Chicken Piccata is something I used to make a long time ago but for one reason or another, stopped in the past couple years. Never could figure out why. Maybe because it has butter and no mushrooms. That could be it.

I’ve been experimenting with some low-light photography as of late for the club at work. Our assignment the past week was “still life” and of course I abused my poetic license to interpret that more as “things that are still” as opposed to the more traditional sense (That and all the actual still life I shot sucked). I used the shot above and the one below as my examples. One tip I did pick up while doing the assignment was how to get some of the glare off of the food/chillies. The light source was in the upper left hand corner of the shot and was blowing out that section of the subject so I took a magazine (Car and Driver June 2011 in fact) and held it between the light source and the food. Worked wonders, no glare and didn’t really reduce the lighting that much.

Thai Chillies

And one more picture that didn’t make the cut. More or less because I didn’t focus it right and was too lazy to zoom in the lcd to check. Oh well, I’ll figure it out next time =)

Poker chips

I’ll probably be posting the assignments for our club here every now and then. It keeps me on my toes and forces me to experiment and learn new techniques. And the club is very helpful, suggesting different things I’d normally never consider but after thinking about it, make sense. And they encouraged me to buy a shutter-release, probably one of the most useful pieces of equipment that I picked up so far. All for 5 bucks too, can’t imagine why I never got one! I also picked up Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography books, so far I’ve nearly finished book 1 and a lot of what I’ve read so far has stuck with me since. Now to just find more opportunities to apply all the new techniques =P

As for the photos, one day I’ll get a couple more tablecloths. It’s getting boring isn’t it?

Anyway, onto the important stuff…the food!

Chicken Piccata

Time : 20 minutes
Serves : 4

Ingredients:
– 1 whole boneless chicken breast
– 2/3 cup flour, for dredging
– 4 tbsp butter
– 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
– salt and pepper to taste
– 2 lemons, juiced
– 1/2 cup chicken broth
– Couple tbsp heavy cream
– 1/4 cup capers, rinsed
– handful of fresh Italian parsley, chopped fine
– 1 lb pasta (linguine, spaghetti, fettucini)

Method:
1. Cut chicken breast into two halves, then slice lengthwise to create 4 total fillets. Use a meat tenderizer to pound into 1/3 inch pieces.
2. Season chicken with some salt and pepper and then dredge in flour.
3. In a large frying pan (large enough to hold all 4 fillets later on), heat 2 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp butter over medium heat. Add in two of the fillets and cook on each side for about 2 minutes. Remove cooked fillets, add 2 tbsp olive oil, and another tbsp of butter and cook the other fillets. When finished, set all the chicken aside.
4. Add in the lemon juice and chicken broth. Stir well, making sure to scrape up the tasty bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add in the capers and bring to a boil. Taste and adjust salt/pepper accordingly.
5. In a separate stock pot, bring several quarts of water to a boil and add in some salt. Cook pasta according to boxed directions until al dente (or whatever firmness you like).
6. Return the chicken to the frying pan and simmer for another 5 minutes, turning occasionally. Remove the chicken once again.
7. Add the last of the butter to the sauce along with the heavy cream. Stir well.
8. Plate the chicken with a helping of pasta, pour sauce over top and garnish with some chopped fresh Italian parsley.

So, as you might’ve noticed, it’s been roughly 6 months since I posted last. Due to work constraints, commitments, and hitting the 100 recipe mark (will update this later), I’ve been sticking to the familiar stuff through the last two seasons and I figured I’d be boring you all with posts of the same stuff over and over again.

Well, that was the fastest 6 months ever.

Now, I’m back (not really with a vengeance)! Currently in the middle of an Italian food kick (Don’t know why, but I feel like this weather is great for some Italian) so that’s what you’ll see over the next few posts (I think). It also could be I have a thing for anything with noodles. And sauce. Just flipping through the 50+ pages of different sauces in Marcella Hazan’s definitive cookbook had my drooling into a bowl. Literally.

