Bawlmerese for Enjoy Your Meal
In a perfect world, I would:
Earlier this year I had sinus surgery. For whatever reason, I completely underestimated how completely wiped out I would feel after my little procedure. I had figured that a couple of days later I would be bouncing around full steam ahead. The reality was quite different. It was all I could do to take a shower and get dressed. Darvocet became my best friend. We spent quality time together camped out on the sofa. We drank Diet Coke and lots of smoothies. We watched crappy daytime television. And we discovered that bad haircut aside, Holden Snyder looks almost exactly the same in 2010 as he did in 1995 when we last caught an episode of As The World Turns. Cooking was the last thing on my mind. But since mine is not the only mouth in this house, and the food doesn’t just magically appear, I had to come up with something for The Mistah to eat besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Continue reading “Chicken With Wild Rice Soup”
I watch a lot of tv. I blame it on The Mistah. He’s the one who thought it was a good idea to bring Tivo into our relationship. In the six years since we got Tivo, I’m convinced that my reading comprehension skills have dwindled because I spend my free time watching whatever shows I’m into at the moment. Lost, Gilmore Girls, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, Absolutely Fabulous, you’ve all contributed to my downfall.
However, because of Tivo, I can free myself from the chains of the Mad Men’s advertisements. No longer must I sit through 30 second infomercials proclaiming the virtues of Crazy Glue (strong enough to hold a man suspended in mid air!) or Nu Finish (the once a year car polish!). My brain will not be washed into handing over $9.99 for a blanket with sleeves. Maybe Tivo isn’t the devil I make it out to be after all.
My cooking often reflects the intersection of the cooking shows I watch and the blogs I follow. That’s how Ina’s Indonesian Ginger Chicken came to be sitting on my dinner plate. I’ve got a Season Pass for Barefoot Contessa, so Ina and I hang out regularly. And then The Kitchen Witch blogged about Ina’s chicken. While it may not do anything to improve my reading comprehension, this recipe will free up about an hour of time that I can use to plow through my list of shows Now Playing on Tivo.
Ina’s Indonesian Ginger Chicken
Adapted from Ina Garten
BAH Note: Ina’s original recipe calls for two chickens. When I made this, I had neither the freezer space nor the appetite for 7 pounds of chicken. So I cut that in half. If you’ve got a crowd to feed, or space in the deep freeze, go ahead and make a big batch.
Combine the honey, 1/4 cup soy sauce, and grated ginger in a small sauce pan. Heat over low to melt the honey and stir well. Taste for seasoning and add 1 to 2 tablespoons more soy sauce if desired. If using sriracha, add a few drops and taste. Add more if desired.
Place the chicken skin side down in a baking pan and cover with the sauce. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and marinate overnight in the refrigerator.
Approximately 30 minutes before you’re ready to cook, pull the pan out of the refrigerator and let the pan sit at room temperature.
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Place the covered pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then carefully remove the foil, turn the chicken skin side up, and raise the temperature to 375 degrees. Bake for another 30 to 45 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked and the sauce turns a deep, dark brown.
I’ve cooked many a boneless chicken breast in my day. If I’m being honest, I’ve ruined more than I’ve gotten right. It all started in college, in a tiny campus housing apartment with an electric stovetop. Neither UMBC nor the Office of Residential Life trusted us enough to put ovens in the apartments. And for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to cook the chicken in the toaster oven before it eventually went up in flames. Continue reading “Asparagus Chicken With Creamy Dijon Sauce”
One weekend a month, The Mistah goes off and does his Army thing. And as bad as this might sound, I enjoy it. I enjoy having the house to myself. I enjoy staying in my pajamas until all hours of the afternoon. I enjoy hunkering down on the sofa with a book or movie, ignoring all the things that I should be doing. What I enjoy most is feeling like I don’t have to cook. Continue reading “Table For One”
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.
Have I mentioned that I’m bad when it comes to sharing? I must have missed that life lesson because in my mind, what’s mine is mine and you can’t have it. I’m ok with some people borrowing things of mine, but it’s a pretty short list of approved borrowers. And if I think there’s even a remote chance I won’t get it back, then the answer is no. Of course, if you’re willing to put up some collateral then we can negotiate an exchange. Continue reading “Tug Of War”
My apologies for the crazy lighting in that picture. In the middle of winter, daylighting photos is a crap shoot. And daylighting when the sun is bouncing off of nearly two feet of snow outside the window is even harder. What’s not hard is Roast Chicken with Sweet Potato Wedges. And they do make being trapped inside your house on a snowy weekend taste much better. Of course, you don’t have to wait for a blizzard to commence in order to make this.
Roast Chicken with Sweet Potato Wedges
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
Scrub the sweet potatoes and cut into wedges (approximately 6 – 8 per potato). Place sweet potatoes and chicken breasts on the sheet pan. Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and mix to coat everything well. Place several sprigs of fresh thyme on the chicken and potatoes.
Bake for 1 hour or until the chicken registers 165 degrees on an instant read thermometer.
Some people believe that your astrological sign determines facets of your personality. If you were to ask The Mistah to describe my personality, I’m sure he’d find a polite answer that didn’t involve the phrase ‘crankypants’. But I’ll tell you the truth, I AM a crankypants. I must have been born under the sign of Cactus instead of Cancer because there are days, when for no good reason, I’m just all prickly. Simple questions come out of my mouth with the tone of an interrogation. Every question that gets put to me receives a reply drowning in sarcasm and impatience. The Mistah has gotten good at reading the stars and knows that when Cactus is rising in the Seventh House, it’s time to hug it out. Continue reading “Hug It Out”
There’s no picture of this dish because all the Picnik or Photoshop in the world couldn’t turn what I photographed into something pretty. Kind of like how I don’t see the “beauty” in modern art. If you say it’s there, then I’m sure it is. But I just don’t understand how splatters and lines and chaos on a canvas can be called a masterpiece. I look at the Basquiat image above and have no reaction other than confusion.
I think this dish could be a food interpretation of modern art. It involved a lot of splatters and some chaos and somewhere under all the mushrooms and Marsala is hidden beauty. It has to be. You just have to look hard. Oh, that’s right, I didn’t post a photo. So I’ll let you draw your own picture. Continue reading “Modern Art”
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 