November to December is Chicken (Breast) Month

Finally and for a limited time only, the chicken breasts at Ralph’s is $2 per pound again. Oh, how I have waited for this glorious day!

About $30's worth of chicken breasts... plus Justin's TV dinners

As a certain idiot I know is fond of saying, “Oh! You are definitely the Chicken Monster!”

Since I have all of this lovely breast at my disposal now, I am declaring the time from now until I go on Winter Break National Chicken (Breast) Month. I’ve had this idea to do themed months for a while now. Basically, I’ll pick one ingredient, or form of food (such as sammeches), as the theme, and for one month I will play out all its variations. During this month I will make, amongst other things, Chicken Marsala, Chicken Kiev, Chicken Parmasan, Chicken Cutlet Curry… You get the idea.

I play with the ingredients I have, so today, I made this… I guess if it had a name it would be something like Tea Fried Chicken… with Mushroom. This is something I noticed on my trip to the motherland, that they would use tea in their dishes as herbs, like we would use basil. I tried looking up the recipe online, but couldn’t find it. All the tea chicken recipes I found would use tea, the beverage, for the sauce. The dish I had in mind is very dry, and uses the tea leaves as herb.

So, I winged it (I have got to remember this one for National Wing Month). It was kind of scary going solo, but it worked out okay, I think.

Ingredients: chicken, oil for frying, (green) tea leaves, and mushroom

These are apparently mushrooms that grow on tea trees? I am not sure.

Rinse & soak in warm water. I think I should have cut the mushrooms in half; they’re kind of long.

Cut the chicken into bite size cubes, dry, and rub with some salt. Fry.

When chicken is done, add–dried chili, tea leaves, and I used a bit of garlic. I have long learned that if you put the spices in first, they will get burnt because it takes so much longer to cook the meat. So what I do is fry the meat spiceless until it’s basically done, then push the meat to the side of the wok so that the bottom can heat up to sufficient frying temperature, then add the spices. Or you can take the meat out if you’re making a sauce.

Add mushroom and sauces (I used a dash of soy sauce–chicken broth might also be good, or the water from soaking the mushroom); salt again.

Moneyshot

Scallops with Bacon & Kale

(Click for large.)

I finally got some time last night to cook, after a busy (but lucrative) week. I decide to do something out of

(Thanks, Plebbie! XD)

Usually when I buy bacon it’s whatever brand is on sale at Ralph’s, but this time I decided to splurge on Whole Foods bacon (because that’s where I went to get the scallops). This is like, double the usual price of bacon!

That is… about 30$ of scallops… Bacon (obviously–very important), coconut milk (optional), black sesame, sesame oil, chicken stock, yellow pepper (forgot to picture the onion), kale, cilantro, and ginger.

I departed from the recipe in several ways. The recipe doesn’t call for marinating the scallops, but I did it anyway. Usually I do it with cornstarch and olive oil, but the recipe wants me to fry the bacon with some sesame oil. I figured that would be too much oil, so I marinated with the sesame oil and just fried the bacon by itself.

Having never worked with kale before, I actually had to look up how you’re supposed to cut it. I’m pretty sure this part I did right (removing the stems) but after that, I couldn’t figure out what “crosswise” meant (just use longitudinal and transversal, people!), so I just said whatever and rolled everything up.

I also added some garlic even though the recipe doesn’t call for it, because what doesn’t taste more delicious with more garlic?

The recipe calls for frying the bacon and searing the scallops in a wok, but that would have made for terrible clean up as everything would have stuck to the wok, so I just fried with my non-stick pan. Which, actually, I think the non-stick coating has mostly come off…

I also think the directions call for searing the scallops with the bacon. However, the bacon need to be stirred to prevent charring/burning, whereas the scallops need to just sit there and be seared, so I just took the bacon out. There is also not enough room for everything, a dozen jumbo sized scallops barely fits on this… well I guess it’s a medium sized skillet.

After some time. Mmm, delicious seared scallops!

At this point I poured the bacon grease into the wok and fried the vegetables. Unfortunately, this… hurts. But then, genius struck. I am designating this glove as my special frying glove. You have no idea, being able to stir without being attacked by flying bits of burning oil is an amazing feeling.

