Bawlmerese for Enjoy Your Meal
This Food Memory is from Joanne of Inspired Taste. She sent me the recipe right before Thanksgiving, which was inspired because I needed a serious infusion of vegetables into my diet after pigging out on turkey day. This soup was easy to fix which was exactly what I needed on what turned out to be a busy day in the kitchen. Thanks Joanne for helping to lighten my load. Continue reading “Food Memories – Creamy Vegetable Soup”
The following originally appeared on 10/11/07 at Exit 51
Patience Grasshopper
My journeys around these Interwebs leads me some interesting places. Some I come back to time after time for inspiration and ideas. And thanks to those sites, I discover new destinations on a daily basis. I’m telling you, it really IS a world wide web y’all. Today I’d like you to journey with me to the world of the Brown Eyed Baker for some Sweet and Sour Chicken.
In her post, Michelle said, “This recipe, although it takes awhile to get from the stove to your plate, is well worth the effort. The flavor of the sauce is perfect, the texture of the chicken is wonderful and all together, you’d think you ordered this from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant.” Yeah, what she said. For two reasons:
1 – This dish will take you a long ass time to get on the table. So don’t come home, casually glance over the recipe and seeing that nothing needs to be marinated, decide to settle into watching that episode of The Gilmore Girls that’s sitting on your dvr before you start dinner. You will be very sorry when you come back into the kitchen at 6:30 only to realize that you’re not going to eat until about 8pm.
2 – Assuming that you choose to ignore #1 above, it will still be worth the effort to start making this even if you don’t get to eat until 8pm. Because this Sweet and Sour Chicken is that good.
Somewhere between coating and battering and browning the chicken, I had my doubts. There was also some pesky basting every 15 minutes for the hour of oven time. And then there was the whole it’s late and I’m really hungry whining going on in my head. I was determined that under no circumstances would I like this dish. But if the happy dance I did as soon as I took one bite of a sticky, glazed, tangy, sweet morsel is any indication, my determination is no match for Sweet and Sour Chicken.
Sorry Luke, Lorelai, Rory, and Logan, but you’re no match for Sweet and Sour Chicken either. The next time this comes up on the week’s menu, y’all are just going to have to chill out in dvr land until I get SSC in the oven. If you tasted even one bite, you’d understand completely.
Sweet and Sour Chicken
Brown Eyed Baker’s Adaptation of Amber’s Take Out Fake Out
BAH Note: Unless you scale this recipe down and only make half (which isn’t a bad idea if you cook for one), I suggest working in batches from the point where the chicken goes into the cornstarch. I also suggest being prepared to get your hands pretty dirty because I found that my hands were the best tool for getting the chicken from the cornstarch to the egg and then the frying pan. Just remember to wash them thoroughly after handing the chicken.
Heat the oven to 325 degrees.
Combine the sugar, ketchup, vinegar, soy sauce and garlic powder in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Set sauce aside.
Cut the chicken breasts into bite sized chunks. Place the cornstarch in a resealable plastic bag, add the chicken pieces, and shake to coat.
Crack the eggs into a medium sized bowl and whisk. Shake excess cornstarch from chicken and coat chicken with egg.
Heat half the oil over medium high heat in a large frying pan, add half of the chicken, and brown on all sides. Remove cooked chicken to a 9×13 baking dish and repeat with the remaining chicken.
Pour the sauce over the chicken and give it a stir once or twice so the pieces are well coated. Bake for 1 hour, basting and turning the chicken in the sauce every 15 minutes.
We have gotten really bad lately about incorporating vegetables into our meals. Sure, sure, we still eat a LOT of salads for lunch but back when we first embarked on our South Beach adventure, there was veg with each and every lunch and dinner. Now, I try and convince myself that merely thinking about making a vegetable counts. Continue reading “Ina’s Roasted Carrots”
I’m always going on about the Universe this and the Universe that and how the Universe knows when things need to happen and why. Of course, it’s much easier when the Universe allows me to help other people see this in their lives, not so much when I need to see it in my own. But that’s exactly what’s happening. And it is ironic that what got me thinking about all this was a post I read over at Bon Appetempt talking about why we cook. That led me to pay a visit to Mr. Ruhlman and Ms. Reichel and made me stop and ask myself why I cook. And I kept coming up with the same answers. I cook because that is how I show that I care. I cook because it nourishes the people that I love. I give of myself when I cook in one of the few ways that I really know how to share what’s in my heart, especially when I don’t have the courage to find the words to express my feelings.
