of all the goods stocked in an American grocery store, I'd come to miss Better Than Bouillon most of all? Not I.

First of all, I underestimated my reliance on it. Second of all, I had no idea that it would be so hard to come by anything other than granulated bouillon (ick) or very, very expensive jars of chicken stock (we're talking 2-cup servings for, oh, 5, 6, 7 euros a pop) in Germany. So I make a lot of stock these days. Combine that with the fact that I have the most adorably tiny freezer (if by adorable you understand that I mean infuriating) and my new normal is coming up with weekly reasons to eat soup.

Of course, as I'm sure many of you would love to yell at the screen right now, Better Than Bouillon, even if miles - many of them - better than granulated, does not hold a candle to homemade stock or broth. Still! I loved it so. It really was a cornerstone of my kitchen. Anyway.

S. Irene Virbila wrote the loveliest article the other day about congee, Chinese rice porridge, a simple meal of rice cooked in water that you then get to gussy up with all kinds of delectable things: chile paste, roasted peanuts, drizzles of soy sauce, fried ground pork. In all my years in New York and during my long love affair with Chinese food, I'd actually never eaten congee before. I tried to go for dinner at Congee Village once and was thwarted by the masses waiting ahead of me for a table. And let's be honest, rice gruel or rice porridge always sounded a little disappointing. A little too medicinal for dinnertime. Like something you had to grow up eating to love.

Silly, silly girl.

Because I'd had a big pot of chicken stock hanging out in my fridge for a few days, I decided to make the Vietnamese version of congee, chao xa ga, which has a slightly more flavorful base (chicken broth boiled together with lemongrass and chili) than regular congee. You cook rice in that fragrant broth until it's soft and (almost) falling apart - the recipe said to cook the rice for more than an hour, while I stopped after 45 minutes. Cooked, shredded chicken meat bolsters the porridge a bit, turning it into a proper meal, while fresh lemon juice and chopped cilantro or saw leaves brighten up the final plate. A plate gobbled up so fast I'd almost rather not admit it.

I initially meant to make this for dinner last night, for three men at our table. But I got a little spooked by the idea that rice porridge might be more of a lady's meal - after all, would I be able to sufficiently feed hungry dudes on something as delicate-sounding as lemon grass-scented rice gruel? After eating it for lunch, by myself, I decided I need to have those friends over again to make up for the error of my ways. Flavorful, filling, slightly spicy and - of course - delicious, I almost felt guilty enjoying chao xa ga all on my own.

Best of all, while I sat here in my Berlin kitchen, waiting for my Vietnamese soup to cook, planning to make Hunanese chopped salted chiles (did the water just spontaneously burst forth in your mouth?) for when I make a proper Chinese congee, I was struck yet again by how much fun cooking can be, how deeply satisfying a venture it is - you have directions in front of you from someone you must trust, who got those directions from someone else herself and so on, you follow those directions, you stand back and suddenly you're in the middle of eating a meal that people on the very opposite side of the universe might be having for lunch right now. Pardon me if that sounds rather obvious or silly, but it made me very happy indeed.

So next up, congee. And then my chicken broth/stock stockpile will be depleted once more, and it'll be back to the stove with chicken parts again. So, tell me, readers, what's your very favorite broth or stock recipe? What do you come back to again and again to stock your freezer with?

Chao xa ga (Rice Porridge with Chicken and Lemon Grass)
Servings: 4 to 6

9 cups chicken broth
2 stalks lemon grass, trimmed (outer leaves, tough green tops and root ends removed), cut into 1-inch pieces and lightly crushed
2 to 3 red bird's eye or Thai chiles, stemmed
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 cup jasmine rice (or similar rice)
2 cooked chicken legs, boned, skinned and shredded
Coarse sea salt
1/2 cup julienned saw (ngo gai) or cilantro leaves
Lemon wedges for serving

1. Pour the chicken broth into a pot and bring to a gentle boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the lemon grass, chiles and fish sauce and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the rice and cook, uncovered, for 45 minutes to an 1 hour.

2. Stir in the shredded chicken and season to taste with salt. Continue to cook until the chicken is heated through, about 15 minutes, or if the chicken is freshly cooked and still warm, just until combined. Divide the congee among 4 to 6 large soup bowls, garnish with the herb leaves and 1 wedge of lemon for each serving.

