Chicken waterzooi and crispy potatoes

[rosefox]

"At some point I must try Julia Child's chicken waterzooi," I said, and tonight we did, since we were dining with friends who weren't interested in fish. The creaminess of it reminded me of many years ago when Mi Cucina on Hudson & Jane was a good restaurant and served utterly sublime pollo y rajas con crema with wonderful crispy cubes of potato (if there's a name for those in Spanish, I don't know it), so crispy potatoes became our side dish. We drank Thomas Henry chardonnay, with which I promptly fell in love--glorious notes of caramel!--and sopped our bowls with French bread and it was very, very good.

Both recipes have been modified to be dairy-free. The potatoes are vegan; the waterzooi could be veganized pretty easily.

( Crispy potatoes )

( Chicken waterzooi )

Both recipes supposedly serve four, so we doubled them. They just barely served six. Fortunately the waterzooi is intensely rich and we had bread as well as potatoes, so no one went hungry.

Afterwards we went out for gelato. I am so full, my goodness.