State of the Chicken Address

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.

1. Cut chicken into ~1 inch cubes (I recommend kitchen scissors!)
2. Combine all non-chicken ingredients, add chicken
3. Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour
4. Heat frying pan on high
5. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan, cook thoroughly (5-8 minutes)
6. 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.

Directions

Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour. Heat frying pan on high. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan. (add veggies if you like) Cooks in 5 to 8 minutes. Serve over rice.

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.

Directions

Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour. Heat frying pan on high. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan. (add veggies if you like) Cooks in 5 to 8 minutes. Serve over rice.

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.

Directions

Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour. Heat frying pan on high. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan. (add veggies if you like) Cooks in 5 to 8 minutes. Serve over rice.

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.

Directions

Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour. Heat frying pan on high. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan. (add veggies if you like) Cooks in 5 to 8 minutes. Serve over rice.

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.

Directions

Marinate 30 min. to 1 hour. Heat frying pan on high. Pour marinated chicken into heated pan. (add veggies if you like) Cooks in 5 to 8 minutes. Serve over rice.

Read more at http://myfridgefood.com/viewrecipe.aspx?recipe=20846#VkTZxieJXAcsjRFI.99

Mystery Soup

Sometime last week, I realized I haven't seen one of my best friends in 6 months. It'd be one thing if this was someone who lived far away, but it isn't, and that's just unacceptable. Especially considering the amount of life we've both been through in the past six months.

After a few texts, we decided to get together and make dinner. But we didn't want to make plans, so the plan was to see what was in my fridge and make food with it. The final text warned me that she would bring "mystery ingredients".

Those mystery ingredients turned out to be a pepper, some tomatoes, and a box of pasta. After some panicked running around, we finally got to cooking. Protip: don't leave your debit card in the ATM. Thankfully, ATMs tend to eat forgotten debit cards these days. So its just an inconvenience and not actually a problem.

First, we removed a bunch of things from my fridge. Apologies for the mess. Not really, I'm human.

With a lot of food and a hungry sourdough starter sitting out on the counter, we set about figuring out what to make.

No worries, we weren't going to put sourdough starter in anything. It just needed feeding - that thick dark layer on top of it is alcohol because the yeast has started fermenting instead of ... feeding, I guess. More on that some other time, or in this older post.

We threw out the idea of pasta sauce right away. It just seemed too obvious. The next thought was to find something to do with soba noodles - that package in the back left of the photo? Its about 3 pounds of soba noodles. I'm set for a while.

I'm also not that familiar with things to do with soba noodles, except putting them in soup. So we decided to make a soba noodle soup.

After a consideration of the ingredients at hand, we decided to start it like a chowder or bisque - with a roux. And what's the best way to start a roux?

Bacon!

I started cooking bacon while my friend prepared the peppers and tomatoes for roasting on my lovely cast iron pan.

Once the bacon was done, I pulled out the bacon, left the grease, and added some flour to start the roux. Added the rest of a carton of milk and the rest of a carton of heavy cream, and started selecting things at random to add to the soup. Well, not entirely at random, we went based on things we thought would taste good with the soup.

Around this point, I also forgot to take any more pictures, apparently. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that soup turned out so good, for such a random soup. In fact, I believe the exact words when we first tasted the soup was "shut the fun bus!" or maybe it was "shut the full cup!"

I know, that wasn't very descriptive, but I should really just let the recipe speak for itself. All measurements are approximate.

Mystery Soup

Ingredients:

1 bell pepper

2 tomatoes

Olive oil

Coarse sea salt

1/2 pound of bacon

4 tablespoons flour

2 cups milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 cup Trader Joes boxed tomato soup

1/2 cup Kirkland Signature (Costco) lobster bisque

1 sprig of thyme

2 anchovies

1 scoop dijon mustard

Dash of garlic powder

1. Turn oven on to 400 degrees. It doesn't need to preheat, persay, but may as well get it started.
2. Slice tomato and pepper into long thin strips. Arrange in a single layer on an oven-safe pan - cast iron preferred. Drizzle with olive oil and sea salt.
3. Put pan in oven, allow to roast through the rest of the cooking process. The peppers and tomatoes should be soft and browned in spots when they are removed.
4. Put a large pot on the stove on medium heat. Slice bacon into bite-sized pieces or smaller, and fry on the bottom of the pot until cooked to your preference.
5. Remove bacon, leave grease in pot. Feel free to nibble on the bacon while cooking. Yes, you probably should have cooked more bacon.
6. Add flour to the pot and stir until combined. Add milk and heavy cream, keep stirring, until thickened. (It doesn't make sense, I know, but suddenly it will be a lot thicker than it was.)
7. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, including the bacon. Stir until well heated, well combined, anchovies have disappeared, etc.
8. Remove the now roasted tomatoes and peppers from the oven and add to soup.
9. Serve with bread. Yum!