Add back the bacon. (The technical term is return… The more you know!) Then I pushed everything to the side and let the bottom of the wok heat up so that i can fry the ginger+garlic for a bit (not pictured).

Add the wet (soy sauce, chicken stock). Interestingly, my coconut milk is solid from being in the fridge… It looks like sour cream or something from the picture.

After that I had no more time to take pictures. Return the scallops, add the kale, then at the end add the cilantro, and sprinkle some sesame seeds on there.

More porn:

Protip: if you’re going to fry in bacon grease, there is no need to add salt.

Shrimp… with Cluuuub Tomato Sauce

终於又开始烧菜了YEAH!

I had shrimp, and I had a can of tomatos, so… Shrimp with Tomato Sauce it is. I was missing some of the ingredients (and forgot to add sugar…), but this came out pretty well anyway.

I was lamenting my lack of ginger and chili bean paste. But then I remembered I had a chili. Why do I have a chili? It went something like this.

At Ralph’s.
Justin: Oh man! Whadaheck! What is this “yellow chili”! That’s crazy! This chili is all yellow!
Me: I’m gonna get one.
Justin: Yeah, do it. Yeah, fuck you.

I cut off a small piece to taste. It wasn’t spicy at all. Then I ate one seed. It attempted to be spicy but is too much of a pansy. Like Justin.

Fry aromatics.

Reduce the sauce.

Fry the shrimp.

Add the shrimp back to the sauce, garnish with green onions (busting out the fancy place), and…

I wasn’t sure if this was going to be delicious. But then I sat down and took a bite and thought to myself, man, why am I so awesome. Mmm mmm mmm.

Seared Tuna with Avocado

Hey, I have a question for you.

Am I awesome, or am I really awesome? Because I’m having trouble decide. XD

Unfortunately I am not as awesome a photographer as I am awesome in general. Apparently this is the best picture I can get.

I was going to do yesterday, but I started grilling late in the afternoon and did not have the appetite for a second meal. So, I kept my tuna on ice overnight, like so. At $23/pound (it has to be sushi grade) I wasn’t going to take any chances.

The ingredients: Olive oil, sesame oil, salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, cilantro, garlic, Jalapeno, ginger, lime. Oh, and my beautiful Tuna, of course. <3 The recipe doesn’t actually call for vinegar, but it does call for a full lime, and I only had half left. (I forgot the avocado in this picture.)

Mix, mix!

Mix, mix!

The recipe wants you to just salt & pepper the fish and sear it like that. I figured it would be good to toss in the sauce, so I did. What the hell do I know, though. I also cut my block in half (2 5oz pieces).

It sears! I seared for probably less than a minute per side. It is easy to tell when you should stop, since you can see on the side how much of it has been cooked. It’s like a progress bar, really. The aim is to just sear the surface, while leaving the middle raw. If you don’t have sushi grade fish then you should probably cook it all the way through. After it was about done I tossed the sauce in there.

If you’re awesome like me, you can take out the flesh of an avocado from the skin in one piece.

Then slice it up and plate! This is actually really simple. Takes maybe half an hour to do. The only difficult thing about this recipe is being able to afford sushi grade fish, haha.

Welp, it was really good, but the soy sauce was a bit overpowering. Must remember 3T is too much next time.

Tea Eggs

Looks like marble.

Anise is the least common ingredient in making tea eggs, so since I have it, I decided to make some.

But, I do not drink tea! Not to worry, I managed to swipe some from the weekly departmental tea last week.

I ended up using all those teabags except for the Lemon flavored one. Lemon has no place in tea eggs >=(

I bought 18 eggs from Ralph’s, but could only fit 14 in the pot. Add unknown amounts of soy sauce, salt, sugar, honey, ginger, and anise. Some recipes will tell you to boil the egg first, then simmer in the sauce. But, the lazy man’s approach is to just boil it in the sauce.

I made a huge mistake: I let the string of the tea bags dangle over the side of the pot. The thing that you’re supposed to hold on to is made of paper, and the heat of the metal in the pot was enough to set it aflame. I did not know it got that hot!

I made a second huge mistake: then the burnt parts fell into the pot.

Then, after the eggs are cooked (be sure of this), hit them repeatedly with something blunt, such as your intellect, so as the break the shell.

