Weekend Miscellaney: Crown Hill, Chicken Stock, and Cranberries

**Who knew you could rent the Gothic Chapel at Crown Hill Cemetery for parties? I didn't. But kudos to a dear friend who skipped the traditional wedding rehearsal dinner on Friday night and threw a Halloween costume bash as a welcome party for the out-of-town wedding guests. The Gothic Chapel is beautiful on its own, but on Halloween? It's a perfect setting for mayhem. Plus that part of the cemetery with its monuments and mausoleums is very "Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer." A perfectly wonderful, scary idea.

**On Friday, I made enough stock to get me through the next couple of months. Ruhlman and others have recently done lengthy posts about how much better house made stock is that the vaguely chicken-flavored water that comes in cans or boxes, but I wasn't sold until I started using it for every day cooking, but what a difference an actual chicken makes. (Plus, by my calculation, one batch yields me about $12 worth of the store-bought stuff. Not bad when a chicken pays for itself.)

**Made and processed a dozen jars of various treats yesterday including my favorite cranberry, sour cherry, grapefruit chutney. There is nothing like the smell of fresh cardamom when it comes right out of the spice grinder. Plus, since I learned to supreme grapefruit instead of peeling the old-school way, this dish is much easier. Sweet, spicy, and tangy. Just the way a good cranberry sauce should be! Plus my workhorse of an old LC stockpot continues to see me through.

Chicken Terrine

Thanksgiving is coming and I wanted to find a terrine that might be adaptable for the holiday table. Inspired by a few of the chicken terrines Chef Chris Eley has featured lately at The Goose, and armed with both Ruhlman's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing and Reynaud's Terrine, I decided to give a poultry-based terrine a try. (I've had good success so far with pork and rabbit.) This one was pretty simple -- chicken, shallots, garlic, chives and nutmeg with eggs and cream to bind. Once again, I thank the gods for food processors.

While chopped shallots and garlic sauteed in oil, I put the diced uncooked chicken breast and eggs in the food process. I added grated nutmeg and cream. Then the shallots, chives, salt and pepper.

The recipe didn't call for lining the mold with anything, but I like the way it looks and was worried this recipe might be bland, so I used thin slices of smoky Black Forest ham. Chicken mixture goes into the lined mold, then into a water bath. After an hour, I brought it out of the oven and weighted it with a foil covered board and a panini press (about 8 lbs.)

This morning, it came out the mold very cleanly and I'm torn about the results. More after I've had a couple of days to process and gotten some second opinions. More pics in the flickr group.