Orange Chicken

Last night I waltzed into the kitchen with the idea that I was just going to whip up a quick veggie stir fry, rice, and orange chicken. While the techniques are simple, it's not exactly what I'd call a "quick dinner" in the end...

First I put some brown rice on to cook while I did everything else (1 cup rice : 2 cups water/stock).

Then I started working on the chicken. I had two chicken breasts that were left over from roast chicken dinner the night before, so I just cut these into bite-sized chunks and then breaded them using a modified Standard Breading Procedure:

1. Coat with flour, shake off excess.

2. Coat with egg (3-4 eggs), allow excess to drain off.

3. Coat with corn starch.

I also add salt an pepper to the flour and cornstarch before using it to coat the chicken. While I breaded the chicken, I had a pot of canola oil warming up on the stove, so that as soon as my chicken bits were breaded, I could immediately fry them in the oil.

When the chicken was just barely beginning to brown, I pulled them out of the oil and placed them on a paper-towel-covered-plate to soak up any excess oil. The fried chicken sat in a warm oven while I made the sauce.

Orange Sauce

1 cup Water

1 Lemon, juiced

1 Orange, juiced and zested

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/3 cup Rice Vinegar

3 Tbsp Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce)

Sprinkle Cayenne

............

3 Tbsp Corn Starch + 3 Tbsp Water

Bring everything above the dotted line to a boil. Dissolve the corn starch in the 3 Tbsp water. When the water-juice-sugar-etc. is at a rolling boil, add the corn starch solution while stirring. Continue to stir over heat until thickened (this should happen fairly quickly). Garlic and/or ginger would also be awesome in this sauce.

When the sauce is thick, pour it over the fried chicken to coat them.

Then I put the chicken back in the warm oven while I whipped up a few sauteed veggies...

Reference: Chinese Orange Chicken

Wandering Goose

My buddy Trevor and I were determined to eat breakfast, brunch, lunch, and 2nd-lunch today. However we ended up having breakfast at Wandering Goose, followed by a long walk around Capitol Hill in which we discovered most restaurants were closed, so we ended up back at Wandering Goose for lunch. This is definitely my new favorite restaurant in Seattle! Utterly perfect buttermilk biscuits filled with anything from jam to cheese and an over easy egg to kale, andouille, and a duck egg. Or my new favorite biscuit: the sawmill contains fried chicken, sage gravy, and aged cheddar. Delicious!

** Sent from my hand-held super-computer!

Love Soup

Several months ago I heard a friend of mine had caught a nasty cold, so set out on a mission of creating the most healing soup I possibly could. This is something I do for my friends every once in a while, and making soup for people always gives me the satisfying feeling that I'm some sort of good witch brewing up healing potions.

I started by making pasta.  This is where that magic ingredient of "love" comes in. I kneaded a lot of love into that dough!  Also, I find freshly made pasta is just generally a special treat.

Fresh made pasta is a simple ratio:

1lb. All Purpose Flour

4 Eggs

1oz. Water

1oz.Vegetable Oil

These ingredients are combined all at once and kneaded for at least a couple minutes either by hand or in a mixer. I usually eye-ball the amount of water and oil, I probably actually use more than 1oz. of water because it's much easier to add flour to a moist dough, then it is to add water to a dry dough later on. Anyway, making pasta honestly just takes practice to know what good pasta dough should feel like.  It should be neither sticky nor dry and it should have a tough elastic quality to it. After the initial knead, the dough must rest for at least an hour, preferably two, or overnight in the fridge. Then you can start rolling it out.  You can simply use a rolling pin (or a wine bottle!) and a knife to make noodles, but I have a manual pasta machine, so that's how I make my noodles.

To make the soup, I sauteed onions, leeks, carrots, fresh-frozen ginger, and garlic (I used a lot of ginger and garlic - for good health!). Then I added duck stock made from Stokesberry Farms magical ducks and let it simmer with a cinnamon stick and some dried chanterelle mushrooms. Meanwhile I roasted a chicken. When the soup was done, I added the fresh pasta since it only needs a minute to cook and will continue to absorb moisture as long as it's in the soup.  I finished the soup with pieces of roasted chicken, pesto, salt, and pepper.

Yay healing soup of love!

Curry and Spice

I am no where near mastering the art of curry. But I keep working at it, and here is my latest and best attempt yet. I think my biggest problem is a totally irrational fear of using too many spices, possibly because I hate over-spiced foods more than I hate under-spiced foods... So I'm trying to find my spice-balance. Here's how last night's curry began:

Spices in a saute pan: Cinnamon, Coriander, Tumeric, Paprika, Clove, Cardamom, Cumin, and Star Anise. (Note to self: buy some Fenugreek!)