This week marks my sixth week of apartment hunting in Berlin. I took a break the week between Christmas and New Year's and again when I was felled with the stomach flu. But besides that, looking for a place to live has become my new job. And, boy, do I hate this new job. Ooh! With vim and vigor. But who wouldn't? No one, that's who. I can practically see you all nodding your heads in agreement when I say that apartment hunting is the pits. Let me tell you, I'd rather be doing the most mind-numbing data entry in a windowless room than trudging up yet another set of stairs. But as I am 32 years old and I cannot live in my mother's apartment, pulling things out of a suitcase every day, for the rest of my life, I persevere. And I muse upon the fact that I've now spent more time looking for an apartment here than I did in all of my almost ten years in New York City. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Never mind! Instead of complaining, let's talk about nice things, shall we? Like some of the things that make me happy here.

1. Eating Nutella on fresh, yeasty rolls for breakfast. Who over the age of 10 still eats Nutella for breakfast? Well, me. It is delicious, obviously. And can I tell you something scandalous and wonderful? All of my pants are loose! Turns out eating Nutella on a regular basis is great for your waistline.

2. Buying tulips for peanuts. The proximity to Holland, I suppose, makes cut flowers incredibly cheap here. I bought a dozen tulips for my mother the other day, the fancy, frilly kind, for less than 5 euros. Peanuts! And just wait until the ranunculus (ranunculii?) start coming into stores. Fresh flowers every day!

3. Listening to NPR Worldwide on the radio, 104.1 FM to be exact. Hearing Renee Montagne's and Steve Inskeep's familiar voices from my old mornings in Queens during the day in Berlin is strange and lovely at the same time.

4. One word: soccer. Every week.

5. Despite missing my friends in New York and my old life and my awesome, awesome city, I feel peace in my heart here. I'm supposed to be here, even with this apartment hunt and the never ending ice and snow and the cold apartments and the gray skies. I'm home. And that feels good.

You know what else is good? Florence Fabricant's prosaically named Chicken Baked with Lentils. (That may have been the worst transition in the history of this blog. Forgive me? My artistic juice is currently on the lam, though fortunately my mojo seems to have returned.) Lentils and radicchio flavored with sage and cumin, chunks of ham and a splash of vinegar are the stars in this easy braise of golden brown chicken legs. So much more sophisticated than the name indicates, no? And yet it's still easy enough to work as a weekend lunch or a weeknight dinner.

The other day, after a morning of seeing apartments with my mother gamely in tow, now that she's in town for a few weeks, I decided we had to take a break. We needed a hot meal and respite from the icy streets. And I needed to focus on something other than apartments. My obsessive mind needed calming, needed to simply dice onions and boil stock, rather than have another conversation about renovation costs, look at another floor plan, or contemplate another compromise.

So I set about cutting up celery and onions, thin-slicing radicchio, browning cubes of bacon and chicken legs and trying to find my center, not to sound like a total yahoo. And it totally worked! I found it! Turns out it was in the kitchen all along. What a surprise, I know.

Basically, you make this deeply flavored base for the dish, using bitter radicchio, mellow bacon, herbal sage, a kick of vinegar, earthy cumin, and onions and celery for good measure. Then you stir in lentils and lay browned chicken legs (or just thighs, whichever) on top, and cook the lot in the oven for an hour, until the liquid is mostly absorbed, the lentils are plump and bursting with flavor, and the chicken is so moist and tender it practically slides off the bone onto your fork in one fell swoop.

It's not much to look at, I suppose, from the point of view of an aesthete. But as with a lot of peasant food, I think its beauty is special precisely because you have to look twice to see it. Once you do, it's hard to avoid. The gravel-like lentils, shining like little planets in the sky of the plate. The golden tones of the chicken, skin puckered and delicate as a lace shawl. The chunks of bacon, rosy-hued and glowing with flavor.

Florence says to serve this with mashed potatoes, but it was so hearty we found it didn't even need a side. Just a deep plate, a big fork, an appetite, and a hankering for comfort. Delicious.

