My role as primary cook/chef in our household was initially a kind of concession. We—our family of five—were living in Ann Arbor, Mich., and I had just gotten hired as a professor at Columbia College Chicago. I was to commute and be home three or four days a week, leaving all of the household responsibilities to my partner, Corrine. As a way of trying to make up for this extra burden, I began doing all of the laundry, grocery shopping and cooking. I would plan, prepare and freeze the meals for the days I would be away, thereby alleviating from Corrine some of the pressures of her regularly repeated, though momentary, single parenthood.
With very little cooking experience beyond the kinds of food I prepared as a single person—spaghetti, chilimac, ramen, salad—I turned to dishes I imagined would "freeze well" and please everyone in the family. Drawing heavily upon my childhood memory and personal taste, I decided—for some odd reason—that casseroles would best fit the bill and set about trying to see how many different ones I could make.
Probably because condensed canned soup loses its appeal after awhile, only one casserole remains a part of our current rotation. Only one casserole seems to symbolize the point in time when our family began to really gel.
Chicken Divan—or "A-van," as all children under six seem to say—involves all of the tastiest bad-for-you ingredients in any casserole dish: mayonnaise, sour cream, cheddar cheese and, of course, cream of chicken or mushroom or potato soup. Lemon juice and curry powder provide the hint of exoticism necessary to press this dish beyond bland. Besides that, all you've really got here is chicken and broccoli. And what kid—American even--would ever reject that?
Both Corrine and I remember our own moms making Chicken Divan, though their recipes were slightly different. My mom used more mayonnaise and Corrine's mom used more cheese. Doing no more than to recommend slightly more authentic curry powder, the kind that you might find in a Pakistani or Indian grocery—not the stuff made by McCormick's—I have melded and revised their recipes in the spirit of the purpose of the dish: to provide a basic, filling, crowd-pleasing meal.
The era of the casserole in my culinary planning has passed, but as our grown and growing children can now tell you, "Chicken Avan" stands as the bedrock of our collectively revered comfort foods. It is a staple of the present that I turn to when there's a newcomer to our family table, a friend or boyfriend who may not be a foodie—not yet! It's a past I turn to when our household seems overwhelmed by daily life, when I want to remember that food can be satisfying and simple, when I want to remember when and where my family life began. And, I am sure Chicken Divan will be a dish of the future, the thing all of our kids take with them, one of the first things they'll make in their kitchens in order to begin to frame their own families.
Serve Chicken Divan over rice, with white wine or pale ale, to your family—whoever they may be.
Chicken Divan
Ingredients:
—2-3 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts
—1 1-lb. package of frozen broccoli
—1 cup mayo
—One and a half cups of sour cream
—1 can cream of chicken soup
—Juice of one lemon
—1-2 tsps of curry powder
—One 8 oz. package of shredded cheddar cheese
—Crackers/corn flakes/bread crumbs
Directions:
1 ) Boil chicken in stock or water with pepper corns, bay leaves salt until tender. Let it cool a bit.
2 ) Pour frozen broccoli in the bottom of an ungreased 11"x 13" pan.
3 ) Cut chicken into manageable chunks and place on top of broccoli.
4 ) Mix all other ingredients together and then spread on the top of the chicken.
5 ) Sprinkle with bread crumbs, crushed crackers or crushed corn flakes.
6 ) Cook for about an hour at 350 degrees, until there's some browning around the edges.
7 ) Serve over rice.