So I decided to get off my (lazy) bum and cook some new stuff up. One quick trip to Russo’s later and I’m ready with ingredients fit for the next week (and 3 different sauces…I can’t wait!).

This time I made some fettucini alfredo, would you believe that I’ve never made it before? Normally, I’ve associated the dish with a soft pile of cheesy overcooked noodles with heaps of butter on top. Maybe just some horrible memories of leftovers one time but needless to say, it’s not a dish I normally would pick out of a menu. But Marcella to the rescue! Her version is decidedly less buttery and more savory…not to mention incredibly easy to make and a good compliment to a lot of Italian main courses.

And for a main course? Lemon parsley chicken. I’ve had this a couple times before, most notably by my friend’s mother years ago when I was in middle school (Hmm, that’s something like 15 years ago, eesh).

Anyway, here we go!

Both recipes are adapted from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Lemon Parsley Chicken

Serves 4
Time : 30 minutes

Ingredients:
– 1 tbsp canola oil
– 2 tbsp butter
– 1 whole chicken breast, halved, cut into 4 fillets (details below)
– Salt and pepper to taste
– 1 lemon
– 3 tbsp chopped parsley
– red pepper flakes (optional)

Method:
1. Prepping the chicken breast. Cut the whole chicken breast in half. Take each half, press firmly down onto the cutting board with your palm and carefully slice horizontally in half. You should end up with 4 chicken cutlets. Using parchment paper, pound each cutlet to about 1/4 inch thickness.
2. Add canola oil and 1.5 tbsp butter to a frying pan large enough to hold all of the cutlets. Turn to medium high.
3. After the butter melts, add the chicken cutlets. Cook about 30-45 seconds on each side and then remove. Sprinkle with a dash of salt and pepper.
4. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into the pan. Simmer briefly for about 30 seconds and scrape up any loose bits of chicken stuck to the pan.
5. Add the chopped parsley and the rest of the butter, stir vigorously to combine and turn the heat to low.
6. Add the chicken cutlets back to the pan.
7. Cook another few minutes on each side, making sure to turn the fillets over in the sauce 2-3 times to coat well then remove to a platter and serve.

Fettucini Alfredo

Serves 4
Time : 15 minutes

Ingredients
- 1 cup (8 fl oz) heavy cream
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 lb fettucini or other pasta
- 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Dash of nutmeg

Method
1. In a large saute pan, add 2/3 cup of heavy cream and the butter over medium heat. Cook about a minute until thickened. Turn off heat and remove
2. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. You’ll want slightly underdone pasta (it’ll finish in the saute pan) so make sure to taste the pasta as the timer gets close. Drain in a colander.
3. Add he pasta to the pan with the sauce, turn the heat to low and toss the pasta to thoroughly coat each noodle.
4. Add the rest of the cream, 3/4 cup of the parmesan cheese, the pinch of nutmeg. Add some salt and pepper gradually, tasting as you go.
5. Toss the pasta again to mix well, taste and add salt/pepper as necessary, then remove to a serving bowl with the rest of the parmesan cheese on the side.

It’s been a while. No, no, I haven’t slacked (maybe I have) but I just haven’t had a whole ton of new stuff to post about. Maybe I should expand and post about some other stuff. I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, one of the local establishments in Boston (Porter Square in Cambridge specifically), Cafe Mami, is pretty well known for serving home-style Japanese food. Their signature items are a couple variations of hambagu and their curry (my favorite is definitely the curry). I think for the last year or two I’ve been going, I’ve always gotten the same thing, Tatsuta Curry (Deep fried chicken in curry). Yum!

Tatsuta Curry – Cafe Mami

I always wondered what the magic was behind the deep fried chicken part. I mean, it can’t be THAT much, can it? Turns out it’s not! After perusing the net and digging through a couple cookbooks, I came up with something (The recipe at Just Hungry was the original inspiration that I worked with). Add in some cheese, an egg, some vegetables…and I found myself with a nice cozy hot/spicy dinner on a cold-ish rainy night. Now if I had a fireplace and football was on, that’s be awesome (football was on but no fireplace sadly…and I had to sit through the “game” that NBC showed – Green Bay beating Dallas down. Game was over in 8 minutes. Ew).