Feel free to add or subtract ingredients as you see fit. The point of this for us was experimentation, a stone soup sort of thing. No reason you can't try that too!

And congratulations to those of you who noticed that the soba noodles didn't make it in to the final recipe.

Homemade pizza!

Let me just start by saying that, for about a year now, I have been participating intermittently in reddit gifts exchanges.  It's a branch of reddit, if you will, that organizes secret santa type exchanges between internet strangers.

Definitely people have their qualms about it, and definitely some people sign up and then don't give a gift, but in general, I think the system is pretty awesome.  The first time I participated, I received Killer Bunnies drinking glasses from someone who does glass etching as a hobby.  A more recent time, I sent someone some awesome stationary and was rewarded with pictures of their cat playing in the box.

This time around, my especially generous gifter gave me a cast iron pizza pan, which is incredibly useful for things like making pizza.  And bread.  Oooooh joy the bread baking I will be doing.

And seriously, look at that beautiful pizza.  Doesn't it make you just want to immediately pop that baby in the oven and replicate that beautiful pizza?

Not so fast.  First you have to make the dough, and that takes time.  You have to mix up some yeast and some water and some other things and let them sit so the yeasty babies can get ready to start nomming on some gluten.  Or however that works.

Then you have to add enough flour to make the dough easy to handle so when you knead it, it doesn't stick to your hands.

Note: two easy indicators of "easy to handle".  The shinyness of it (this dough is shiny and therefore damp enough to be sticky).  Also, the amount it sticks to your stirrer.  You can see here that it was still sticking to my stirrer a lot.

Once my dough was "easy to handle" (note: mine wasn't, quite), I spread some flour over the counter to prepare for kneading.  I usually recommend putting a cookie sheet down or something to contain the flour, for easier cleanup, but... I felt like making a mess this time around.

Plop that baby down and knead it!

Probably my favorite part of the baking process, it's hard to do wrong and it's so meditative.

Eventually the gluten gets super strong and your dough becomes... bread-dough like.  Nice and smooth and, in this case, a little too sticky and shiny.

But that's okay, I just left it out to rise, and then put it in the fridge.

Two days later, it was time to make pizza.

I sprayed the pan with cooking spray, since this is new cast iron and not quite non-stick yet.  Spread out the dough, added my favorite toppings (cheese and sauce) and my dad's favorite topping (anchovies).

Then it went in the oven.

As an out of order aside - this is a "pizza docker".  I got it in a previous redditgifts exchange, and hadn't used it yet.  You roll it over your pizza dough after spreading it out over the pan but before adding toppings to poke out any air bubbles in the dough.  I think.  I'm not 100% sure yet, but I did it, and the pizza turned out nicely, so I guess it did its job.

See?  Pizza!  It was a little bit doughy on the top of the crust in the center, but still delicious.  Our ideas for improvement of the slight doughyness:
1) Less watery sauce
2) Cook the crust for ~5 minutes before adding toppings
3) A little more flour in the dough (as I mentioned, it was still a bit sticky)
4) Pre-heating the pan and sliding the pizza onto it like they do in fancy pizza shops with stone ovens.

Overall?  Would definitely make again.  Actually, I have been informed that I will be making it again in 2 days.  Hopefully it goes as well or better this time.

Pizza
Recipe from my dear friend Kathrine
Makes one 12 inch pizza (I doubled the recipe to make a 14 inch pizza with a thick crust, and it was perfect)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup water (around room temperature)
2 and 1/4 teaspoons or one package of yeast
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Some salt (between 1/4 to 1 teaspoon)
Cooking spray
Toppings of choice

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. With a spoon, stir in half of the flour and all of the oil, salt and sugar. Stir in enough of the remaining flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until the dough is easy to handle.
2. Sprinkle flour lightly on a countertop or large cutting board. Place the dough on floured surface. Knead by folding the dough toward you, then with the heels of your hands, pushing the dough away from you with a short rocking motion. Move the dough a quarter turn and repeat. Continue kneading about 10 minutes, sprinkling surface with more flour if the dough starts to stick, until the dough is smooth and springy. 
3. Spray a large bowl with the cooking spray. Place the dough in bowl, turning it to grease all sides. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap, and let it rise in a warm place 20 minutes.
4. Gently push your fist into the dough to deflate it. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 2 hours but no longer than 48 hours. (If dough should double in size during refrigeration, gently push your fist into the dough to deflate it.)
5. Heat the oven to 425°F.
6. Spread out the dough on a pizza pan or pizza stone, sauce and cheese and top your pizza how you want it, and then cook for 15-20 minutes.