I basically do a variation on Serious Eats’ recipe with extra sauce (seriously good call on that book :-D), since the recipe they wrote produces way too little to coat the chicken.
I more or less increase everything by 50% over SE’s base. However, since I also increase the amount of chicken by 50% since their recipe doesn’t make enough to be worth all the hassle, the math gets especially screwy. And then today I went and bought an extra pound of chicken because my Kung Pao chicken is going too fast, which made the math even weirder. . . At one point tonight I found myself calculating a 66% increase on 3/8s of a cup of dark soy sauce and realized I had fallen deeply down a rabbit hole :)
edit: as you can see from the link title, my Recipes folder is a bastion of modesty and restraint.
I actually bought a big bunch of gai lan to give that a try for the first time. Then my 30 minute nap before cooking turned into a 90-minute nap and I decided to skip it till tomorrow :(
edit: and correct, the missus can’t stand most green veg, so it’s gonna be like a pound and a half of gai lan, all for me!
Man, I sure hope I don’t hate it. That would suck.
Funny, I did the exact same bullshit as you for the exact same reasons. Ended up making too much chicken and waaaay to much sauce last time. Which was an improvement mind you, but the chicken is a pale shadow of itself the next day and you can only drown it in so much sauce.
Love the recipe, but haven’t made it in awhile because of the above.
Just a heads up that everything in Mark Bittman’s fabulous How to Cook Everything line of cookbooks is currently on sale on Kindle, average $3 per. I can heartily recommend both the original How to Cook Everything and my grail cookbook, How to Cook Everything Fast. I just picked up the Vegetarian version and the baking one too, just in case. Skipped How to Grill because, well, no grill.
I am making beef bourguignon tomorrow. Like, full on Julia Child style. Beef/pearl onions/carrot/garlic/mushrooms braised in beef stock and a whole bottle of pinot noir for like 4 hours. I’m drooling just thinking about it.
In the midst of another Japanese food blitz, this time for a friend’s annual Blizzcon streaming party. Menu isn’t quite as insane as the one from this summer, but it’s still full-bore nutso.
Tonkotsu ramen with slow-braised chashu pork, soy marinated eggs, and random various toppings (nori, corn, green onions, pickled ginger, mushrooms). Fried pork tonkatsu. Chicken teriyaki. Beef gyudon bowls (now there’s a RAS syndromism for you). Plus sides like white and fried rice, veggie yakisoba stir fried noodles, fried tempura veggies, miso soup, and vegetable curry.
Literally have a blister on my finger where I balance my knife while cutting o.O
I slice the banana into small pcs about 1/4" thick and it basically melts into the oatmeal.
Recipe hidden:
Summary
One serving is:
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 cup walnuts (roasted in microwave for 90 seconds)
1 tablespoon flax seeds
1 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon to taste (a bunch for me)
giant dolop of almond butter
bring water & milk to almost a boil, reduce heat to medium
add oats, cook for 3 minutes
add banana, cook for 3 minute, stir often to help break it down
at same time, roast walnuts in microwave and add
add flax seeds, vanilla, and cinnamon, stir together
remove from heat and put in bowl
add dolop of almond butter
Chuck roast and bacon with white onion, pearl onions, carrot, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, tomato paste, a bottle of pinot noir, beef stock, simmered on the stove and then it braised in the oven for about 4 hours. Quartered some button mushrooms and sauteed in butter/garlic, mixed in at the end. And then some mashed potatoes to go along. Oh man, this is one of the tastiest things I’ve ever made.
I came across this recipe for classic Cacio E Pepe, and learning in the video that it was the basis for a bunch of other italian pastas, including my favorite Cabonara.
Pecorino cheese and pancetta was found at my local grocery store, and I tried my hand at the Carbonara.
It turned out great, and was a big hit with everyone at home. I now understand why adding cream to pasta dishes like this gets italians so upset.
On some level, I can at least get people annoyed when a classic traditional recipe is altered beyond recognition (Americanized, cream-heavy carbonara is like the broad cultural-level equivalent to the comments section of every online recipe–“Tastes awful, even though I substituted salt for sugar and my own urine for the butter to make it healther! 0/5 stars!”), I will at least stand by cream sauces as being a totally delicious thing. Their own thing, absolutely, and a glorious thing.
Which I also realize you weren’t necessarily denying. I just felt the need to defend their honor from nebulous Italians :)
Blizzcon 2018 Food Party Madness is a wrap, kids!
My good buddy James hosted his annual viewing party with a projector and four TVs of Blizzcon Virtual Ticket simultaneous streaming action for 13 people and one baby, who is also people, but very small. Two days of tournaments, announcements, and community artistic contests, plus three odd concerts. Good times :-D
For it, I did a Japanese menu similar to the cabin party menu from this summer:
Unable to find a single slab of it, I got for thinner lengths of skin-on pork belly and seared them a little in oil. Sadly they were all a little too wide to fit into my pain, and quite unwieldy, so not every part made contact. Alas. Anyway, those got dunked into a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, ginger, garlic, and green onions and braised, flipping occasionally, for four hours at 275F. Then chilled, sliced, and toasted in a pan to crisp up. Pictures will come eventually. . .
Somewhat wilted yakisoba–noodles stir fried in a tangy-salty sauce with mixed veggies. In my case, slices of carrots, red bell peppers, onions, button and shiitaki mushrooms, and snow peas.
Gyudon fixins! Thinly sliced ribeye and onions simmered in a salty-sweet sauce made with sake, mirin, soy sauce, sugar, and dashi stock. Plus white rice!
Slices of pork tonkatsu–breaded, deep fried pork chop cutlets. Pictured with part of our extensive toppings bar, including green onions, tonkatsu sauce, a Japanese spicy pepper blend, and beni shoga–slices of pickled ginger.
Freshly made okonomiyaki–Japanese pancake made from an egg-heavy batter lightened with grated Japanese mountain yam, flavored with that beni shoga ginger, green onions, and dashi stock, stuffed with shrimp and shredded cabbage, and cooked on top of slices of pork belly (well, bacon in my case). Topped with a sweet-and-salty okinomiyaki sauce and a drizzle of Kewpie mayo, artfully etched.
Tonkotsu ramen–pork bones simmered with ginger, garlic, and scallions for almost a full day–flavored with a shoyu tare–a soy/mirin/sake/dashi blend–and topped with that chashu braised pork from earlier, now sliced and fried crisp, some green onions, some corn, and a soy-sauce marinated soft-boiled egg. Despite using two-week old eggs, the classic “simmer and then dunk in ice water and then lightly tap and then roll” method, they still peeled very badly, so they didn’t look very nice :(
Out of focus teriyaki chicken thighs (yes, dark meat, @ChristienMurawski! Way cheaper to feed a crowd with :) ) with a tasteful sprinkle of sesame seeds.
Tempura veggies–you can see the green beans, but there’s sliced sweet potatoes and zucchini beneath–plus a dashi-and-soy-based tempura dipping sauce.
Not pictured: miso soup with tofu, wakame, and enoki mushrooms; a vegan miso with just tofu and wakame and a mushroom-and-kelp broth base; and a vegan “gyudon” remake with seitan as the protein rather than beef, and using the same mushroom-kelp vegan dashi substitute as the alternate miso.
All told, we went through 4.5lbs of ribeye, 4lbs of pork chops, 5lbs of chicken thighs, 4lbs of pork belly, 4lbs of pig’s trotters, 3lbs of chicken wings, and a not-insignificantly sized case of vegetables provided freely by the host’s brother, who drives a truck for local farmer’s market.