I used a boxed curry mix, the hot mix from S&B. I tried making a curry paste once and failed horribly (it was inedible) and I always thought the boxed curry tasted pretty good, so why not use it. Here’s a picture of it below:

The only thing I was skeptical about was the frying part. I don’t like frying. It’s messy, smelly, and generally unpleasant for the kitchen (Would rather buy the fried food elsewhere) but I figured I’d give this one a try. I used a deep saucepan to try to minimize the splashing and used just enough oil to cover the top of the chicken while it was frying, no more than that. And for cleaning up, for the love of what’s good, please let the oil cool down and then soak it up with paper towels, wrap in a plastic bag and toss in the garbage. Don’t pour that stuff down your drain.

Chicken Karaage Curry

Serves: 4
Time : 1 hour – 1 hour 30 minutes (depends how well you multi-task =P )

Karaage recipe originally adapted from Just Hungry

Ingredients:
- 8 chicken thighs, boneless, skinless, trimmed
- 1 box (700g) S&B Curry
- 2 carrots
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 6 cups water
- cornstarch for dredging
- eggs
- some mozzarella cheese (shredded or block is fine – I don’t like using fresh mozz)

Marinade:
- 1-2 inch piece of ginger, grated
- 4 tb light soy sauce
- 1.5 tb sake
- sprinkle of sugar
- dab of sesame oil

Method:
For the karaage:
1. Mix the chicken and marinade, set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Heat about 1/2 inch canola oil in a deep saucepan.
3. Lightly dredge chicken thighs in cornstarch.
4. Fry each piece until finished.

For the curry:
1. Add a little bit of oil to a saute pan.
2. Stir fry the onions and carrot until onions are lightly browned.
3. Add in the water, bring to a boil, and simmer until carrots cooked through.
4. Add in the curry mix, bring to a simmer again (If you have a bay leaf or two, feel free to toss them in)
5. When cooked to the right consistency, serve over warm rice.

Plating:
1. In a deep bowl, scoop some warm rice
2. Place some cheese along the top of the rice
3. Place a couple chicken karaage pieces on top of the cheese
4. Pour some piping hot curry over top.
5. Top with an egg, cooked however you like it.
6. Dig in!!!

I never really think about this kind of thing but cooking the dish above got me started. When I cook or dine out, I usually think about a cuisine’s common ingredients, like basil in Italian cooking or say cilantro in Hispanic cooking. I tend not to think about what isn’t used in a particular style until I see a recipe that seems a little unusual.

In this case, it’s butter. I know, butter! It’s something I use almost on a daily basis but I can’t really think of any other time I’ve used butter in cooking Chinese food. The closest I can think of is when I use a tiny pad to keep an egg from sticking to a pan.

I haven’t been cooking a whole lot of new stuff lately so I apologize that posts have been far and few in between. Now that I’ve built up a decent binder of recipes I like, I’ve been going back to them fairly often. Maybe I’ll post a few more cooking catchups just with updated pictures =)

Recipe adapted from hzrt8w of eGullet

Butter and Black Pepper Chicken

Time: 35-40 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
– 1 – 1.5 lb Chicken breast, cubed
– 1/8 – 1/4 stick butter
– 2 – 3 scallions, chopped
– 5 cloves garlic, minced
– 1 tsp sambal olek or other chili sauce
– salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
– 1/4 cup chicken broth
– 1 tsp sugar
– 1 tsp white vinegar
– 1/2 tsp corn starch + 1 tsp water

Marinade:
– 1 tsp sesame oil
– 1/2 tsp white pepper
– sprinkle of salt
– 1 tsp soy sauce
– 1 tsp ShaoHsing Rice Wine
– 1 tsp corn starch

Method:
1. Mix the marinade with the chicken and set aside for about 20 minutes.
2. Heat a frying pan over medium high heat. Swirl in some oil. Tip in the chicken and let cook undisturbed for about a minute. Then turn to cook the other side for another minute or so. Remove once about 3/4 cooked.
3. Add in the garlic and chili sauce. Cook until fragrant, then add in some salt, the white parts of the scallions and about a tsp of freshly ground black pepper. Dash in 1 tsp vinegar.
4. Add the chicken broth, 1 tsp sugar, and corn starch slurry. Stir in and cook for about 30 seconds.
5. Add chicken back in, stir well to coat the chicken.
6. Add the rest of the scallions, 1 tsp soy sauce, and more salt and black pepper to taste.

