Roasted "fried" whole chicken

 

This is the kind of roasted poultry that I'd been striving for. And this happened by accident.

Lunar New Year 2021 and the Texas Snowpocalypse

-Lunar New Year-

I kept things simple this year. I just poached a chicken while ordering out dumplings. The poached chicken recipe I like to follow is the one by Ming Tsai that he discussed on a Lunar New Year special. It involves carrots, scallions, basil, ginger and a chicken being poached in chicken stock. I remember loving it the first time, but the only way I can access the recipe is by buying the book since I can't find it posted online. 

So I following the directions for the Star Anise braised chicken using the ingredients in some random formation. The outcome was good, but what was better was eating the cold the next day with a poached chicken sauce found on Woks of Life. The baby loved it. 

There was a lot of residual gelatinous broth from the poaching liquid and as such it made me realize that - though the whole chicken only poaches for a little while, next time I will strip all of the meat off the bones and further simmer the broth for more hours to get more of that collagen out of the bones. Store bought broth is expensive. If I have a whole chicken, I may as well make stock or a broth.

-Snowpocalypse-

I live in Texas and the state is currently shutdown since we don't have the resources to combat this kind of natural disaster. So we have to hunker down and essentially make do with what we have in the house, which is a decent amount since we had stocked up before due to the pandemic. We're ok for now and I enjoy a challenge of creativity under pressure.

-Chicken Adobo-

I had some thighs that needed to be used. For a change of pace, I tried a variation on a recipe from ATK that adds coconut milk. The sauce was quite good, though following the instructions yielded meat that was still a little pinkish inside. Next time, I will low simmer for 35-40 minutes each side and go for 180 degrees. 

Marinade in everything but the vinegar. Place meat skin side down in a cold pan to render out fat, then remove fat from pan. Mix all sauce ingredients except sugar and simmer. When chicken is done, remove, reduce sauce and add sugar. To this, I added eggs and daikon. It was good. 

2020

 Crazy Year. Happy Thanksgiving! 

See that baby in the back? My previous post on my modified chili where I commented I had 3 weeks to momdom, this kid decided to show up the next day. That threw me for a loop. Toss in a pandemic and now I'm just trying to salvage the rest of my sanity. She cute tho. 

Thanksgiving this year was fairly modest due to the circumstances and overall, not too bad. As usual, I need to write a review of and notes for next year, but where would I remember too look? Here, of course. 

Chili for all seasons

Clearly, I'm on a chili kick.

First off, my work just had it's annual chili cook off...sort of. It was cancelled this year due to inclement weather, so chili was made anyway and we just ate it in the lab break room. Now, while that's all good and well - I don't eat beef. So I only had some corn bread, but given that I had made my chili (previous post) and had been eating it all week, I didn't feel like I was missing out.

Secondly, don't know if I mentioned this, but I'm pregnant. Really pregnant. 3 weeks to Momdom. At my most recent ultrasound, I was diagnosed with a mild case of polyhydraminos, speculatively due to my diet creating a high sugar environment for the baby resulting in increased urine, therefore increased amniotic fluid. I was told to watch my carb intake by the specialist while my OB told me I'm fine and just approach carbs with moderation. After a few days of moping and feeling like a failure, I realized that chili is an excellent vessel for low carb meals with some alterations. So, I remade my chili with some modifications:

Ingredients:

1 lb Turkey

1 lb Pork

chicken stock

2 dried Ancho chilis
2 dried Guajillo chili
2 dried Pasilla chili

3.5 tsp Ancho chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cheyenne

1.5 onions diced
1 large zucchini (~1 cup diced)
2 carrots (~1 cup diced)
4 cloves garlic

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes

salt

Procedure:
Soak dried chilis in water for about 20 minutes. Remove the stems and seeds and pulse blend the chilis

Brown meat in a little bit of oil, then remove from the pot.

Saute onion & garlic until the onion is clear. Add carrots and zucchini and mix well.

Add the meat back to the pot. Add the spices, blended chili paste and enough stock to cover everything by 1/4 inch. Simmer until the carrots are tender (15-20 minutes)

When carrots are tender, add the can of crushed tomatoes. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, then adjust seasoning to taste

Salt to taste. Simmer a little longer, than store in fridge over night for the flavors to meld.