Chicken Baked with Lentils
Serves 4 to 6

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 pound pancetta or bacon, in one slice, diced
3 pounds chicken thighs, 6 to 8 pieces, patted dry
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups finely chopped onions
1/2 cup finely chopped celery, about 1 rib
4 cloves garlic, sliced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 cups finely chopped radicchio, about 1/2 head, cored
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons minced fresh sage
2 cups lentils
3 cups chicken stock, more if needed

1. Heat oil in a 4-quart ovenproof casserole. Add pancetta and cook on medium until golden. Remove. Season chicken with salt and pepper and add, skin side down. Sear until golden on medium-high heat, working in two shifts if necessary. Remove from pan. Heat oven to 300 degrees. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons fat from pan.

2. Add onions, celery and garlic, cook on medium until soft and translucent. Stir in cumin. Add radicchio, vinegar and sage; sauté briefly. Add lentils, stock and cooked pancetta.

3. Return chicken to pan, bring to a simmer, cover and place in oven. Cook about an hour, until lentils are tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed, but not all. Lentils should be saucelike but not soupy. Add a little stock if needed. Check seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if needed, then serve.

No.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

I most emphatically disagree with this recipe. I wish it wouldn't exist. It vexed me, irritated me, annoyed me to my core. It it were up to me, I'd strike it from existence. In short, I hated it.

It sort of hurt, hating it. After all, I love Zak Pelaccio's food. If it were up to me, I'd have a standing lunch date at the Fatty Crab every week. Also, I loved the mission of the article accompanying the recipe: how to make the lame old skinless, boneless chicken breast glam again. Loved it! (Also, must try the sauerkraut-stuffed, pan-fried chicken breast recipe now).

But this recipe was a doozy: my "gently cooked" chicken breasts were hard as rocks. I have poached many a chicken breast in my time and they've always been tender, juicy, a joy. These were rubbery, hideous things. German chicken breasts? Or this recipe? I'm looking at you, recipe.

Second of all, and this, I realize, is partially my failing because I emphatically do not subscribe to the school of Raw Garlic Adoration, but the Garlic-Chili-Ginger Sauce was so heavy on the stuff that it practically hurt. I woke up in the middle of the night after eating, oh, a teaspoon of the sauce, and had to go brush my teeth a second time. In the dark. In the middle of the night.

One word: UGH. Another word: wouldn't half as many garlic cloves still have worked?

The sweetened soy sauce was kind of interesting to know about, and the spicy broth was nice: I used it to cook rice the next day and that was totally tasty. But if that's the best thing that this recipe has to offer, I'm leaving it behind me in the dust.

Onward!

Oh, and one administrative thing: After many, many requests, I finally got around to putting an RSS feed link on the blog. Want to subscribe to The Wednesday Chef? Look over in the left-hand column, all the way at the bottom. Enjoy. And thanks for your patience!

Chicken Breasts with Garlic-Chili-Ginger Sauce
Serves 4

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, 8 ounces each
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 5-inch-long piece fresh ginger root, peeled
8 fat garlic cloves
4 jalapeño peppers
1 quart chicken broth
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice, more to taste
Cooked rice, for serving
Sesame oil, for drizzling
1 bunch roughly chopped basil, for serving
1 bunch roughly chopped cilantro, for serving
1 bunch thinly sliced scallions, for serving
1 European cucumber, thinly sliced, for serving

1. Cut each chicken breast in half crosswise and season with salt and pepper.

2. Slice about an inch of ginger root into thin rounds and place in a large pot. Coarsely chop remaining ginger and place in a blender. Thinly slice 2 garlic cloves and add to pot. Coarsely slice remaining garlic and add to blender. Thinly slice 2 jalapeño peppers and add them to pot. Halve remaining peppers, discard seeds and coarsely chop flesh; place in blender.

3. Add chicken broth to pot and bring to a simmer. Let cook for 10 minutes. Add chicken pieces to broth and let liquid come back to a simmer. Immediately turn off heat, cover pot and let sit for 10 minutes. Cut into a piece of chicken to test for doneness. If it is not done, bring broth back to a bare simmer, then turn off heat, cover and let sit for an additional minute or two.

