Alison ClarkFESTIVE CHICKEN BAKE
I make this at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter - the delicious smell greets us on return from church services.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
This can be done in a slow cooker (low for 6-8 hours), or in a casserole dish (375deg. oven for between one, to one and a half hours). It’s also delicious made with boneless pork chops.
Festive Chicken Bake
Credit for the original recipe: “Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook” pub. 2000, Goodbooks, PA. Dawn J. Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good.
|
Alison Clark
(Photo: Zachary Windus)
Alison, a native of New Zealand, travelled to Canada in 1981 to complete a Masters Degree in Organ Performance at McGill University (Montreal). She won the New Zealand Organ Competition when she was 18, and while studying in Montreal she travelled to Chartres (France), Bruges (Belgium), Manchester (England), and Ann Arbor, Michigan to play in more Competitions. Alison has also performed for Radio New Zealand, and Radio Canada (Montreal).
Currently, Alison is the music director of Grace Anglican Church (Brantford) and Saturday evening Cantor and organist for Our Lady of the Assumption, but she has held church positions in Montreal (assistant at Christ Church Cathedral), Fredericton’s Christ Church Cathedral, All Saints Kingsway, (Toronto), and churches in Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario). Alison has played concerts in many cities: Boston, Hilton Head, P.E.I, Halifax, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland, Montreal, Toronto, to name just a few. She has only once started a concert in full view of the audience, when she’d forgotten to turn the organ ON. Two other concerts (Toronto - a Subway stop closed for an emergency, and Montreal where the Trans-Canada Hwy was closed and she had to take an alternate route, which forced her- a stranger in a strange land - to park at a Metro Stop and use it) meaning she arrived five minutes before the start of her concerts. She loves to encourage and promote young organists braving the music scene these days. |
Alison writes: The hunt for homogenized milk and other tales:
Once I had found an apartment in Montréal, incidentally in the same area Farley Mowatt lived, I began to settle into city life, where being woken at 6am by chatty Italian roadworks crews, or the delicious smell of Bagel bakeries was normal. I decided to shop for milk so that I could make myself a cup of tea. My practice times at the Cathedral were from 9pm to midnight; Lectures, accompanying choir rehearsals Monday to Thursday every week kept me busy, so the luxury of a cup of tea was reserved for Saturdays or Sunday afternoons. Occasionally I would practice in the afternoons, but that was often interrupted by people hopping over the gate and visiting me in the gallery, including very drunk men, or people calling up from the aisle wanting me to play treasures like “Amazing Grace”.
Anyway, back to the milk situation:
I needed to find the milk I was used to putting in my tea in Christchurch, NZ. That milk did not have a percentage denomination - it was regular milk with a nice layer of cream on top. Unfortunately I hadn’t discovered the supermarkets in Montréal yet, but I found a Convenience store. So I studied all the varieties and realized I didn’t want Skim or 1%, not even 2% sounded right, but Buttermilk certainly had an acceptable % amount of fats to maybe make me feel at home. Well, the sourness of that first mouthful was a shock, and it was all tossed into the sink. The next day I asked choir members for help. A lot of laughs and friends for life.
The other lesson I learnt four years later, when I was living and working in Hudson, Quebec. I was lucky enough to be living in a beautiful home where, in the Winter I could ski down the snowy slope in front of this stately home, and cross the frozen Lac des deux Montagnes, with the dog. We would cross to Oka (I had no idea that seeing the water running beneath the ice under my skis was rather dangerous, but here I am, telling the tale) and we’d visit the elaborate Catholic Church overlooking the lake. In the Summer we would take the ferry.
I used to invite friends out from Montreal for dinner occasionally, and found a great recipe for dessert which required whipped cream, melted chocolate and gelatine. Which I have lost, don’t ask. So, once again, I visited the local Dépanneur and bought cream. After 45 minutes of trying to coax the cream to a more solid state I realized something was very wrong, and returned to the friendly lady who then introduced me to 35% Whipping cream, and all was well with the world once again…
Once I had found an apartment in Montréal, incidentally in the same area Farley Mowatt lived, I began to settle into city life, where being woken at 6am by chatty Italian roadworks crews, or the delicious smell of Bagel bakeries was normal. I decided to shop for milk so that I could make myself a cup of tea. My practice times at the Cathedral were from 9pm to midnight; Lectures, accompanying choir rehearsals Monday to Thursday every week kept me busy, so the luxury of a cup of tea was reserved for Saturdays or Sunday afternoons. Occasionally I would practice in the afternoons, but that was often interrupted by people hopping over the gate and visiting me in the gallery, including very drunk men, or people calling up from the aisle wanting me to play treasures like “Amazing Grace”.
Anyway, back to the milk situation:
I needed to find the milk I was used to putting in my tea in Christchurch, NZ. That milk did not have a percentage denomination - it was regular milk with a nice layer of cream on top. Unfortunately I hadn’t discovered the supermarkets in Montréal yet, but I found a Convenience store. So I studied all the varieties and realized I didn’t want Skim or 1%, not even 2% sounded right, but Buttermilk certainly had an acceptable % amount of fats to maybe make me feel at home. Well, the sourness of that first mouthful was a shock, and it was all tossed into the sink. The next day I asked choir members for help. A lot of laughs and friends for life.
The other lesson I learnt four years later, when I was living and working in Hudson, Quebec. I was lucky enough to be living in a beautiful home where, in the Winter I could ski down the snowy slope in front of this stately home, and cross the frozen Lac des deux Montagnes, with the dog. We would cross to Oka (I had no idea that seeing the water running beneath the ice under my skis was rather dangerous, but here I am, telling the tale) and we’d visit the elaborate Catholic Church overlooking the lake. In the Summer we would take the ferry.
I used to invite friends out from Montreal for dinner occasionally, and found a great recipe for dessert which required whipped cream, melted chocolate and gelatine. Which I have lost, don’t ask. So, once again, I visited the local Dépanneur and bought cream. After 45 minutes of trying to coax the cream to a more solid state I realized something was very wrong, and returned to the friendly lady who then introduced me to 35% Whipping cream, and all was well with the world once again…