Removing the beans and corn allows me to have more control over the carb content and frees me up to eat the chili with cornbread or Fritos. I can also add beans if I want to and just let the chili simmer for 15-20 minutes. 

Chili 2019

I started making chili the year before last when I developed mad cravings for Frito pie (the tuna noodle casserole of the American Southwest).

The bigger inspiration aside from needing to use up Thanksgiving leftovers is my diet. I don't eat beef and I tend to keep my diet low sodium. This makes most chili in Texas off limits for me. This recipe came about from reverse engineering someone's vegan chili that I had at a charity benefit. I added meat.

Ingredients:

1 lb Turkey

chicken stock

2 dried Ancho chilis
1 dried Guajillo chili
1 dried Pasilla chili

3.5 tsp Ancho chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cheyenne

1 onion
1 large zucchini (~1 cup diced)
2 carrots (~1 cup diced)
2 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp tomato paste

1 can Rotel tomatoes, liquid reserved
1 can black beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 can corn

salt

Procedure:
Simmer dried chilis in water for about 10 minutes. Remove the stems and seeds and pulse blend the chilis

Brown meat in a little bit of oil, then remove from the pot.

Saute onion & garlic until the onion is clear. Add carrots and zucchini and mix well.

Add the meat back to the pot. Add the spices, blended chili paste and enough stock to cover everything by 1/4 inch. Simmer until the carrots are tender (15-20 minutes)

When carrots are tender, add tomato paste and Rotel tomatoes. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, then adjust seasoning to taste
---At this point, the chili is pretty good without the beans and corn. This is a good stopping point.

Drain and wash beans and corn, then add to chili. Simmer for another 20 minutes.

Salt to taste.

My current fried chicken recipe

As noted previously, I've been on a fried chicken binge that was spurred on by my need/strong desire to use a package of Tazah coating for broasted chicken.

Then things spiraled out of control from there, I started contemplating my own desires out of fried chicken in terms of flavor and texture. Should I try egg? Should I try buttermilk? Can you marinate too long? I spun off from the original goal of just trying broasted chicken to making my own original - monster effort in it's own right.

I think my goal was to replicate fried chicken that my mom had made ONCE when I was young but it had a memorable enough flavor profile.

I cut a leg quarter into 3 pieces to make cooking (and eating all of my test runs) easier.

Let it soak in a marinade of:

2 chopped garlic cloves
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tsp Fish sauce
sprinkle pepper

It hung out in this marinade for 24 hours because the husband wouldn't let me deep dry when I got home late from work.

It got dredged in a flour mix of:

2 Tbsp potato starch
1 Tbsp rice flour
and 1/4 tsp of baking powder

Fry for 12 minutes total, turning at the 6 minute mark.

Then bake for 20 minutes @ 400 F

It was fortunate for this to cap off my fried chicken experimentation because this was awesome. Other than working on residual greasiness, the taste and texture are where I want them to be. I was afraid of it being salty because of all the marinating time, but no - this was awesome.

I would've taken a picture, but I ate it. My cast iron pans are pretty well seasoned now. I'm logging this for my reference, since for the sake of my health, I gotta take a fried chicken break.

What happened to 2018?

The year went by too fast.

Updates in my cooking life:

- I'm really digging traditional cast iron. I got my husband into playing with it too and he makes a rather lovely Chicago style deep dish pizza. (Did I mention I got married?)

- Thankgiving 2018: Immigration Nation! Yes. We had an immigration themed Thanksgiving and it was awesome! My cousin deboned the turkey and stuffed it with kiampung (Chinese sticky rice). While I thought it was amazing and I hoarded almost all of the turkey leftovers and remaining kiampung, some of our guests actually preferred my stuffing. Compliment? Not so much as stuffing felt more contextually appropriate along with the flavors of Thanksgiving. I clearly didn't emphasize the theme enough. The tamales and pierogis were well received.

- I just broasted chicken for the first time today. It was fun and felt good, but there's a texture goal I'm going for so I'll be experimenting a little more.