4. In a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce and brown sugar until sugar mostly dissolves. Set aside. To the mixture in blender add fish sauce and lime juice along with 1/4 cup broth from pot. Puree, if necessary adding a little more broth to help mixture move in blender. Taste and add a pinch of salt and more lime if needed.

5. When chicken is done, transfer to a cutting board and slice. Remove garlic and pepper from broth and discard, if you like. To serve, heap rice in 4 shallow bowls and top with chicken slices. Spoon several tablespoons broth over chicken and rice, then drizzle with sweet soy sauce and sesame oil. Sprinkle on the herbs, scallions and cucumber. Serve garlic-chili-ginger sauce on the side; have additional sesame oil and sweet soy sauce on table for more drizzling.

I don't know what it was like where you were on Saturday, but here - just a week after a snowstorm closed schools and streets, and dumped close to a foot of snow on some parts of the (sub)urban area - the sun came out, the snow melted, and my heart bloomed in the warmth of the air.

How is it that every spring, like clockwork, seems to surprise us all, captivate us with its newness and glory? How do we manage not to lose that reliable sense of wonder at the first shoots we spy pushing through the crumbly earth? The first real rays that warm our bones as we stroll down streets, pushing scarves once-essential off our suddenly sticky-hot necks? The relief we feel each year that the cold and the snow is just a passing thing, something to endure; that we'll be rewarded in the end for our patience with a rebirth of ourselves, our parks, our neighbors, our world?

Spring, oh, spring.

In honor of its valiant efforts to blow the cobwebs out of my head, I made a springy, herbal Vietnamese rice noodle salad for dinner, first spied here, and originally from here. I have a severe weakness for Vietnamese rice noodles and fish sauce. When I first moved to New York, I lived near a wonderful little Vietnamese restaurant on the Upper West Side and although I'd had my fair share of pho in college and of nem in Paris, I dare say that I didn't really fall in love until I was able to eat a plate of bun every week, the cold, silky noodles slipping gently down my throat, the heady mixture of fish sauce and lime and palm sugar making the juices run together in my mouth.

This salad is a spring-addled cook's dream. All you have to do is spend some time at your cutting board, deftly slicing cabbage and peeled carrots and washed scallions into neat little strips. In the meantime, you can poach a chicken breast or two. (So much easier than roasting or grilling - just bring a pot of water to boil, add some salt, a garlic clove, and a slice or two of fresh ginger, then slip in the chicken breasts and let cook, at a bare simmer, for about 15 minutes. Drain, cool, shred, eat.) In a moment or two, you can whizz together the dressing (so good that I briefly contemplated bottling the leftovers to swig surreptitiously, like a good bourbon from a flask) and "cook" the noodles. The rest is just a matter of assembly. Do you make neat little piles of the vegetables and herbs and toppings? Do you bang everything all together, willy nilly? It's up to you.

You know it doesn't really matter, of course. What matters is what happens when you put that first forkful in your mouth: sweet, spicy, sour, slithery, crunchy, this salad is a joy to eat. It's fresh and cooling and the herbs play off each other just so, the fish sauce giving the salad this lovely, moody depth. I added mint to the original recipe, because mint simply seemed to belong there and wouldn't you know, we polished off the whole thing - leftovers meant for lunch this week! - in one go. Sigh. I don't blame us. It was just so good.

Molly renamed this Almost-Summer Rice Noodle Salad and so it's only natural that in my mind, now, it will always be called Almost-Spring Rice Noodle Salad. Because, of course, this weekend ended and a rather nasty cold rain moved in and I spent the day drinking hot tea and shivering in my inexplicably cold office, my toes cramped in their wet shoes. What I'm trying to say is, we're not quite there yet. But the other night, with the windows open and the loamy scent of new earth in the air and a salad fit for warm evenings and balcony dinners, I let myself believe that spring was right around the corner.

Rice Noodle Salad
Serves 4

1 pound thin rice noodles
3 large cloves garlic, peeled
½ cup Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce
2/3 cup water
½ cup fresh lime juice
½ cup rice vinegar
¼ to ½ cup brown sugar, to taste
1 to 2 hot chilies (red bird, jalapeño, or serrano), seeded and minced, or to taste
6 to 8 leaves Napa cabbage, thinly sliced
8 scallions, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, peeled and shredded or julienned
1/4 cup mint leaves, sliced
1/4 cup tightly packed cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
2 grilled or roasted chicken breasts, shredded
1 cup roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the rice noodles, stir gently, then turn off the heat, cover and let sit for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain the noodles in a colander, rinse with cold water, and place them in a large bowl.

