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Chicken

Chicken stir-fried with Black Bean sauce

Jul 7th, 2010
by dave.
4 comments

Black Bean Chicken

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.

Pad Thai with Chicken and Shrimp

May 19th, 2010
by dave.
4 comments

Pad Thai 3

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.

Chicken Soup with Orzo

Apr 28th, 2010
by dave.
2 comments

Chicken Soup

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 =)

Chicken Saltimbocca

Mar 3rd, 2010
by dave.
1 comment

Chicken Saltimbocca

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.

Kung Pao Chicken

Feb 24th, 2010
by dave.
No comments yet

Kung Pao Chicken

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

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