Bread and Wine: White Chicken Chili

It is the week of fall. Not a bad time to write about chili.

This has to be one of my favorite recipes out of the book (so far). I was afraid of it at first-- in my mind if you mess with chili too much, you make something that's supposed to be easy and comforting, well, uneasy and kind of discomfiting to already too-busy cooks.

But this. This is easy and comforting.

It's also gluten and dairy-free (yay!) And almost everyone I've served it too loves it. Even children.

It doesn't hurt that it comes with Niequist's reflections in her Bread and Wine chapter "Open the Door." Her thoughts on home-shame are amazing--the reasons that we don't cook, don't host, don't invite people in, all the fear we have of judgment and out-of-controllness that wells up in our womanly souls. If cooking is challenging, hospitality is doubly-so, especially if you're like some of us nice-girl types who know how the world should spin and are all-too keenly aware of our shortcomings and dirty floors. Niequist frames those fears in terms of bubbly soup and grace, maybe the only two things we all really need.

Hm, soup and grace; a good combination.

Let's eat.

The Recipe: White Chicken Chili
Ingredients: Cooked chicken, chicken broth, canned white chili beans, salsa

After the long list of ingredients for the chicken curry, this one is kind of my dream. Four ingredients to play with and pair and add to. This is so me.

The line that stuck out to me about this recipe is Niequist's note that "this is a good meal to bring to friends who just had a baby--warm, easy, comforting. Bring a bit container of chili, with chips, cheese, avocado, etc." After having my own disastrous and very hungry first two weeks with my firstborn, the image of offering thick, warm soup to someone who is tired, overwhelmd and hungry (and who of us isn't from time to time, baby or no?) is meaningful.

Following her words, the first time I made this soup was for my brother-in-law and his wife with their ahem, FIFTH child. They are not big eaters and have no problem ordering out, but it's a new kid. Everyone's excited and happy and nervous and wired and hungry, especially your current children and whoever is taking care of them. I sent over a ginormous Tupperware container of the stuff, complete with chips, cheese, extra salsa and sour cream, and a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Probably the greatest compliment I've ever received was to learn that everyone, even the young kids, ate it and loved it.

Here's how I made it:

I poured everything into a big pot and brought it to a boil. The end.

If you read my last post about my trouble with simmering, yeah, again, this soup is kind of a dream. It really does cook up wonderfully quickly, though, like Niequist points out, it just gets better the longer it simmers on a stove. So essentially you can make it around 3pm when your babies are napping and then turn it down to a simmer and forget about it until supper time without any problems.

Since the first time I made this recipe I've played around with it, sautéing onion and garlic in olive oil in the pot before adding the broth, sometimes a few finely chopped jarred jalapenos (but the kids don't like all the spicy, so I don't do that too often). I like Kroger's Private Selection medium salsa to dump in it. It's a little on the kicky side, so once everything has boiled together, I add a couple blurps of fresh lime juice from a bottle, cover the pot and let it just simmer together until time to eat. It's great. The lime tempers the spice but ups the flavor. One night I had leftover mojito rotisserie chicken from Publix so I used that for the soup and it was probably the best pot I've made so far.

Ah, and rice. Sometimes I add it in the soup (just add a little more broth), or make it to pour the soup over. Either way, it's a lovely comforting, carb-y addition.

And let's talk about prepared foods. I was raised to always boil my own chickens and make my own broth, but I've embraced the freedom of using precooked chicken and boxed broths for this soup when it's been a hard week. It tastes great and I'm not so tired, so win-win.

It's kind of hard to lose with this soup.

The Chapter: "Open the Door"

If I were leading a book group on Bread and Wine, this chapter might be as good as any to start with. Here Niequist writes about all of the reasons it's so hard to host, to be engage in hospitality, to let people in.

Namely, shame.

Next to body shame, she writes, most of us women probably struggle with home-shame the most (when I read this I nearly raised my hand in my empty living room) . Our homes (and let's just be honest, our LIVES) are never quite good enough, quite orderly enough, quite right enough to host the Martha Stewart-quality dinner parties we're supposed to.

Our dishes are chipped.

We don't have enough flatware.

Uh, where's everyone gonna sit?

Matching glasses? Pfft, forget it.

Clean floors? Neat bedrooms? Unsmelly bathrooms? Excuse me while I can't stop laughing.

Whatever. Most of us have pretty good reasons to not have people over.

And yet, Niequist gently reminds us, that's not what people want.

"What people are craving, isn't perfection," she writes. "People aren't longing to be impressed; they're longing to feel like they're home. If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they'll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how odd."

My husband and I often talk about the places where we have felt most at home, especially during the unmoored years of college and after--when you're no longer children, but not yet established in your own home with your own family.

The places we felt at home were no picture-perfect, glossy-magazine dwellings. They were usually a little rough around the edges, whiny toddlers somewhere in there, with cluttered kitchens and crumbly floors. But they were spaces where people loved us, fed us, and wanted to hear how we were really doing. They helped us laugh when we were stressed and let us cry if need be. For me, in those places, I actually don't remember many homemade meals, maybe we had pizza, or boxed brownies.

Mostly I just remember the love.

I don't know if I've yet made our house like that. I still tend to get facial tics over my own yucky floors and my children's ever-wet bathroom. When people are over, I wish I could say I forget about dishes and fully focus on the faces in front of me. But I can't. I bustle and hurry and get flustered over having to wash forks so we have enough for dessert.

But I try.

I keep trying to open my door with grace and soup and carbs and laughter, and I find much nourishment there.