I was hoping these would last me a while, but… they are just so morey!

Scallops & Snow Peas

Whirl!

One pound of scallops. Doesn’t look like very much, does it?

They are sliced and marinaded in salt, olive oil, and corn starch. Looks like chicken… For truly, scallops are the chicken of the sea. Actually, I think we decided that oysters were the chicken of the sea. Because chicken is wont to carry all kinds of diseases if not cooked thoroughly. Oysters, too, when consumed raw, can make for some fun trips to the ER. That’s why they’re worth paying $1.5 a pop for at Sushi Mura.

They are fried like there is no tomorrow. Unfortunately, this part, like the frying part in the Kung Pao chicken episode, hurts. I dried the scallops before marinading but… still popping all over the place.

The snow peas are also fried, with garlic and ginger. But they are not fried like there is no tomorrow; they are fried like they will wilt and lose texture if left in the wok too long.

I was supposed to used chicken broth for the sauce. But, I prematurely did my shopping before I looked at the recipe, so I mixed my usual Asian sauce. Fish sauce + cooking wine + soy sauce + sugar + corn starch + love.

Aerial moneyshot:

What do you know, it’s pretty good!

More Noodles ’n Shit Redux

Soba is pretty awesome.

(I had to go into MS Word to make the apostrophe slant the right way.)

For the broth: shiitake, garlic, ginger, sugar, and soy sauce. Although the recipe doesn’t call for it, I added some anise because I figured it would go well with that blend of seasoning. Trust me on this. I’m Asian; I have a sense for these things.

I was skeptical about a broth based on soy sauce, but this smells pretty good. Actually, this is the exact same blend of seasoning I used for the meat, minus the wine.

Meanwhile: more pressed tofu. This is a different brand than the one that’s been featured in previous entries. It’s got these air bubbles inside; I’m not sure whether they’re an artifact of the manufacturing process particular to this brand or of the fact that I froze them. Anyway, slice. i thought about lightly frying it, but decided to be lazy and just threw it in the broth for a couple minutes. It just needs to be hot; pressed tofu is cooked already.

Zen plate! Not pictured in the process: I found some dry seaweed in my cupboard, which I hydrated and tucked under the shiitake. Throw some green onion over it, and done.

Final moneyshot:

I’m not sure if the sesame seeds are a good touch. It’s a distracting. Almost too garish. The version without is simpler. On the other hand, it’s also a little boring.

Bonus: leftovers

(I figured out how to get a crisp image: you have to pull the camera back a little so it can focus, and zoom in.)

George Likes His Chicken Spicy

Kung Pao chicken is one of the fobbiest dishes out there. I mean that’s probably what you think of when you think Chinese food, along with, I don’t know, Orange chicken or something. I’m not sure how authentic it is. Would it be more correct to say it’s an American invention? I do not know! I am not familiar with the history of KPC. For all I know it’s had a long and celebrated history in the fobland. But I do know that I like Kung Pao chicken. So I decided to make it.

Ingredients: cooking wine, sesame oil, soy sauce, peppers, peanuts, chicken, green onion, garlic, and ginger. This is a really simple dish to make.

Cut chicken into bite size (well, or the same order of magnitude) and marinade in a mixture of–I used 2T soy sauce, 2T wine, 1T sesame oil, and 1T corn starch. Oh, I forgot to include it in the picture.

Half an hour later, we are ready to rock ‘n roll. No, that’s not how long it takes to chop up then garlic and ginger and green onion; that’s how long it takes for the marinade to do its thing. This is my whole mise en place! See, I told you this was simple.

I first fry the chicken in the nonstick pan, because… I don’t want it sticking to the wok. Because of the marinade, this part… hurt. It was popping all over the place. I mean, it’s not like it can do all that much damage, because the droplets that jump up aren’t that big, but it still stings. I need a bigger thing to stir with.

All done. That is a sexy brown!

Then, fry up the chilli, followed by garlic and ginger. I thought the kind of chilli they used for, well, these kinds of dishes were longer, but you know, there was a recipe for Kung Pao chicken on the back of the package, so I figure it must be right. I used only 6 things of chilli, which turned out to be not that spicy. Very mild. You wouldn’t have thought that from how they smelled as they were being fried, though. I got a runny nose from this.