But the Universe has decided to challenge me to find other ways to share what’s in my heart. And for the time being, that means that I need to focus myself on the people in my world, to be present with them, to find the words before it’s too late to say them. So I’m going to take a step back for now and go where the Universe says I need to be.
There are still new posts scheduled to go live here at BAH for a while, as well as all of the Exit 51 archives on Flashback Friday. And I hope to be back soon to cooking and writing and commenting and following along with your adventures. Until then, Bon Appetit Hon.
My Grandmother made stuffed peppers at least one a month when I was growing up. But for some reason, it took me many years to realize that I had no idea how she made them. What I have discovered in my personal quest to document some of her recipes is that getting her to write these things down is like pulling teeth. Seriously, I’ve had to badger her, which is not at all how I was raised to treat my elders. But I do what I have to. Continue reading “Stuffed Peppers”
The following originally appeared on 10/9/07 at Exit 51
Confucius Says
Sunday was football and Chinese carry out. My fortune read:
Faith is knowing there is an ocean when you can only see the stream.
That’s one smart cookie!
I grew up with a meat cutter in the house. So you’d think I might have picked up a nugget or two about cuts of beef and how to make the most of them. Sadly, you’d be wrong. I can’t tell a porterhouse from a t-bone (actually, these two are pretty similar according to the pdf chart put up by these folks, so I’m going to give myself a pass on that one) or a skirt steak from a bottom round. I have even been known to pull out my smartphone in the grocery store to try and find substitutes when I can’t find the cut of beef specified in a recipe on the week’s menu. So I thought I was on easy street when I decided to make Deb’s Southwestern Pulled Brisket because it seemed like I was always seeing brisket in the meat case. Until I went to look for it that is. And then it was nowhere to be found. Not at Bloom or Safeway or Harris Teeter. Was this some brisket conspiracy by the beef lobbyists? Finally, I spied a lone brisket at Giant which was good because the internet connection on the Pre sucks in that store and I refused to go to yet another place in search of a cut of brisket. Actually, Costco had huge briskets in the meat case but I’ve got neither the storage space nor the appetite for $30 of brisket. Continue reading “A Tisket, A Tasket, A Brisket In My Basket”
These truths I hold to be self evident:
Thankfully, the blogs I read help me to find some of that good stuff that’s on other sites. So I’m giving Alice @ Savory Sweet Life a big BAH thanks for her post of Jaden’s Coconut Shrimp. Otherwise, this gem would have gone unnoticed by me. And as #4 states, that is not a good thing.
I am entering this recipe in the Get Grillin’ Event run by Family Fresh Cooking and Cookin’ Canuck, sponsored by Ile de France Cheese, Rösle, Emile Henry, Rouxbe and ManPans. This week’s theme is appetizers. Check out all the entries and submit one of your own!
Jaden’s Coconut Shrimp
BAH Tip: If using smaller shrimp, work in batches so that they do not steam. You want them to cook quickly in the pan so it’s important that you only have a single layer of shrimp in the pan at a time.
Pat shrimp dry with paper towels and set aside.
Place a large frying pan over medium heat and add the coconut. Stir occasionally and toast until golden brown. Transfer coconut to a plate.
Return empty frying pan to stove and set over high heat. The pan is ready when a bead of water sizzles on contact and evaporates. Add oil and shrimp to the pan. Cook for one minute then turn and cook for one minute on the other side. Remove shrimp from the pan, leaving as much oil in it as possible.
Reduce heat to medium and add butter to the pan. Once it has melted and starts foaming, add the green onion and garlic. Cook until fragrant, approximately 30 seconds. Remove frying pan from the stove and add the cognac, a pinch of salt, and sugar (if using). Return pan to the stove and stir to combine. Return shrimp to the pan and let the sauce thicken slightly and coat the shrimp.
Remove from heat, add the toasted coconut, and gently toss to combine.
Serve as an appetizer or add rice for an entree.
The crappy economy makes it hard to feel like even an occasional splurge is ok. But my wise friend Jeannie rightly pointed out that living in fear is not really living. So from time to time I remind myself of that and try to work a special treat into the kitchen or pantry. Maybe it’s a bottle of finishing oil to give dishes a lovely punctuation, a bar of extra dark chocolate to savor, or a small order of sushi for The Mistah to enjoy. Most recently it was a container of white truffle butter and fancy pasta. Continue reading “Splurge”
Bon Appetit Hon by Wendi Mosteiko is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Bon Appetit Hon 