Short post today again, sorry! Just got back in yesterday from Santa Barbara (More on this next week! Vacation was a blast!) and I’m still trying to get life sorted out (Backed up work, a broken HVAC, and warping floorboards will do that to you).

But anyway, a few weeks back I ended up in a Japanese one-bowl/bento lunch kick and found a couple recipes on No Recipes that did the trick! And with a little bit of experimentation, they came out great! Mostly it was a few changes in the amount of spice in the dish and then trying to see what a little bit of dashi would do as well. Hopefully I didn’t ruin the authenticity of the dish too much!

Soboro don

Time: 15 minutes
Serves : 3 – 4

Recipe adapted from Marc at No Recipes

Ingredients:
- 1 lb ground chicken, dark meat
- 1/2 tsp ginger, grated
- 2 tsp sugar
- 3 tbsp mirin
- 3 scallions
- 2 eggs

- 1/2c dashi broth
- 4 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1/2 tb sugar
- 1 tsp gochujang chili paste

Method:
1. Add 1 tbsp canola oil to a frying pan over medium high heat. Add in the ginger and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add in the chicken and use a spatula to break apart the chunks.
2. When the chicken is just done, add in the mirin and sugar. Stir well to coat and then add in the dashi broth, soy sauce, sugar, and gochujang mix. Cook until the liquid is mostly gone.
3. Fill a bowl with hot rice, top with scallions and scoop in some chicken and sauce. Top with a fried egg and serve.

Short post this week. Had an incredibly busy July 4th weekend and I’m flying down to DC for a wedding this Saturday so time is a little short (serves me right for not scheduling posts). I do have a variety of posts to write up in the coming weeks though and I’m hoping things start to settle down again for a little while at least =)

Andrea Nguyen’s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen has been one of my favorite cookbooks for the past couple years and I’m a frequent visitor of her blog, Viet World Kitchen. She writes incredibly well and frequently posts about dishes she’s made recently, one of them being the inspiration for today’s post!

Chicken stir-fried with Black Bean sauce

Time: 20 minutes
Serves: 4

Adapted from Andrea Nguyen’s recipe at Viet World Kitchen

Ingredients:
– 1 to 1.5 lb chicken thighs, cubed
– 2 tbsp oil
– 1 tbsp fermented black beans, washed
– 2 tsp garlic
– 2 tsp ginger, grated
– 1 tsp dark soy sauce
– 1/3 cup Chicken Broth or water
– 1 medium red onion, sliced
– 1 tsp red pepper flakes
– 1 carrot, sliced thinly
– 1 – 2 scallions, chopped

Marinade:
– 2 tsp corn starch
– 1 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 1 tsp oil
– 2 tsp light soy sauce

Method:
1. Mix together the chicken and marinade. Marinate at least 10 minutes
2. Mash the black beans with a spoon, mix together with garlic, ginger, and dark soy sauce. In a separate bowl, mix the water/broth with the remaining 1 tbsp ShaoHsing rice wine
3. Heat a wok or frying pan under high heat. Add some oil in along with the red onion and red pepper flakes. Stir fry the onions briefly and then add the chicken. Spread the chicken out evenly throughout the pan and let cook undisturbed for a minute. After a minute, stir fry the chicken until just barely finished.
4. Add carrots and black bean sauce, stir fry a few moments, then add the broth mix and 1/4 tsp salt. After stir frying another minute or so, add the scallion in and stir fry another minute before serving.