After that you’re suppose to add the peanuts and let them roast for a while, but… I forgot. This part went by very fast, that’s why I only had time to grad a picture after I added the sauce. Then I added the peanuts.

Return the chicken, let the sauce thicken for a bit. After I turned off the heat, I mixed in the green onions.

Final moneyshot. I think this was supposed to be 2 servings, but I “accidentally” dumped all the food onto the plate. “Whoops.”

Epilogue:
As I was cleaning up, I spied a largeish spider hanging from the ceiling (from the light, in fact), mere feet away from my head! Upon this discovery I said in calm and reassuring manner, “Jesus fucking christ!” and then threw wads of paper towel at it in a pathetic display of poor hand-eye co-ordination.

More Noodles ’n Shit

More specifically, Soba ‘n Shit.

Soba (noodles made from buckwheat). What exactly is buckwheat? I assume it’s like wheat, except more buck.

It already comes sorted into serving size bundles, with a wrap ‘n everything.

These noodles know how to boil like it’s nobody’s business.

It’s done and then it’s ready to be plated (bowled?).

MEANWHILE!

The last time I made this, I boiled the shrimp and it ended up all curled up. I thought about how to rectify this situation. Well, I could cook it with the shell on, but then I’d have to deal with the shell as I ate. Then I thought about putting them on toothpicks and boiling them that way, to straighten them out, but I don’t have any toothpicks. I do, however, have these grilling skewers. I was going to put each shrimp on only one skewer, but I think this arrangement is superior. It saves more space, because in a single skewer arrangement, the shrimp is more aligned in the direction of the skewer and so takes up more space, but here it is orthogonal. And it makes them straighter.

Of course, I wouldn’t be able to boil them this way, because the skewers are too big to fit inside the pot. So I decided to bake them. (Faster than setting up the grill).

I didn’t know how long or how high, so I just set it to 350 and checked every once in a while until it looked all pink and done.

I was a little worried about overcooking it, but hindsight has revealed that, after I thought it was done, I should have probably left it in there for another while, because when I was eating it it turned out a little undercooked in some parts. Well, I looked up what I could get sick from eating raw seafood, and, basically, I think, if I don’t have a fever or vomit in the next 2 days, I’ll probably be fine.

(Digression: I’ve been a little paranoid lately, because my apartmentmate is away, that if something happened to me I wouldn’t be found until several days after my death. On the other hand, even when he is here, if something happened to me I probably wouldn’t be found until it was too late too, because it’s not like he comes into my room every few hours to check up.)

Hindsight has also revealed that I should have oiled the skewers beforehand.

ALSO MEANWHILE!

Usually I just drop the egg into the soup as I cook it, but this is different, since I’m cooking all the ingredients separately and assembling them at the end. If I just dropped the egg into the soup in the bowl, there wouldn’t be enough heat to cook it (as hindsight has also revealed…).

FURTHERMORE!

It’s only spinach.

Cut.

CONCORDEDLY!

I blew my entire shiitake wad on the meat last time, so I had to move to the dry stuff.

VIS A VIS! Oh wait, no, we’re done now. Parting moneyshot (closeup):

Heh, it’s backwards. The far things are in focus and the close things are not. What can I say, I am as terrible a photographer as I am a cook :shobon:

MEAT!

I made meat the other day, because who doesn’t love meat.

More specifically, pork ribs.

I also made coconut rice. I didn’t include a picture of the rice because it looks just like regular rice. Except, you know, it tastes like coconut. Probably because of all that coconut milk I put in there. Yup, that’s right, the whole can.

The seasoning consists of soy sauce, cooking wine,

fermented black beans, garlic (whole), aaaaaannnnnnd

these babies: anise seeds. I ended up using 3 whole things of garlic (all I had on hand), because I can always get more garlic, but I’m probably not making meat again for a while (by meat I mean pork or beef (or lamb or horse, etc), chicken is chicken). It’s really not used as seasoning, I just like to eat garlic when it’s been cooked like this, as whole cloves. Since it’s not chopped up or crushed, it’s very mellow.

It all simmers. Very slow. More than an hour.

Also added these. Fried tofu (cut in half). It’s all spongy inside on account of having been fried. Perfect for soaking up all the delicious sauce.