Chicken-Broccoli Recipe

This was a recipe from my dad's cousin/my mom's friend (i.e. the person who introduced my parents to each other) and it used Campbell's cream of chicken soup. I remember loving it as a child. We now make it without the canned soup and serve it over brown rice to make it a little more healthy but it really just is the ultimate super-creamy comfort food.

1 breast of skinnless/boneless chicken boiled for 15-20 minutes (or breast meat left over from a roast made earlier in the week)

The florets of two good-sized heads of broccoli - boiled until easy to puncture with a fork

Sauce:
Make a roux by melting 5 tablespoons of butter in a heavy-bottom pan over medium heat. Add 5 tablespoons of flour. Mix the two ingredients together and then add 2 cups of chicken broth (or one small package of Pacific free-range chicken broth) and one cup of milk (preferably raw, whole milk). Bring ingredients to a rolling boil and stir fairly consistently. (I tend to start the next part of the sauce and stir every minute or two.)

Sauce, Part Two:
Measure one cup of mayonnaise into a mixing bowl. (My sister insists that it has to be Kraft mayonnaise - I don't have a strong opinion here. And one of my aunt's uses plain yogurt to replace some/all of the mayonnaise.)

To the mayonnaise add: a capful of lemon juice (a.k.a. 1 teaspoon -- I think), a capful of curry powder (again, I think this is 1 teaspoon).

Are you starting to get a sense of cooking this recipe? I don't measure carefully. This recipe is adaptable, easy to put together, and is a cross-generation crowd-pleaser in our family.

While I'm making the mayonnaise-curry-lemon mixture, I'm stirring the roux every minute (or every couple of minutes) or so. My four-year-old also loves to mix the mayo-mixture together. (We usually do this while my almost-two year old, who also loves to help but tends to be a little less...umm...helpful, is taking his nap.)

To the mayonnaise mixture, I add the roux and my daughter mixes.

Meanwhile, I lay out the chicken and the cooked broccoli in a glass lasagna-size pan. We like a higher broccoli to chicken ratio in our house. And then we pour the sauce over the chicken and broccoli and top with grated cheddar cheese (or sometimes a "mozzarella and cheddar and something else" blend). Recently I started purchasing shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheese from Organic Valley. (I like what I've read about the company.) Use whatever amount you like. I think the original recipe called for 2 cups, which is usually one package. That was a little too cheesy for us so I cut it back a bit.

Bake in a (preheated) oven at 350* for about 30-40 minutes.

Once that's in, scoop out one cup of brown rice* and rinse it in a colander under warm water (removes bitter coating) and mix with two cups of water, a little salt and a little olive oil or butter. Bring to a boil and then simmer very low (I use my back "simmer" burner with a diffuser plate) for about 40 minutes.

Just before taking the casserole out of the oven, I put the broiler on for a minute or two (I use my oven's timer so I don't get distracted and burn the whole thing) and lightly brown the top so the cheese gets a little crispy.

Serve over the rice and with bread for dipping (which is more like slurping up every last drop of the sauce)!

* For a special treat sometimes I use Jasmine or Basmati flavored brown rice (which I honestly can not tell apart unless maybe I tried them side-by-side). I think the flavored rice adds a nice ummm...flavor. Same ratio of rice to water as the regular brown rice, same approximate cooking time.