Every once in a while, lightning strikes and I have one of those “Eureka!” moments. Sadly, I can’t say this involves a time machine or some incredibly super-duper scientific discovery like anti-matter or anything. I mean, anti-matter would be awesome wouldn’t it? Then there could be stuff like this! (facepalm)

This epiphany, if you will, involves food (of course it does).

Pad Thai’s been one of those dishes I could NEVER get right. After a dozen failures (miserable at that, they were all barely edible), I stumbled on an old post on Use Real Butter which opened my eyes. And after consulting a link at Chez Pim, I knew I was set. Not an hour later (I immediately ran off to the store and had to cook this), I had a nice steaming plate of noodles and devoured it without hesitation. The first portion was only ok, the next was much better (the secret is in the sauce!) and within two weeks, I probably cooked it 4 times.

What was wrong with what I was doing before? Turns out one of the most important techniques is incredibly simple. Cook small portions at a time, preferably individual servings if you can! Why? It’s easier to manipulate everything as a whole and being able to move ingredients around the pan/wok really helps when trying to mix things together and also when cracking in the egg. That, and with the dish taking 2-3 minutes of actual cooking time, you can still churn servings out at a good clip.

A word of caution though, this is by no means healthy food. I had to use a lot of oil to avoid too much sticking and that may be a little excessive but it does get the job done.

Recipe adapted from Use Real Butter and Chez Pim.

Pad Thai w/ Chicken and Shrimp

Serves 4
Time : 45 minutes (mostly prep time)

Ingredients:
– 1 lb rice noodles, just undercooked per packaging directions
– 1/2 – 3/4 lb chicken breast, thinly sliced
– 12 medium shrimp (maybe 1/2 lb at the most), peeled deveined (tails ok)
– 4 cloves garlic, minced
– 1 – 2 tbsp salted turnips, minced
– 2 tbsp chives, chopped
– Generous handful of bean sprouts
– 2 – 3 oz firm pressed tofu, sliced
– 4 eggs
– 1 lime, wedged
– Handful of crushed peanuts

Sauce:
– 1/2 cup Tamarind paste
– 1/2 cup Fish sauce
– 1/3 cup Brown Sugar
– 1 tbsp+ Chili Powder

Method:
Prepare EVERYTHING beforehand. Have everything within an arm-length of the stove, pad thai is cooked quickly and you don’t want to waste precious seconds fumbling around for things. Separate the noodles into 4 portions (this is key since the noodles stick together and again, you don’t want to waste time pulling the noodles apart!)
1. Combine the sauce together in a small saucepan over low heat.
2. Fill a medium saucepan with water (could be the water you cooked the noodles in) and leave simmering on the side. You’ll be using this to quickly dunk the noodles before adding them to the frying pan (If the noodles are piping hot when you start cooking you may not need to do this.
3. Heat a frying/pan over high heat with enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan.
4. Add a quarter-portion of sliced chicken (2-3oz) and a portion of the shrimp (4 shrimp). Let it cook undisturbed for about 15-20 seconds, then turn and cook another 15-20 seconds.
5. Add 1-2 tbsp of the sauce and a portion of garlic, quickly stir everything together.
6. Dunk a portion of the rice noodles in water, drain and add to the frying pan along with 1/4 cup of the sauce. Mix well to combine.
7. Push the noodles to one end of the pan and crack 1 egg on the other side. Let the egg cook for 10 seconds undisturbed and then use the spatula to break it apart and mix with the noodles.
8. Add a portion of salted turnip, tofu, bean sprouts, and chives in. Stir and toss for another 30 seconds to a minute and plate immediately.
9. Serve with lime wedges, crushed peanuts, and extra chili powder.

NOTE : If done right, you should not need to scrub the pan between portions. Took me a couple tries to get this down.

