Unintended Nachos: June 2014

So from the title of this, you might have some idea of how long its been since I actually made this food. But we're going to ignore the fact that the State of the Union Address is something that happened in January, because, you know, its only been 5 months, to the day. That's not too long, right? I'd say something about how I'm going to get better at posting, but I think I say that all the time. To myself, if not publicly on my blog. Anyways, enough shaming myself for not being a good blogger. Onward, to food!

I remember last year, for the State of the Union, I was in college, and it was the first time I really put effort forth into watching the talk (rather than not watching, or just watching it with my parents). I'd made potstickers... I don't know why I remember that I'd made potstickers, but I had, and I sat down on the couch with my laptop on the table, eating my potstickers and watching the address, when my Chinese roommate walked in and wanted to know what we were watching. It was a fun moment, explaining it all to her, and I think she sat and watched with us for a bit, but that might be wishful thinking.

... right before I wrote about having made potstickers, I decided I was hungry for potstickers and put some rice in the rice cooker to eat with them potstickers when I'm done writing this. I swear it isn't correlated.

Anyways, this time around, I had similar thoughts about food. I had thawed a couple of chicken breasts, and I wanted to do something with chicken. Having no idea what to do with the chicken, I headed to Fridge Food and started looking for ideas. I found some truly terrible ones, including "teriyaki sauce" made only from mayonnaise and soy sauce. Seriously, if you venture into random recipe websites, use caution. And maybe common sense.

I did find a recipe that looked good eventually. It was a basic soy sauce, ginger and brown sugar marinade, fried and served with rice. With about an hour before the State of the Union was about to start, I mixed up the marinade with a tablespoon, because, well, why dirty more than one spoon?

Okay, 5 months later, I don't know why I took this picture. Look! Chicken!

I really hate handling raw chicken, but something that's made it way better is having kitchen scissors. It's way easier to cut chicken into bite sized chunks with kitchen scissors than with a knife, and the added benefit that you can cut it over a ceramic plate and then pop that right in the dishwasher...

... because salmonella is scary. And raw chicken / raw chicken juice smells really bad if you leave it out. I wish I could say I don't know this from experience.

Oh, also, I didn't have bowls in my new kitchen at this point. So everything was getting mixed in tupperware containers. That situation has since been rectified.

Once the chicken was marinading, it was time to start the rice, since the rice cooker takes around 20 minutes. I'm not sure exactly how long it takes, actually, I just know that right now, I'm hungry, and the rice cooker is taking way too long (by which I mean, my apartment smells deliciously of rice, but the rice isn't ready to eat yet).

As if to taunt myself further, here's a beautiful picture of cooked rice.

Growing up, I always cooked rice on the stove. Rice cookers felt like cheating (but mostly, I just didn't own one). Then sometime, not long before this rice cooker got purchased, a couple of Asian friends were saying that they don't know any Asians who don't use rice cookers.

Now... now I have a rice cooker and 2 crockpots. All the easy cooking can happen!

Once the chicken had been marinading for a while, I popped it on the stove, sauce and all. Since I haven't said it enough yet, Salmonella is scary. Cook your chicken until there's no pink in the middle. Cook all your meats thoroughly and make sure to wash anything that's touched raw meat really well. K?

I know you all need to see my beautiful bamboo rice paddle. I love it. I can't/shouldn't wash it in the dishwasher, but the feel of bamboo in my hands is worth it. (I also prefer bamboo knitting needles, I'm sure its related.)

I'm slowly curating a bamboo and red kitchen. It wasn't on purpose at first. It's starting to get more purposeful.

See, wasn't that easy? I made a food! It could use a little more color if it wants to look pretty, but I didn't need pretty, I needed food in my belly while I watched the president tell us how the Union is doing.

Oh wait, it was missing something. Meat and carbs isn't really a balanced meal, and all that salty needs some sweet to balance it out.

So, obviously, the solution is to eat pinapple straight out of the can with chopsticks, right?

Right.

Seriously, try it sometime, it's fun!

I didn't get to explain the State of the Union to anyone this time, but I did get to enjoy chatting about our thoughts on it with some knitting friends I met on the internet.

Hey! My rice is done! What timing!

State of the Chicken

Ingredients
4 to 5 boneless skinless Chicken Breasts
1/4 c. oil
4 tbsp brown sugar
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 tbsp. ground ginger
1/4 c. soy sauce.

Cut chicken into ~1 inch cubes (I recommend kitchen scissors!)
Combine all non-chicken ingredients, add chicken
Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour
Heat frying pan on high
Pour marinated chicken into heated pan, cook thoroughly (5-8 minutes)
Serve over rice

4 to 5 boneless skinless Chicken Breasts, diced into 1 inch cubes
1/4 c. oil
4 tbsp brown sugar
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 tbsp. ground ginger
1/4 c. soy sauce.
Read more at http://myfridgefood.com/viewrecipe.aspx?recipe=20846#VkTZxieJXAcsjRFI.99

Ingredients

4 to 5 boneless skinless Chicken Breasts, diced into 1 inch cubes
1/4 c. oil
4 tbsp brown sugar
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 tbsp. ground ginger
1/4 c. soy sauce.