Chicken a la Benedum

Note: This story was originally written and posted on 12/7/2007, back when I was using a different software for blogging. The Benedum family has since added a third child. (Praise the Lord for blessing our church families with children.) Also, the above pic is not of the actual dish; it's just some photo I found that looks pretty close to what the actual dish looked like. :-)

I did not go bonkers over Italian food until I came to West Virginia. But they do it really well here! Now, I'm a big fan of Italian food. Clarksburg, WV is an Italian food mecca. Annually, the city hosts the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival. Now, after having lived in the state for a combined 14 years or so, I'm already an honorary (adopted) West Virginian. But I cannot yet say I'm a "bona fide" expert Italian chef. However, to hear the Adam Benedum family tell it after eating this dish I invented the other night, I should be up for the nomination.

It all started when I got a hankering (that's a southern word for a strong desire, a yearning) to have some homemade Cajun Gumbo. That's a delicious chicken-&-okra-&-whatever-else stew, based on a dark roux dissolved into chicken broth, to thicken and flavor the broth. (As you may know, I was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. Now we all know that Louisiana is the home of Cajun Country, and delicious Cajun cuisine. I don't use the word cuisine lightly. Cooking great Cajun food is literally an art form, and some expert Cajun chefs are paid big bucks to do it right.)

To make Gumbo right, you gotta boil chickens. Well, I went to the store to buy chickens and other needed ingredients. They had fresh chicken quarters ("leg & thigh") on sale ($0.62/lb.), and so I bought leg quarters instead of whole chickens. Quarters have a good mixture of meat (dark meat and medium meat, if that's a term?) on them, so one can make just as good a Gumbo with them as with whole chickens.

Anyhow, it so happened (a day or two after the grocery shopping trip) that we invited Adam & Brandy Benedum and their family (they have two cute boys) over for dinner. He is a great brother in our local church who's been helping me a lot around our house, over the last few weeks and months. When we arrived home, I knew there wasn't enough time to complete any Gumbo that night, but I wanted to get the lengthy Gumbo process started anyhow--while trying to figure out whatever else we could cook up for that night's dinner.

I put all 10 pounds of meat on to boil. After the quarters had been boiling for about 30 or 45 minutes or so, I got this idea to invent something. I was winging it. Well, leg-quartering it, actually. Into a huge Teflon skillet I deposited about three of the leg quarters that I plucked out of the boiling pot. I cannot remember if I de-skinned them at that point, but I think I left the skin on. They would have been easy to de-skin then, since they had been cooking for some time. (De-skinning reduces fat content. Leaving it on adds flavor, and lets the individual eater have his or her choice.)

I cut one or two of them apart (separating leg from thigh) to make it easier to arrange them in the skillet. I ladled out some of the steaming hot broth (from the chickens boiling in the big pot) and gave it to the orphans in the skillet. (Covering them less than half way up.) I liberally covered them with garlic powder and oregano, and added some thyme and sage, and salt and black pepper. I added 1 cup of chopped onion and 1 cup of chopped green bell pepper. Then I poured in 1/2 large jar of spaghetti sauce, and 1 can of creamed corn. I wanted corn in the dish, and knew the cream would help thicken the broth. I also poured in about 3 oz. of Coca Cola to sweeten and darken the mix a little. I chopped up about 10 slices of pepperoni into small pieces, and threw those in, too.

I cooked all this on a high heat--turning the chicken pieces over occasionally, as needed--until the meat showed as done when I sliced down to the bone on the thick parts. As the sauce reduced, if it got too dry, I just added a little more broth from the boiling pot.

We cooked up a batch of spaghetti noodles (al dente, of course), and we made lots of garlic toast (sliced Italian bread covered with butter & garlic powder, sprinkled with parsley flakes, and toasted in the oven).

The delicious meal was served by laying down a bed of spaghetti noodles covered with my delicious new sauce, topped with a scrumptious piece of the chicken, and bordered by the garlic toast. Mmmmmm, Mmmmmm. We all enjoyed it immensely. Adam asked what the new dish was to be called. Well, I named it after him and his family. I don't know if Benedum sounds Italian, but the "a la" part does. :-)

Now, don't you want to come to the pastor's house for dinner? To all CAC members: You're officially invited! Just call, email, or hint to get a date and time arranged.