Today's go:
- chopped chicken and washed it
- boiled it for 5 minutes in water with 2 tbsp vinegar and 1 tsp salt.
- rubbed in dry coating
- fried for 12 minutes, turning at 6 min mark

Conveniently, my small cast iron pan can fit the 3 pieces I divy the leg quarter into - so I'll get some good experimentation in the mix. I will use an egg wash before coating in flour and for my own tastes, I'll boil the chicken in a higher vinegar salt solution.

Thanksgiving 2017: I should've read my thoughts on Thanksgiving 2015

My first post of the year and it happens to be the weekend after Thanksgiving. Some people go crazy for Black Friday while I celebrate Thanksgiving leftovers. To each, their own.

Thankgiving 2017

It's 2017. So what happened to Thanksgiving 2016? I got hired full time in January of 2016 and I still hadn't gotten used to the idea of requesting PTO and such, so I worked all the holidays. It irritated me, but for Thanksgiving 2016 I tried to have at least a little celebration. We bought a small turkey and attempted to cook it, and that was our first real time using the oven to cook. It's not the best way to test drive the oven. Despite getting turkey pot pies and a years worth of turkey stock out of the carcass, I vowed to take off Thanksgiving always just because it irritated me too much to work it.
In the spirit of delegating out tasks for Thanksgiving and my cousin asking about it, I decided it would be an excellent idea to attempt to delegate out responsibilities again.

Late Night Kitchen Sink Ratatouille

Your guess would be as good as mine as to why I made ratatouille just now at 1 AM.

I generally tend to view anything that doesn't involve meat as fairly easy when it comes to the labor, even if it isn't.

I've had some eggplants sitting around and I've been meaning to do something with them. They gave me the inspiration to make ratatouille, but they're still sitting on my counter because I bought another eggplant for my ratatouille purposes when I was at the store earlier. I did not have my phone on me, so I could not look up a recipe for ratatouille to make sure I had all the ingredients. I decided I was gonna wing it (improvise).

Potato Latkes

This was a recipe that was handed out around last December by a teacher whose class I helped out by tutoring. The teacher was Jewish, so that's how the class ended up eating potato pancakes for show and tell.

New flavors I HATE: Beautiful

How can something taste beautiful? or stupid?

I had one of those learning weekends where you find out the hard way that you can't eat everything and won't eat everything.

It started at weekly dim sum.

They have two kinds of jelly on the dessert cart. Rose and Dragonfruit. I know I love the dragon fruit, but I couldn't say I prefer it to the rose because I'd never had it. The guy could only describe the taste as "beautiful" and I generally don't like perfumy flavors. I tried it and immediately regretted it. If you would never go into your backyard and find roses to eat immediately, then anything with a strong flower flavor is not a good idea. It's good in some macarons, but that's only if done right. 

It was my lucky day, after dim sum, my sister and I went to get Turkish coffee. Along with the coffee they served us lokum, ROSE flavored lokum. 

As someone who can kind of know immediately upon description whether or not I'll like something, if I ever find myself questioning if I'll like something, then the answer is most likely no. 

Chinese Herbal Soups: Chicken soup with Red Dates

The Great Delegator: Thanksgiving & Christmas 2015

As usual, the posts are a little sparse. When I'm not busy, I'm just tired. There have been a lot of new and exciting developments in life and in my world of cooking. One of my more recent developments is delegating out meal chores on the big days: Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

Thanksgiving went pretty well. The table was not as crowded with vegetables (as I usually prefer), but it also was not crowded with casseroles. I let my little cousin also take over desserts since - like I've said - I've been tired. He contributed a fresh fruit tart and also a red velvet cake in place of a previously promised ube cake. The lack of an ube cake was quite the let down. A lot of the menu of previous years was present at this years table:

Roasted Root Vegetables
Mushroom Stuffing
Kikiam
Roasted Cauliflower
...etc

There is something nice about knowing exactly what you're doing, but I find myself just getting a little bored. 2016 I'll be aiming to expand my Thanksgiving horizons.

