Blood Red Chicken (WIP)

This is from tonight's successful experiment.  The recipe is for one serving with rice.

• a chicken thigh, boned and cut into chunks
• handfull of Green beans, celery, bamboo shoots, or broccoli
• six to eight fresh cherries, pitted and quartered
• egg beaten with cornstarch

And on support:

• sugar
• sherry or Chinese cooking wine
• cornstarch dissolved in a few tablespoons water
• rice wine vinegar
• splash soy sauce

Put the cherries, vinegar, soy sauce, sherry, and sugar in a ceramic bowl with a pinch of salt and a splash of water.  Let that marinate.

Clean and chop your veggies.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper, dredge in cornstarch.  Heat a pan up real hot, and grease with some vegetable oil.  Batter the chicken in the egg mixture, and fry hot and fast till browned.  Set aside on a paper towel, covered.

With the same pan still hot, throw the veggies in and reduce heat to a high pan fry for a few minutes.  Then pour the cherry mixture in, cook for another few minutes.  Pour in the cornstarch mixture and let it bubble for a few minutes, then throw the chicken back in and toss it all around to mix.

You'll need a fair amount of vinegar and sugar to make it really pop.  Don't use too much oil to fry the chicken or it might explode when you go to throw the cherry mix in.

Alfredo is Simple!!?

My alfredo at school was, it would seem, legendary.  It was at least delicious, and sure to give you a heart attack.

But I was doing it all wrong, apparently.  Last week my mother and I caught an episode of Lydia's Italy in America (way to go PBS with those show names; people will totally watch them now...).  It happened to be a 'basics' episode about pasta.  Not making it fresh or anything, but just how to whip up a good, delicious, pasta dish and the few tricks you need to pull it off.

It also results in a much lighter and stronger alfredo.  That's good for two reasons: less fat, and you end up using less to get the same flavor.  Plus the whole thing only takes as long as it takes the pasta to cook.

So the basics are these: cook your pasta to less than al dente.  Before it gets to that point, cook up your sauce ingredients, like oil and veggies, in a pan.  Remove the pasta from the water using something like a spider or a handled strainer and put it directly into the pan.  Add a splash or two of the pasta water, and finish the pasta off in the pan.  Right before serving, melt in your cheese.  And you're done.

The undercooked pasta absorbs the flavors of the sauce in the pan as you finish it off and the pasta starch in the water acts as a binding agent in the sauce, making it hold together and stick to the pasta.  The cheese is last because cooking cheese releases the aromatics that make it taste yummy, so you should add it last thing to keep the flavor bold.  So sayeth Lydia, goddess of day-time Italian food.

When I make my alfredo now, it starts as some butter and olive oil in the pan.  You fry up some onions first, then add tomato chunks (preferably peeled and gutted; look up riposte) and some salt and pepper; a fresh herb would be good too, Lydia used sage in her's.  Toss in pasta, through in some whole milk (or cream), a teaspoon or so of lemon juice, and let it cook a while below full frying temperature until you think the pasta is done.  Throw in some feta and parmesan, and stir well to mix.  And then its like heaven.

Last night I made it with broccoli; that was a good choice.  Thank you Lydia for your secrets.

Roller Coaster Salad

I put this up on Facebook the night I came up with it.  I wanted to make something weird and tasty that wasn't the usual green fiber-laced dish but was just as easy to make.  People seemed to like the sound of it.

Use a veggie peeler to turn one carrot into thin strips; you'll probably end up with a thick wedge from the middle, so slice that up for garnish. Chop the strips up a bit to get fork-size pieces. Dress with a teaspoon of cider vinegar, at most two tablespoons of olive oil, and dashes of pepper, ginger (I was using ground ginger), sugar, pepper, and cinnamon (very small dash). Marinate for 15 minutes, serve with crumbled feta.

It's a roller coaster salad because the flavor starts off vinegary and sweet, passes through the salty and musty/tangy feta, then finishes cheesy with a kick of spicy ginger.

For vegan or lactose intolerant folk, replace the feta and sugar with some avocado, salt, and kiwi (cut up into nifty shapes, of course).  It has not been tested, but it should yield a similar ride.

What to Expect and an All-purpose Meat Rub

I like to rant about the science of cooking, so it will end up in here.  I'll try to stick to recipes, with appropriate explanations of why the dish works and points you need to know to make sure it works.  I'll also try to cite where I got the info that inspired the dish if possible, though hot-links to those citations may take a while for me to get into.  Remember Cooking for Geeks and a few favorite cookbooks that deal in your style of food are must-haves, do not forgo getting yourself them.

Now, about that meat rub.

We concocted this brilliant dry rub mix at college, using my eclectic tastes in seasonings and some random experimentation.  It was designed for pork (since I think pork is generally pretty vile unless you cover up that sort of grimy off flavor it has), but it can work for just about any meat.  Haven't tried it on poultry yet.

You will need (with parts in parentheses):

• Garam Marsala (1) - The short of this mix, as I understand it, is "curry powder is what you get when the British mix Indian spices; garam marsala is what you get when Indians mix Indian spices."  It has a strong spiced flavor with a bit of a hot kick at the end.
• Fenugreek (4) - I don't remember how I came across this.  I think it was in the Atlantic Spice Company and I just nabbed some; it has since become an indispensable element in my curries.  Fenugreek has a sort of middle, mealy-savory flavor that I can't ever pin down.  It's good on meats, I know that.
• Garlic Powder (1) -  This is an all-purpose rub, so garlic powder is okay here.
• Smoked Paprika (1) - One of the more magical secret ingredients you should have in your arsenal; it tastes like, you guessed it, smoke.  And a hint of bell pepper, but mostly smoke.
• Thyme (1) - Usually I use thyme on poultry; it just seems to work well.  Thyme adds an herby light flavor.
• Oregano (1) - Pizza tastes like pizza because of oregano; other than that I'm sure you are familiar.
• Salt (1) - Duh.
• Pepper (1) - Double-duh.

That is from memory, mind you; I'm just about out and I have to scrounge up the recipe again soon.  It's a great thing to have around if you need an emergency meat seasoning.

A cool thing to note is that Thyme and Oregano both have the same aromatic chemical in them that gives them the bulk of their flavor (that's in Cooking for Geeks); it just so happens that Thyme is good on poultry and oregano goes pretty well on four-legged meats.  A pretty nifty accident of our messing around.

Let's try blogging about food...

Blogging about nothing in particular proved hard to keep up; maybe documenting my culinary escapades will be more motivational.

Cooking is a skill everyone should have in some form or another; it's an essential part of the basket of things a person should know so that they don't die, or in this modern age of processed and prepared foods, not get cancer or diabetes.  Seriously, don't eat fast food more than once a month at most, preferably once a year if you must, and if you are serious just don't bother.

Post #1 also has a reading list to go with it.  These are my go-to books at the moment:

• The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, aka, Fanny Farmer - I have a paper reprint of the original edition from 1896.  This is the essential American cook book: its basically about feeding hungry working people and families.  As one would expect given its provenance as a cook book, there is an entire chapter on potatoes.
• Larousse Gastronomique - If you have never heard of this book, think of it as 'The Gastronomicon'.  It is a one volume encyclopedia of cuisine, from a decidedly French, haute perspective.  I believe the original French work was published in the '30s; I happened upon a copy of the very first English edition from the '60s.  If you want to get at the heart of French cooking from a scholarly point of view, this thing is a great resource.  There are recipes, history lessons, technique, cooking heroes (Carême should be someone you know about), and write ups on a huge breadth of ingredients.  There are also aspics if you want to dive off the deep end into "WHY?"
• Cooking for Geeks - My most recent acquisition and by far the most useful handbook to have in your kitchen; thanks sis'.  It is published by O'Reilly, the same people who make the iconic programming books that are animal themed, and it is targeted at people who want something more than recipes.  This book lays out the basics of the chemistry and physics of making organic matter into delicious food; it tells you how food works, not just how to make it.

And that is the end of the reading list today.