Baby fricassee

Just this week, our son turned 9 months. A lot is happening. He’s about to start crawling. He’s so close that he is upset almost daily that it hasn’t happened yet. He just got his 9-month shots, and my wife reintroduced dairy into her diet as the second to last CMPA elimination to go.

Perfect time, I thought, for a family comfort food: Chicken fricassee. It’s what my grandma used to make whenever we visited and it is one of my all-time favorite meals. A rich-in-butter, cream, and flavor dish to welcome the family back from our dairy hiatus.

So as I’ve been doing recently, I cooked up two versions: one for the adults with all the salt, choking hazards, and dairy our son can’t yet have. And one for the baby skipping salt and cream. (For the adult version I also replaced eggs with a vegan alternative, JUST Egg to be precise which turned out great.)

For the baby, I used a pair of chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken, and I

  • skipped all of the salt (part of the recipe is making chicken broth from scratch, which made that easy)
  • replaced the butter in the roux with a mix of olive oil and vegetable oil
  • replaced the asparagus, peas & carrots, and mushrooms with a canned vegetable medley (because there was no “no salt added” version for any of the others)
  • and skipped the eggs and heavy cream

It turned out absolutely revolting. It turns out that German dishes actually do need all that butter they ask for.

But the vegetable medley did help and after we mashed and mixed everything with the rice, it was still a little bland and boring but no longer an affront to the senses.

And our son really liked digging into all that sauciness and chicken. At one point he had his tiny mouth fully stuffed and desperately tried to shove more food in.

It also turned out less messy than I had anticipated. Because the texture was smooth and sticky, most of the food stayed on his little tray and hands rather than on the floor.

Until he rubbed his eyes, that’s when things got messy quickly.