I put this pan of spices over high heat and kept the spices constantly moving to toast them and to release their oils without burning them. This happens fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, I was cooking Blue Bird Grain Farms rice pilaf with lots of saffron and an "Iranian rice herb" mixture. In another pan I seared chicken legs in bacon grease until they were good and brown (dreaming of a tandoori oven). I used onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, and peppers to deglaze the pan as they cooked and released their moisture. When the veggies began to caramelize I added chicken stock and the toasted spices and let the whole thing simmer until the sauce was thick. It turned out to be pretty delicious and my under-spicing aloud the flavor of Stokesberry's incredible chicken to come through.

It's Pot Pie Time!

I've been craving pot pie lately. Not just craving to eat pot pie, but craving to make pot pie, which is exactly what happened today. I haven't made pie dough in a while, but I followed the golden ratio of 3:2:1 (flour:butter:water). I used my infallible method for cutting butter into flour by small-dicing frozen unsalted butter, adding it to the flour, and systematically squishing each tiny frozen butter cube between my fingers. By starting out with frozen butter, it keeps everything cold enough that the butter doesn't melt and squishing it between your fingers is oh-so-satisfying! Anyway, once I was was done squishing, I put the flour-butter mixture in the fridge while I made the filling with onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, parsnips, cremini mushrooms, green beans, and diced chicken breast. I used my rosemary beer to deglaze the pan, made a quick roux, and added some chicken stock to make it saucy with berbere, cinnamon, paprika, and black pepper.

Side note on my rosemary beer: I wanted to make a beer that tasted like gin, specifically Voyager Gin from Pacific Distilleries. I used some of the lightest malts possible for the mash. The boil contained 5 ounces of hops (Warrior, Mt. Hood, and Tettnang) in addition to rosemary, artemisia, cinnamon sticks, juniper berries, ground cardamom, whole cloves, caraway seeds, and dried thyme. Though I added so much rosemary you can hardly taste the hops...thus it is rosemary beer. It's excellent to cook with and it's aging quite nicely as a beverage. But I digress, back to the pie!

I made the pies in ramekins and the only acceptable thing to do with left over dough is to coat it in cinnamon and sugar and bake it.

I initially forgot to poke the pie dough in a couple places to allow for gas exchange so they don't explode. When I checked on them part way through baking, one of the smaller ones was literally levitating - my pot pie became a hot air balloon! Physics is awesome sometimes. Anyway, I poked them and they finished cooking beautifully.

I made a quick salad to go with a pot pie for dinner. If only pot-pie wasn't so time-consuming to make, I'd make them all the time!

Curry and Chai

Last night I made a chicken curry for dinner. I didn't follow a recipe, so I have no idea what type of curry it is but here is what went into it:

Stokesberry chicken breasts, yellow and red onion, a bulb and a half of garlic and an equal amount of fresh-frozen ginger, peppers, carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, chicken stock, coriander, cinnamon, alspice, clove, tumeric, black pepper, paprika, cumin, ras al hanout, and salt.

Alex made some chai to go with it (it's a mix from Teahouse Kuan Yin).

I ended up mopping up the juice on my plate with cornbread, which gave me an idea: curry tamales!

Happenstantial Fusion and other Gastronomic Explorations

Alex and I have been creating some sautéed creations that start out as a method to use up what's about to go bad in our fridge, only to realize later what a fantastically unusual fusion of cuisines we've created. It all started a few nights ago with pork stir-fry meat, then onions, garlic and carrots. I believe some peppers and summer squash, some broccoli, a tomato, and a phenomenal eggplant all went in too. We finished it with soy sauce, fish sauce, and tossed it with quinoa and Firefly Kitchen's kim-chee. Let's call it "Chinese-Korean-Brazilian cuisine with French Technique". Then there was last night's meal that began with fried potatoes and onions and evolved to contain summer squash, tomatoes, cabbage, and green beans. I cooked up some hot Italian sausages to put on the side and Alex brought out the sauerkraut... after one bite, I realize this would taste best mixed together, creating a French-Italian-German cuisine. This is also the beginning of what may be an obsession with combining spicy and fermented foods, they're just so exciting together!

On another note, I was craving grilled cheese and tomato soup the other day, but it was way too hot out, so instead I whipped up some gazpacho and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Golden Glen Creamery's Queso Con Salsa cheese. Just to make it a well-rounded meal I fried up some Stokesberry Farms sweet Italian chicken sausages also. Here's a picture of our perfect summer dinner out on the balcony: