What makes something comfort food? For some, it’s the ease of preparation. Often, it’s the time of year – there’s something about a long, cold night in Maine that makes oven-baked entrées so appealing. Some folks may key into nostalgia – “Mom (or Dad, or Grandma, or Uncle or Aunt Fill-in-the-Blank) used to make this – it always made me feel loved.” Of course, it’s tough to add that certain je ne sais quoi they conferred on the dish – whether through their loving preparation, their timing, the karma imbued in a certain implement they’d employ, or the diner’s personal circumstance at that moment. Whenever they placed that dish before you, you felt good all-over.

Sunnie’s handwritten recipe for Continental Chicken, as written out in 1982 in a book she gave her children for Christmas. Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Bates

My birth mom died when I was nine, and my dad remarried shortly thereafter. Sunnie, his new wife, had her hands full with a blended family and a husband who was rapidly rising in the executive ranks of corporate America and traveled for weeks at a time. Somewhere along the line, she discovered a recipe for Chicken Continental. As a 10-year-old kid growing up across the river from Roswell, Georgia (which, trust me on this, had yet to develop its current cosmopolitan cachet), Chicken Continental sounded pretty darn sophisticated.

My brothers and I loved this stuff. Sunnie would bring it to the table in a Dansk-designed, circular covered-casserole, emblazoned with teal-blue, split-avocado graphics on a white enamel surface. She’d ceremoniously place it in a custom-sized teak collar (think Starbucks cardboard collar for your coffee and you get the picture, sort-of), deliver it to the table, pull off the lid and voila! We were in Paree!

A couple of years ago, before the pandemic had completely waned, I was looking for something ‘comfort-ish’ on a cold, dark autumn afternoon. In 1982, as an empty-nester, Sunnie had thoughtfully (and painstakingly) put together hand-written copies of favorite recipes and distributed them to us kids as Christmas presents. I thought back to Chicken Continental, found it in her cookbook, made some adjustments for contemporary (and my own) sensibilities and gave it a try. It had been 50+ years since I’d dug into its chicken-y deliciousness. The decades melted away and I was back on the Chattahoochee River, enjoying a childhood in the Georgia woods, ready for the world to open wide.

Continental Chicken. Photo by Susan Bates

Chicken Continental

You can find versions of this recipe online, but this is my adaptation from Sunnie’s recipe book. It’s great comfort food and relatively easy to put together. It can be quickly expanded for a large group: Classic Campbell’s Soup comfort food cuisine. I changed the recipe, using boneless chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken, cut into pieces, dropped the Minute Rice that Sunnie’s recipe called for, incorporated regular long-grain rice instead, and increased the cooking time and liquid to accommodate that switch. You could also use boneless chicken breasts. No need to add salt to the recipe, as the soup and the broth have plenty.

Preparation time: 35 minutes
Oven time: 40 minutes

1 cup flour
Pepper
5-6 boneless chicken thighs or 3-4 boneless breasts
8 tablespoons butter, plus extra to butter the casserole
½ onion, chopped
1 teaspoon dry thyme, or to taste
½ cup minced celery or 1 teaspoon celery flakes, optional
1 (10 ounce) can Cream of Chicken or Cream of Celery condensed soup
1 (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth
1½ cups long grain rice
1 tablespoon dried parsley or ¼ cup fresh chopped parsley and parsley/parsley flakes, optional
Paprika, optional

Preheat the oven to at 375 degrees. Butter a 9×13-inch oven-proof baking dish (or an enameled Dansk casserole with cover).

Season the flour with pepper. Dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a medium-large skillet over medium heat. Sauté the chicken in the butter in batches. As the pieces brown, remove them and set them aside on a plate, adding up to 2 more tablespoons butter as needed.

As chicken is browning and, in a separate sauce pan, sauté the onion in the remaining 2 tablespoons of the butter until soft, about 4 minutes. Add the thyme and, if you’re using it, the celery. Then add the condensed soup. Gradually whisk in the chicken broth. Heat the mixture to a slow simmer. Add ½ cup water, then reduce heat to low. Set aside ½ cup of the mixture.

Pour the uncooked rice into the prepared baking dish, distributing it evenly across the bottom.

Once all the chicken is browned, bring the soup/onion mixture to a rolling boil. This is important – it has to be rolling. Pour the boiling mixture over the rice in the baking dish and gently stir to make sure it’s evenly distributed. Add any butter drippings still in the skillet to the rice/soup mixture.

Place the browned chicken on top of the rice, along with any chicken juices, followed by the reserved 1/2 cup soup mixture. If you’re using the optional garnish ingredients, dust the casserole with paprika and sprinkle on the parsley now.

Cover the casserole tightly with aluminum foil and place immediately in the preheated oven. Bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the casserole sit, covered, for 5 minutes before serving it.

Enjoy!

Geoffrey Bates. Photo by Susan Bates

THE COOK, Geoffrey Bates

“I spent about 10 years making a sort-of living in the food service industry in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I started by waiting tables and being a host at The Hobbit House restaurant in Athens, Ohio – imagine a basement seating area, mirrored at either end, with red flocked wall paper and a menu that featured items such as a “Shire Salad” or “Gandalf’s Brew.” I found my way to short-order cooking, then managing a hippie-dippie Mexican Restaurant (¿Casa Que Pasa? now Casa Nueva and still in business), cooking for a summer residential Indonesian Language and Culture workshop at Ohio University for two summers (two meals a day for 50+ people for eight weeks), managing a community college cafeteria in Connecticut…you get the picture.

“My degrees are in the visual arts. After my Ohio stint, I exhibited widely in southern New England and taught at several colleges before finally developing a career in museum work, finishing up with 10 years as the first director and curator of a large-scale sculpture park set on over 100 acres of prairie landscape south of Chicago.

“Yes, I’m ‘from away.’ But, like so many others, the pull of Maine has figured prominently in my life ever since my mother visited her parents in South Bristol, pregnant with me, in 1951. I remember it well… My blended family visited often through my teenage years and after my wife, Susan, and I were married, we made every effort to undertake a yearly pilgrimage to South Bristol. Our children have never visited Walt Disney World.

“We were fortunate to have purchased some land from my aunt that’s contiguous to my grandparents’ original compound, and we built a home and moved here when I retired in 2017. We are ‘year-rounders’ who revel in the quiet of February on the coast. I can say that I have never been happier.”