Christmas Eve, my delegation worked out even less than before. The little cousin is starting to take orders for his baking skills and once again failed to show an ube cake, this was also in addition to failing to make pancit. I'm not trying to rag too hard on it, but seriously - don't offer to make something if there's a chance you can't. He's only 20 though, he still has a lot of impractical optimism. The table looked a little sparse until my mom took out some Chinese food. The newcomer to this table was creamed spinach. I utilized a Cooks Illustrated recipe and...I'm not sure I even like creamed spinach. It was ok. I think one thing that really affected my planning and cooking experience for Christmas Eve was that fact that I'm still getting over a cold and couldn't really smell things. I finally got to try out my sweet potato buttermilk pie recipe with garnet sweet potatoes and lemon zest - maybe it's because I didn't mash the potatoes as well as I had previously but garnet sweet potatoes seemed a little more fibrous and not as sweet. I'm sticking with jewel sweet potatoes for my pie, the texture seems smoother. Also, the lemon zest was a nice touch, I don't have any strong inclinations towards with or without. Lastly, the pie tastes better after it's been refrigerated overnight. 

Overall, pretty good turn out this year. I'll need to make a mental note to have some back up side dishes, 

Unholy Union Salad: White Anchovy and Blue Cheese Salad

This is a salad that I would like to call: The Unholy Union because it combines

Wild Planet White Anchovies:

A small oily fish in a tin that tastes like a more mild version of sardines.

Fourme d'Ambert:

A blue cheese that my boyfriend describes as tasting like the smell of a barn in Wisconsin. The cheesiest state in the union. Is that really a bad thing? I think not.

The result is this:

Perhaps the most awesome salad ever.

Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie

I beta tested sweet potato pies for Thanksgiving. One was just a sweet potato pie and the other was a sweet potato buttermilk pie. Originally, both of the pies were going to be featured at this years Thanksgiving, but they were too similar and one was clearly better.

Thanksgiving 2015: Casse-rolled Over

My execution was usurped by casseroles!

MaPo Tofu

I've started school - so as a result, I want to focus on everything but school. Really, I've been meaning to write up a lot like usual, but school is gradually taking over my life. I've been meaning to do a special on eating well and cheap since I've had to revert to my lower cost diet, but since that can go on indefinitely, I'm going for a recipe that's been on my mind - before I forget it.

I've been severely limiting my pork intake for reasons I don't remember. I'd imagine it's the healthier route to go though. As a result, I can't get Mapo Tofu in restaurants anymore and that makes me sad.

I decided to start making my own variation with lamb (I completely stopped eating beef also). The not fun part is the fact that ground lamb is about $7 a pound. Other than that - it has a pretty good flavor. I started with Foodie Ling's recipe as the basis from there and then started modifying. I follow the same basic procedure, I just added more things.

Mapo Tofu Recipe

1/3 lb (150 g) ground lamb (1/4 lb works too if you really want to stretch your money)
3-5 garlic cloves - minced

60 mL water
1 1/2 Tbsp Broad Bean chili paste (doubanjiang)
2 Tbsp Lao Gan Ma black bean chili sauce
2 packs soft tofu - medium firm works well too. Cubed
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp potato starch + 2 Tbsp water (corn starch would work too)

1 tsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp Shao Xing wine
chopped spring onion

Chicken Adobo: The Family Exchange

I got to see my uncle/godfather for the first time in 17 years. One thing that I found interesting was how similar I am to my uncle. The common interests were very apparent.

I've been cooking adobo for almost a decade and only now do I honestly feel that there's little to no need for experimentation. Once I tried my uncle's adobo, I realized why my adobo always seemed off and I learned to trust that you don't need an extensive amount of ingredients to make something good. Lastly, mistakes are not always a bad thing.

Okonomiyaki - 16 years in the making

I have this odd tendency to crave things on the basis of seeing other people enjoy them. When I crave things, that's when they taste the best - that's what happened when I was so eager to try Vegemite when it was hard to find around this neck of the woods. I enjoy salty and yeasty. From a more recent blog posting, the jajangmyun I made, I saw on a TV show and it just looked good. After researching about it, I decided I was going to like it.

Chinese Dumplings Expanded

The year of the Horse was ushered in on the 31st of January, so clearly, I'm behind on my posts. I made the Sweet Potato Dumplings last year, and this year, I've expanded my dumpling experimentation.

Yes. I decided to try out the recipe with Okinawan sweet potatoes and Japanese white flesh sweet potatoes.