2. Place the garlic cloves in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse to mince. Add the fish sauce, water, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar, and chilies, and purée them together. (The mixture will get quite frothy.) Taste, and if necessary, add more chile and adjust the sweet/tart balance.

3. Toss the vegetables, herbs, chicken and peanuts with the noodles, and pour dressing to taste over the salad. Toss well and serve. (Save any remaining dressing in the fridge - I used the leftovers plus a bit of olive oil to dress a big bowl of baby arugula mixed with a diced avocado and some cold poached chicken breast for dinner the next night.)

(Do not reach to adjust the brightness dial on your computer: that is, indeed, the color of the soup. And the color of my silicone spatula. And the color of my bespattered linoleum counter. Oh, turmeric, you madden me with your lovely flavor and your ability to turn everything you touch to bright, unmoveable yellow.)

Whenever I leave Europe after vacation, I arrive back in the States with a knot in my heart and a serious craving for fresh, spicy Asian food: clear broths, incendiary peppers, bright flavors. I'm not really sure why. Last summer, I read Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark Fin and Sichuan Pepper on the flight back from Italy and I arrived with a watering mouth and unholy hankering for dan dan noodles. I couldn't rest until I drove myself to Flushing one night after work to go down into the rabbit warren of food stands that is Golden Mall.

This time I made a crucial mistake. I thought that making my own Asian food would be just as good as leaving it up to the experts. What I didn't realize is that part of what I look forward is the sheer ease of being able to show up somewhere in New York and have utter confidence that what you're about to order is authentic, delicious and not to be replicated at home. Berlin may have many things, but superb Asian food available at a moment's notice is not one of them.

Anyway, instead of just hopping in the car and going to to Flushing one night, I read Julia Moskin's article about curried noodle soups and decided to cook my own happiness instead of buying it. Well. I won't be doing that again. Not when I'm in the still-delicate fog of jet lag and melancholy. It's not that the soup was bad. It wasn't. It was fine. Well, a little greasy, perhaps, and the flavors a bit muddied, it's true, but it wasn't awful.

(What an endorsement, right?)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this soup just wasn't right for me this week. That's the silliest thing I might have ever written on this blog, but it just so happens to be true. I don't doubt that this soup soothes millions of souls, but all it made me feel was foolish and slightly cheated. I learn easily enough, though. Next time, I'm going directly from the airport to Chinatown and letting the professionals do my palliative cooking. Ooh, I'm excited already.

Soto Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Soup with Noodles and Aromatics)
Serves 4

1 free-range chicken, about 3 pounds, quartered
2 stalks fresh lemon grass, bruised with the handle of a heavy knife and tied in a knot
6 kaffir lime leaves, fresh or frozen  (optional)
1 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
5 shallots, peeled and halved
3 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons finely minced fresh turmeric, or 1 1/2 teaspoons ground turmeric
2 tablespoons finely minced ginger
3 tablespoons peanut oil
4 ounces glass noodles or thin dried rice noodles, called vermicelli, bihun or bun
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped celery leaves, mint, Thai basil or cilantro leaves
2 shallots, thinly sliced and fried in vegetable oil until brown (optional)
Quartered limes and chili paste (such as sambal) for serving
Cooked white rice  (optional)

Thank you all, you big sweethearts, for your congratulations and good wishes and love. I'm basking in it all - we are, I should say - and I don't want this feeling to ever end. I knew people liked romance, but I didn't know how much! It feels a little anti-climactic to write this next post about food again: "I just got engaged! Now let me tell you about this toast." But we keep eating and I keep writing and so it goes, just with a bigger grin these days.

* * *

I am, in a word, a sucker for Chinese food. It's become a full-blown obsession of mine, in fact. Perhaps it's fed by the fact that Ben dislikes it and we've moved to a neighborhood where there's no good Chinese food in walking distance (O, Manhattan, this is what I miss!), I don't know, but I do spend an inordinate amount of time thinking of ways I can eat more of it.

