Taking it slow in the new year

During the first few days of the new year, my husband is still on winter break from his job at the university and I have extra days off from the cafe for New Year's Day and other days when business is really slow. It's cold outside and we're craving something warming and uncomplicated to eat after all the party food and cookies in December. And since at least one of us will be around in the late morning, it's a great time to drag out the slow cooker to make those dishes that finish themselves while you're having an afternoon at home relaxing or catching up on chores.

Before I go into the recipes, I just wanted to have a bit of a rant about slow cookers: you can't really just "set it and forget it," despite the conventional wisdom about them. They are slow enough to give you an afternoon off from cooking dinner, but not slow enough for the working woman or man who is away from home for 9 or 10 hours. Also, many recipes involve adding an ingredient an hour before the end of cooking time or changing the temperature partway through cooking. Unless you're talking very large slow cooker with very large amount of food in it (impractical for a two-person household like mine, where the five-quart cooker feeds us for two or three days) or you've got a fancier slow cooker than mine that can be set to only cook for a preset amount of time and then change itself to warmer mode, you just can't fill the slow cooker at breakfast and not look at it till dinner and expect the food to be anything but overcooked. My basic, no-frills Crock-Pot is a tool that can only be used for days off or staggered schedules where one of us has the morning off and the other comes home at the right time in the evening to turn off the cooking.

This planning problem is, of course, no trouble at all when one person is at home all day during winter break. On just one such day this week, Andrew further modified a Taste of Home recipe I'd already changed to accommodate our tastes. Here's our result:

Slow-Cooked White Chicken Chili
serves 4 to 5

2 chicken legs (bone-in, skin-on)
1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 Tbsp canola oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 1/2 cup water
1 tsp Minor's chicken base concentrate
1 15-oz can Great Northern beans
1 1/4 cup frozen corn kernels
1 can chopped green chiles
2 tsp ground cumin

Brown chicken legs in oil. Remove and place in 5-quart slow cooker. Saute onions in oil until tender, add garlic and cook one more minute. Transfer to slow cooker, on top of chicken. Add all other ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours until chicken is no longer pink and leg bones pull apart easily.

Here's another recipe full of warmth, good smells, and beany heartiness that I made yesterday, once again making heavy modifications to a Taste of Home recipe. I was inspired to make cornbread (a Cook's Illustrated recipe) to accompany this one. Cut a piece of cornbread in half in a bowl and pour the stew right on top to let the juices soak into the bread.

Four-Bean Stew
serves 4 to 6

8 oz leftover roasted ham (OK to leave on the fatty bits)
2 medium onions, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground dry mustard
1 28-oz can Boston-style baked beans (no tomato, flavored with molasses)
1 16-oz can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 16-oz can butter beans, rinsed and drained
1 15-oz can whole green beans, drained

Chop ham and set aside. Saute onions in oil, add garlic and cook another minute or two. Stir in sugar, cider vinegar, mustard and salt. Simmer about 10 minutes. Stir all ingredients together in 5-quart slow cooker and cook on low 6 hours. Stir occasionally to avoid sticking. Serve over split pieces of cornbread.

Special note to my mother: Hey, Mom, I finally got over my long-standing hatred of cornbread! I found a couple of recipes that I actually like. They both include actual corn kernels, along with lots of fat or cream, and not very much sugar. For small portions only.