Currently trying to wean myself off the incredibly addictive Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. Growing up with classical music and show-tunes made this just that much better. It’s incredibly witty, stars Nathan Fillion (Probably best known for Firefly), one of my favorite sadly-canceled-to-early tv-shows) AND Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser). I’ve had a couple of the tunes stuck in my head for days and I don’t think that’ll change anytime soon (Wonder if I can drive the roommate nuts)

Whole chicken was on sale a while back so as is with a lot of the meat I buy (Probably have at least 15 pounds of various meats in the freezer), I bought it without figuring out what to do with it first. I was thinking along the lines of soy sauce chicken or just a roasted chicken, but just getting over being sick (Had some sort of stomach bug where I couldn’t eat anything, lost 5 pounds in 3 days…not good!) I decided on some chicken soup. Enter the Internet, once again and Ree from The Pioneer Woman. A couple days before (while I couldn’t eat, which was FANTASTIC I tell you), this post came up…and made my mouth water (and my stomach churn). But that didn’t stop me from thinking about it a bunch…

So one “mistake” I made was not thinking about how many people the soup would feed. I think I had a 3.5 lb chicken which, when it was all said and done, made AT LEAST 6 quarts of soup. And this was after I had 2 bowls. So maybe 7 quarts!!! That’s my motto: If you’re going to do anything, make sure you do it in excess.

Recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Chicken Soup with Orzo

Time : 90 minutes – 2 hours
Serves : A lot

Ingredients:
– 1 whole chicken, quartered
– 1 lb box of Orzo pasta
– 1 medium onion, chopped
– 2-3 carrots, diced
– 2-3 stalks celery, diced
– 2 – 3 tsp salt
– 1 – 1.5 tbsp parsley flakes
– a pinch of dried thyme
– 3 – 4 tbsp flour mixed with 2 – 3 tbsp water
– 1/2 tsp Turmeric
– Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method:
1. Put the quartered chicken in a stockpot and cover it such that the chicken is 1/2 – 1 inch below the surface. Simmer for about 30 minutes.
2. Take the chicken out of the pot and shred the chicken (by hand or with utensils), set aside. Return the bones to the pot and simmer for another 30-45 minutes.
3. Remove the bones from the broth. Watch out for the small bones that may have fallen off while simmering!
4. Add the onions, celery, and carrots followed by all of the herbs and spices. Stir occasionally for about 10 minutes.
5. In a large saucepan or stock pot, boil water (with a healthy drizzle of salt) to cook the pasta. Cook the pasta until just underdone, you want the pasta to have a little crunch to it, it’ll cook the rest of the way in the soup.
6. Add the pasta and chicken back to the soup, stirring frequently for about 5-10 more minutes.
7. Add the flour/water mixture to the soup to thicken it up a little bit.
8. Adjust flavors as necessary. I like my soup a little saltier so I added a little bit more salt (Can also use some chicken base)

NOTE: Since you’re making a LOT of soup here, you can withhold some of the pasta so that it doesn’t get saturated and soggy after being stored. Just prep the pasta again while heating up the soup and then stir it in =)

Have you ever had a favorite dish at a restaurant you’d order almost every time without hesitation? So tasty that you think about it in the minutes beforehand, ready to ferociously dig in? Savoring every bite then wishing there was more? Well, for me, one of those dishes is chicken saltimbocca, chicken with sage and prosciutto in a white wine sauce. This is one of my Italian favorites, I’ve ordered it at almost all of the local Italian places I’ve been to (except some of the fancier ones that don’t have it on the menu. I guess it’s a little low-class for them)

But the funny thing is, I must have had this dish at least a dozen times over the last year or so and it never really occurred to me that I could try to make it myself. Maybe I could blame my laziness, the intimidation of Italian cooking, or even that I’m loathe to open up a new bottle of wine every time I cook (since I don’t cook every night) but no, I can’t even make an excuse for it. I just…well it didn’t even cross my mind until a couple weeks back.

I’m not really sure how it actually came to mind (could be that I ordered a new cookbook, more details on this when I actually cook something from it) but off I was, scouring the Internet for recipes. There were a ton of recipes to be found, some I liked…and of course some not so much.

Anyway, the recipe posted below is a compilation of several I found on the net along with a few additions of my own.