(A few times after the New York Times published this map, I'd get in the car and drive to Flushing, where I'd scurry into the subterranean warren of food stands where no one speaks any English and the food seems as cheap and authentic as I imagine it to be in China itself. Five minutes later, with hot, porky, chili-oil-slicked noodles packed into a plastic take-away box and wrapped in a plastic bag dangling from my wrist, I'd dash out, hop in the car and speed home to eat noodles in blissful, mouth-tingling silence. The fly-by-night nature of the operation almost made it seem like I was conducting an illicit affair. My darling had plans after work and I dallied with translucent-skinned dumplings and fragrant soups. My sweetheart had to go into the city on a Saturday and I schemed to eat hand-pulled noodles and let Sichuan peppercorns numb my lips. Hoo, I get sweaty just thinking about it.)

But for some reason, I'm still a little scared of making Chinese food at home. Yes, I'm daunted by the long ingredient lists. Also, I don't own a wok or have the pleasure of a dining companion willing to ingest copious amounts of ground pork at every meal. Is that enough reason to keep myself from making the food I currently love the most? Absolutely not. Do I jump with glee every time one of the newspapers publishes a Chinese recipe, just because then it feels like a challenge that I have to complete? Yes, indeed.

Mark Bittman's Hainanese chicken has quite a bit going for it. First of all, it makes A Lot of Food. Enough to feed a family of four or six, I'd say, or two with leftovers for lunch for at least a couple of days. Second of all, you'll get a few quarts of chicken stock - lovely, ginger-and-garlic scented chicken stock - out of it, perfect for freezing and drinking in times of sickness or for cooking rice. I'm trying my hardest right now to economize and find meals where I didn't before (but spending a few extra dollars on an organic, free-ranging chicken seems worth it, nevertheless). Third of all, in the annals of Chinese recipes, it is so easy you could almost do it with your eyes closed, which is what I find most appealing, of course.

You boil a chicken with ginger and garlic for 10 minutes, then turn off the flame and let the chicken sit in hot broth for almost an hour. Then you use the hot broth to cook the rice. It's a one-dish meal, with cucumbers and tomatoes and chopped scallions all arranged right on top of the chicken and rice and served at the table with a dipping sauce.

The dipping sauce is the one problem with this whole recipe. It's basically just oil mixed with ginger and chopped scallions and it feels a little odd, to be dipping chunks of chicken into oil (I halved the amount of oil called for, but still). The next time I make this, I'll simply toss the chicken with the ginger, scallions and sesame oil and then pile the whole lot on top of the rice.

For someone who professes to dislike Chinese food, Ben had an awful lot of this at dinner. It's not takeout from Flushing, no, and it's not nearly hot and funky enough for my tastes, but I'm counting it as a minor success. Besides, now I've got the goods for homemade fried rice - my first ever - and that's cause for celebration!

Hainanese Chicken with Rice
Serves 4 to 6

Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 whole (3- to 4-pound) chicken, trimmed of excess fat
Several cloves smashed garlic, plus 1 teaspoon minced garlic
Several slices fresh ginger, plus 1 tablespoon minced ginger
4 tablespoons peanut oil, or neutral oil, like corn or canola
3 shallots, roughly chopped, or a small onion
2 cups long-grain rice
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 cup minced scallions
2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced
2 tomatoes, sliced
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. Add chicken to pot along with smashed garlic and sliced ginger. Bird should be completely submerged, but only just. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and let bird remain in water for 45 minutes to an hour, covered, or until it is cooked through.

2. Remove chicken from pot, reserve stock, and let bird cool to room temperature. Put 4 tablespoons peanut oil in a skillet over medium heat; you may add trimmed chicken fat to this also. When oil is hot, add remaining garlic, along with shallots; cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add rice and cook, stirring, until glossy. Add 4 cups reserved chicken stock and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover; cook for about 20 minutes, until rice has absorbed all liquid. Stir in salt and pepper to taste.

3. Combine the sesame oil, ginger, half the scallions and a large pinch of salt.

4. Shred or chop chicken, discarding skin. Toss the chicken with the sesame oil mixture. Put rice on a large platter and mound chicken on top of it; decorate platter with cucumbers, tomatoes and cilantro, and serve.