Surprisingly, she kept the jalapenos in. And she always called it not Rosa de la Garza's Texas chicken, but the chicken that killed Grandpa. Unless, of course, Grandma was around.
One of the things she loved about making the dish was that after browning the chicken, you add all the chopped vegetables and corn and no liquid, then put the lid on the pan. The pan never came close to closing because there were so many vegetables piled in. Yet it cooked down until the lid closed by itself, and the vegetables and chicken simmered into something marvelous, with plenty of sauce. It was easy and delicious, and she always served it with Uncle Ben's rice.
As my brothers and I grew up, learning to cook along the way, we all made the chicken that killed Grandpa part of our own repertoires, tweaking it to suit our own tastes.
The original recipe called for browning the chicken in lard, butter or vegetable shortening; I started using olive oil instead. And the recipe didn't actually have you brown the chicken. Instead, the first step was "Heat the lard in a large casserole and add the chicken. Sprinkle with salt to taste and cook until the chicken loses its raw look." Ooh, that raw look. Then you were to add spices and garlic, cook, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes, then add the squash and onion.
Where'd it come from?
THIS didn't make any sense to me. Why not brown the chicken properly, remove it and deglaze the pan before proceeding? And wouldn't lots of chopped cilantro added toward the end be great? Even after developing my own version, I continued to love Joan's too and I loved teasing her about having cut the recipe from McCall's magazine, from which she clipped many a dish, though it seems mortifyingly unsophisticated to her now. She has always insisted it was from the New York Times magazine, which happens to better fit her self-image as a cook. Since she's a pathological revisionist historian (she recently started perpetrating a tale in which my youngest brother, John, requested a Swedish nanny when he was 3), I hassled her afresh about it just about every summer.
Last month, when the summer squashes and corn and tomatoes started looking so good, I asked Joan if she still had the original recipe -- I was sure it was from McCall's. "No," she said. "It was the New York Times magazine."
"Mmm hm," I said.