Chicken Saltimbocca

Time : 35-45 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
– 4 Boneless chicken cutlets (4-6 oz each)
– 8 thin slices of prosciutto
– 8 fresh sage leaves (plus more for garnish)
– 4 slices fontina or mozzarella
– 1/2 cup flour
– 2 tbsp butter
– 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
– 1 shallot, minced
– 4 cloves garlic, minced
– 1/2 – 3/4 cup dry white wine
– 1/2 cup chicken broth

Method:
1. Sprinkle each chicken cutlet with salt and pepper. Pound flat, roughly a quarter of an inch. Lightly dredge the chicken cutlets in the flour
2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp butter in a large frying pan. When the butter melts, place the chicken in the pan. Cook 3-4 minutes then flip over. Place 2 sage leaves and 2 slices of prosciutto on each cutlet. Place a slice of cheese on each cutlet and cook, covered, for another 3-4 minutes. Remove cutlets to a platter and cover.
3. Add shallots and garlic to the hot pan with 1 tbsp olive oil, let sit for about 10-15 seconds.
4. Add wine to the hot pan (watch for the smoke!) and use a wooden spoon to scrape all the brown bits from the pan. Reduce the wine to about half, then add the chicken broth. Reduce again, then remove from heat and add the remaining 1 tbsp butter.
5. Taste the sauce and adjust accordingly with some salt and fresh pepper. Pour the sauce over the cutlets and serve.

Chinese food never ceases to surprise me, I never get tired of it. Obvious bias aside, there’s so many different regions (probably from the vastness of the country) and so many types of cuisines that are so drastically different from each other that it’s hard to become jaded with the food. I’ve primarily stuck to Cantonese food but I’m trying to branch out into more of the Northern Chinese style food.

One particular style I’ve been reading a ton about is Szechuan cuisine. There’s a couple Szechuan restaurants around Boston (Sichuan Gourmet and Sichuan Garden) that I really like but I’d never even tried to make some of the food that they offer. One dish in particular that I’d love to try sometime is lightly fried fish fillets in a nice spicy/oily sauce.

So which brings me to today. I recently picked up a copy of Fuschia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty, considered to be one of the top cookbooks in Szechuan cuisine. While light on pictures (I think picture based cookbooks are the most appealing. Not only do you get to have a reference as to how the food should look, you can figure out if it looks tasty enough to try out in the first place!), she provides very descriptive notes on the history of many dishes as well as her own personal background on said dishes.

Typically, Szechuan food tends to be a bit on the oily side, which is one reason I never really thought about trying to cook it often. But reading through the book, one of the big points mentioned is that for the dishes that use a lot of oil, chillies, and whole peppercorns, diners typically use chopsticks only with the dish, grabbing the pieces of food and shaking off the excess oil. For those dishes, the sauce (read: oil) typically isn’t spooned over one’s rice. But here’s the problem…I love sauce and I hate wasting something that I went through the trouble of making. But I figured I should try it anyway.

Kung Pao Chicken

Time : 1 hour
Serves 4 w/ rice and side vegetable

Ingredients:
- 2/3 – 1 lb boneless chicken breast
- 4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
- 1 inch piece of ginger, sliced thin
- 5 scallions, chopped
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 12 – 15 Dried chili peppers, seeds removed
- 1 tsp roasted ground sichuan pepper
- 2/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts

Marinade:
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine
- 1/2 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tsp corn starch
- 1 tbsp water

Sauce:
- 3 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp corn starch
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 3 tsp Chinkiang vinegar or balsamic vinegar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp water

Method:
1. Cube the chicken and mix marinade. Marinate chicken while preparing other ingredients.
2. Combine sauce ingredients.
3. Heat a frying pan over high heat. Add 2 tbsp oil. Add chillies and stir fry briefly until fragrant.
4. Add chicken and stir fry. When lightly browned, add ginger, garlic, and the scallions. Stir fry until the chicken is cooked through.
5. Add the sauce and sichuan pepper. Stir until sauce thickens. Add peanuts, toss briefly, then serve.

Notes : Adapted from Fuschia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty