Attempted chicken soup last night.
Bought the happiest looking chicken at Whole Foods.
Placed cooked chicken on cutting board, turned on stove, board melted, no chicken.
Didn't have extra carrots, either.
Chicken stock with celery, onion, and herbs is still good.
While still hopeful about chicken soup, made flavored salt.
Sage, rosemary, lemon zest, garlic.
Live clams in the fridge. Have sherry and white wine, will cook.
Meatballs. Hardly worth elaboration but certainly worth adding to your repertoire of easy weeknight meals. Make them on a night when you don't know what else to make. Eat them on their own, toss them with pasta, or add them to a soup like I did. Make a meatball sub, stick toothpicks in them and have a party, eat a plateful as "study food." Pick your protein and your fillings. Be creative. Serious Eats recently tried Nigel Slater's recipe for meatballs with beets, with good results.
I've never made meatballs, and I wasn't in the mood for recipes. And you don't really need one. Start with 1 pound of ground chicken (or other meat). Add an egg, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. That's your foundation. This will make 35-40 small meatballs.
From here, experiment. I used a mix of fresh herbs from my garden (chives, cilantro, basil, Italian parsley), dried herbs and spices (coriander, dill), chopped red onion, grated Parmesan cheese, and some ketchup. Don't worry about having unified flavors or about using your bare hands to combine the ingredients.
To cook the meatballs, heat some oil over medium heat in a pan and cook the meatballs in batches until they're brown all over and thoroughly cooked. It doesn't take long. If you're adding them to soup, you can finish cooking them in the pot.
What do you do when Whole Foods has a sale on whole chickens? Buy four of them, cut them into eight pieces each, and vacuum seal them for freezer storage, of course. Chicken with lemon and olive, chicken curry, roasted chicken, hainanese chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. And the rest for stock.
Ziploc vacuum seal bags are effective, affordable, and take up less space than those clunky vacuum sealers.
This much chicken calls for a dinner party. Getting the living room into guest-ready shape is the next project.
Happy Halloween! If you are of the costume and party cohort, then merry festivities to you. If you're like me, and envision an ideal Halloween evening as involving the couch, a t.v. show, and quiet, then here's a perfect dish for fall: chicken poached in ginger and garlic, served over brown rice. It's soothing and a welcome change of pace from the usual Western fare.
Being Korean, I feel I should have some recipe of my heritage, something passed down to me through generations. Alas, instead, I have a Mark Bittman recipe, although this recipe turned out to be delicious. I went through a ginger and garlic kick a few weeks ago, when I couldn't shake this insatiable craving for Asian flavors. While this rendition of chicken, garlic, and ginger isn't immediately familiar to my Korean taste buds, it hit the spot. In fact, I wish I had a bowl of this stuff right now (instead, I'm tending to a pot of risotto with white wine, but that's irrelevant...yum).
Check it out! Ginger-garlic chicken over rice, a variation of the same but with fish sauce, and a Thai fish vinaigrette. Good luck!
1. Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Rice
Adapted from Mark Bittman's Hainanese Chicken with Rice
Ingredients: Start with several cloves of garlic and several slices of peeled ginger. Also have on hand: chicken for two, vegetable oil, 1 small onion, two cups of brown rice, a pile of minced scallion, and sesame oil. You can see I am a stickler for exact measurements.
For the chicken: Bring to boil a pot of water--just enough to cover your chicken. Add the chicken, plus several slices of both garlic and ginger. Reduce the heat to medium-low or medium, and leave the pot alone for about ten minutes. Then turn off the heat, and let the chicken sit on the stove in the pot for about another half hour, until it's fully cooked. Remove the chicken from the pot and let it cool. Set aside the remaining broth.
Note: If you are indeed using a whole bird, as Bittman requests, and are cooking it for up to an hour, then I'm thinking the liquid would properly be called a stock. But since I used boneless meat and only cooked it for about half an hour, I think this is appropriately called a broth. Note that either way, you can save any liquid you don't use in the final plating and freeze it to use next time. This way, you have more concentrated flavor.
The rice: Put about 1/4 cup of neutral oil (vegetable, canola, etc.) in a large, heavy pan over medium heat. Add more sliced garlic, and the chopped onion. Stirring occasionally, cook the onion and garlic for about five minutes, until the onion starts to become translucent. Next add the rice, and stir to coat the grains in oil. They will become glossy. 
See? Nice and glossy. Add about 4 cups of your reserved stock, and bring the whole thing to a boil. Reduce the heat to a bare simmer, and cover. Cook the rice for about 20 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed.
Plating: Slice the chicken and arrange over your cooked rice. Drizzle sesame oil over the chicken and serve, along with the dipping sauce, which in my haste, I forgot to photograph.
To make a dipping sauce: Combine a tiny bit of neutral oil, some minced ginger, some sliced scallion, and a pinch of salt. I used less oil than what Bittman called for, since I found the sauce was otherwise way too oily. In fact, I think you could omit the neutral oil and instead go for a tiny bit of sesame oil mixed with ginger and scallion.
2. Variation: Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Fish Sauce
After making Bittman's recipe, I stumbled upon yet another New York Times' recipe, similar but with less simple. I made the chicken again, using Bittman's instructions for the chicken and rice, but adding cilantro (which I omitted the first time around) and scallions. For the sauce, I used a Thai sauce I made the week prior, and added soy sauce, sugar, and reserved chicken broth.
Note: This combination of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy is ubiquitous in many different Asian cuisines. It's all about balance, which is why you should really make your sauce to taste.
For the sauce: In a food processor, blend 2 cloves of garlic and a few slices of ginger. Then add about 1/4 cup each of your reserved ginger-garlic chicken broth and fish sauce vinaigrette (recipe below), plus a tablespoon each of soy sauce and brown sugar. Blend.
Plating: Arrange your chicken over brown rice, garnish with chopped scallions and cilantro, and drizzle some sauce over the top. Delicious!
3. Thai Vinaigrette
Adapted from Joy of Cooking
Ingredients:
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
2 tablespoons fish sauce*
1 tsp sugar
salt to taste
ground red pepper to taste (I used cayenne, since that's what I had)
How To:
Put everything in a jar, screw on the lid, then shake until everything is combined. Open the jar, add about 6 tablespoons of vegetable oil, reseal the jar, then shake until smooth.
Adjust as desired. I increased the lime juice considerably, finding that this vinaigrette was more like salad dressing, less like a light Asian sauce. Next time, I would decrease the amount of vegetable oil. Try starting with just 2-3 tablespoons of oil.
* A Note on Fish Sauce, and "Asian" Food:
Fish sauce is not to be underestimated! I could write an entire post on what has become my new favorite flavor. I shouldn't be surprised, since my mom always added dried anchovies or kelp to stocks to flavor Korean stews and soups. Fish sauce is used in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, not exclusively. No two are alike, and there are different grades of fish sauce. I love it because it adds an umami flavor to all sorts of dishes, Asian or not, and it has an interesting history. If you're curious, read more at Cook's Illustrated or take a listen at The Splendid Table (start at 23:27). And what is this I read about artisanal fish sauces?
A pet peeve of mine is(are?) generalizations about Asian cuisines. Not that I'm an expert (far from it), but calling all Japanese food "sushi," Chinese food "stir fries," and Korean food "bbq and kimchi" is like saying American food is "burgers," or Italian food is "pizza." The worst is hearing people say Asian food is all the same: spicy and unrefined. If you ask me, pastas and butter-and-sugar-laden pastries all taste the same, too.
Unfortunately, many people, including me, are more than happy to rely on American restaurants to dictate what single dish, authentic or not, embodies an entire culture: pad thai, Korean bbq, sushi, pho, General Tso's chicken, and naan & curry. But I'll stop there. Instead of being critical, I should take my own medicine and start exploring. After all, this is Los Angeles. Any takers?
Meet Liz. Liz and I go to school together. She likes literature and food blogs.
I learned about the latter when I caught her sneaking a glance at Smitten Kitchen before class. Looking at closeup photos of donuts at 9:30 am is not a good idea.
* * EDIT 9/26/11: Learning Liz is camera-shy, I have replaced her lovely face with an image showing off her gnocchi-rolling ability. * *
What do you do when you learn that a classmate likes food? Schedule a cooking date, of course. I drove to Liz's apartment, and after a quick ingredients trip to Co-Opportunity, we got to work. The plan: Chicken tagine, based on Mark Bittman's recipe in The Best Recipes in the World, and green olive gnocchi, based on Heidi Swanson's recipe in 101 Cookbooks.
We were fairly faithful to Bittman's recipe, though we did add homemade preserved lemons. The aroma made us excited.
Heidi said to use premade gnocchi, but we made our own, based on another recipe from Heidi. We think we'll increase the proportionate amount of flour next time, as Mark Bittman's gnocchi recipe requests.
Little gnocchi waiting to be boiled and pan fried.
Like people, some are oddly shaped.
It's a good thing Liz and I both like green olives. We decided not to puree the sauce, as the recipe required. Lumpy sauce is good, too.
Colorful, patterned dishes and a tablecloth make for a photoworthy tableau.
Next time, my place! Suggestions on what to make?
About a month ago, Slow Food USA embarked on a campaign to "take back the 'Value Meal'" (quoting Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA). Part of the campaign was the $5 Challenge, which took place yesterday. The challenge was exactly what it sounds like: Create a meal costing a total of $5 or less. The broader goal was to encourage healthier, more conscious eating and to promote dialogue on what a sustainable, delicious food system should look like.
You may already be familiar with Slow Food. Their mantra is to "[make] it easier to access real food that is good for us, good for those who produce it and good for the planet."
I've been thinking a lot about sustainable food and its challenges. I'm particularly concerned by the stark divide between "local, sustainable" and hunger/food access. Despite the criticism Slow Food attracts for being elitist, I do think that it plays a valuable role in starting dialogues, getting issues raised. With that said, I don't think it's enough to simply talk and "vote with your fork." My hope is that people will travel outside their comfort zone of like-minded, similarly situated people and find ways to improve food access for all. But even for me, that's a slow, evolving journey.
Taking this $5 challenge was easy for me, since I've already come to find that most of my home-cooked meals cost less than a McDonald's meal.
I wanted to make something that reflected what I might actually make for dinner on a busy weekday night. In other words, quick, easy, simple. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. I even used premade mole, after meeting the people behind it at this weekend's Good Food Festival (more on that later).
The truth is that most people are busy, and the average American is not thinking up the next complicated recipe he or she wants to try. This is especially true when that person has a family to feed.
There are many times when I embark on a DIY food project: jam, preserved lemons, barbecue sauce. Not this weekend, though.
I just grabbed a half pound of chicken thighs from Whole Foods, simmered them in some water for about 25 minutes, then used some of that cooking liquid to mix into the mole sauce. Meanwhile, I sauteed some onion and pepper, then added some brown rice I had cooked the day before. Almost brainless.
Here's the final breakdown:
Grand Total: Less than $2.50 per person
Lunch, fresh off the stove (well, still on the stove).
Sorry for dark lighting!
Chicken Soba with Mushroom Garlic Reduction
Serves 2-3
Ingredients:
1/2 tub of crimini mushrooms, washed and quartered
1/2 red onion, diced
4-5 cloves of garlic (I like my garlic), smashed
1-2 handfuls shredded roasted chicken meat
Buckwheat soba noodles
1-2 tbsp. butter
Low sodium chicken broth
Dry red wine
Lemon (optional)
Yesterday I opened my fridge and pulled out everything that was open and consumable (goodbye, icky cucumber). I didn’t think, I just grabbed. “Everything must go. Everything!!” There was half an onion, some mushrooms, a dwindling rotisserie chicken, half a lemon, and a nearly empty box of chicken broth. There was also half a bottle of wine on the counter that was no longer drinkable.
I wanted a lunch that tasted fresh and had a lot of flavor without putting me to sleep. Out came the soba noodles, which I love eating in a variety of ways. I brought a pot of water to boil.
I decided to do a quasi-pan sauce with the mushrooms. I say quasi because instead of searing meat, I would use onions. I started by sweating the onions in the butter over medium high heat until they started to leave a dark brown crust on the bottom of the pan. In went some chicken broth, which acted as a deglazer. After scraping up the brown bits, I added the mushrooms and garlic, cooking over medium to medium high heat. I alternated between adding chicken broth and red wine. I kept the pan hot enough to let the sauce reduce but not so hot that the sauce would entirely evaporate. Everything turned a purple chestnut color.
While the sauce simmered, I had cooked and drained the noodles. When the mushroom sauce was dark and a bit thickened, I added the noodles to the pan, tossing them with the sauce. Then I plated the pasta and squeezed the half lemon over the entire thing.
Yum.
Notes:
I like using up my leftovers, and I’m happy when I can find a perfect use for that last bit of onion, or last squeeze of lemon. Lemons are great to squeeze onto anything-pasta, oatmeal, eggs, salad, meat, tea…anything that can use brightness. Wine and broth of any kind are also my new friends. They build a better base of flavor for anything you make. I now buy wine, stock, and lemons on a regular basis, regardless of what I have planned that week. I don’t buy expensive wine for cooking. I am happy with the $2-3 selection from Trader Joe’s. As for broth, it can get pretty pricey to buy those cardboard cartons, but thankfully, making your own stock is both easy and economical. Just save your vegetable bits and meat bones (ok, well there is more to it than that, but this is the gist of it)! And as for lemons, ah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that. Is there a dwarf lemon tree that produces at least a bag of lemons per week? I didn’t think so.
And don’t underestimate soba noodles. They cook very quickly (three minutes or so, as opposed to seven or eight for Italian pasta), have a nice flavor, and are satisfying without leaving you feeling sluggish. And they are versatile! They can be eaten with tsuyu with some seaweed on top, or as a side along with an entrée.
Finally, I swear that my stainless steel All-Clad pan-the most recent addition to the kitchen, thanks to another very, very generous gift from Suzanne- has made a big difference in my food. Food heats evenly, meat sears, vegetables caramelize. It’s good when food sticks a bit because those bits release in liquid and make a flavorful sauce. The recipe above would probably turn out very differently if attempted in a nonstick pan.
How do you approach weeknight meals? When I come home from a long day at school, I tend to open the fridge, grab anything that's cooked, reheat, and eat. Sometimes I even skip the reheating step since without a microwave, it would require turning on the stove.
I'm trying to do better. It turns out cold cauliflower doesn't taste too great. It's not easy, and I'm often unsuccessful. But I hope by blogging some of my better meals, I will be more motivated to take thirty minutes to prepare a balanced meal instead of eating a carbs bomb (burrito, pasta) or frozen food.
These meals aren't gourmet, or even coherent, but they force me to use my leftover food. More, they leave me feeling better than instant ramen. (Not that I have anything against instant ramen. Finals season has commenced, which means I'll be starting my diet of packaged noodles very soon.)
Quick Dinner: Chicken, Starch, and Greens - Two Ways!
Version 1 | Risotto with mushroom, onion, and Parmesan cheese. Leftover chicken with breadcrumbs, reheated. Baby bok choy, quickly stir fried.
Time: About thirty minutes, including risotto cooking time
Shopping List: Box of arborio rice, grated Parmesan cheese, chicken stock, mushrooms, an onion, baby bok choy, dry white wine, and a protein, if you don't have some left over. (I got everything on this list from Trader Joe's.)
Version 2 | Brown rice with store-bought rotisserie chicken and stir fried southern greens (mustard, spinach, collard greens)
Time: Ten minutes, not counting rice cooking time
Shopping List: Brown rice (Mitsuwa), rotisserie chicken (Whole Foods), prewashed/premixed southern greens (Trader Joe's), stir fry seasonings (sesame oil, oyster sauce, garlic)
I’m noticing a pattern among my favorite recipes: They're simple, don't require many hard-to-find ingredients, and store well. Sometimes I put in some extra effort, but for the most part, I cook because I'm hungry and busy.
Since I want to free up my week to focus on school, I cook on the weekends: During the week, I browse my favorite blogs for recipes. By Friday, I'm thinking of what I want to eat the following week, by Saturday, I'm buying groceries, and by Sunday, I’m cooking up a storm. I like visiting all the nearby grocery stores and making product and price comparisons (meat from Whole Foods, bread from Trader Joes, fish from Mitsuwa).
In the spirit of economy, efficiency, and flavor, I bring you a simple recipe that utilizes kitchen staples: bread, cheese, herbs, and chicken-Chicken with breadcrumbs! The word “breadcrumbs” evokes Shake ‘n Bake, greasy chicken parmigiana, and Mary Poppins’ pigeons (one which I’ve never tried, one which I haven’t had in ages, and one which I never want to try). But I hope this recipe banishes any sketchy associations because this dish, while simple, is delicious. It’s crunchy, has great flavor, and is low on fat. Consider it a healthy alternative to fried chicken.
The recipe is easily adjustable to your liking. I’ve included my measurements, but they are neither exact nor in rigid proportion. See my notes below for some thoughts on variations. At the least, though, I recommend you ensure that (1) you use good quality, dry bread (2) you add flavor to the breadcrumbs (whether it’s spices, herbs, or cheese) and (3) you do an adequate job coating the chicken. By the way, I prefer a very coarse crumb (no powder for me!), but you decide.
Following those guidelines, you can't go wrong. I hope you like it.
Chicken with Herbed Breadcrumbs
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
1 baguette (fresh or day-old)
Olive oil
Approx. 1 cup packed herbs
Approx. 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Optional: Minced garlic
Salt and pepper
4-6 chicken breast halves
2-3 eggs, whisked
1/3 cup flour
Equipment:
Food processor, baking sheet
How To:
Notes:
a good morning greeting, before settling in to work
brown rice, pesto chicken, broccoli with lemon juice
(and a few stray grains of rice)
Just a friendly PSA reminder to eat your vegetables. In the time it takes for you to whine about not having time to cook, you can rinse some broccoli, hack it into pieces, toss it in a hot pan, and sprinkle some lemon juice over the whole thing. If you marinate meat and cook your rice beforehand, you will be eating in less time than it takes to go to Jack in the Box and back. Forget how tempting chicken strips are. Treat yourself right. And buy yourself some flowers.
Thanks to my friend Natalia for the completely unexpected yet much needed set of dishes (featured). You might have seen her in a fall 2010 Subaru commercial (yes, she's really moving to Wyoming) or at a play near you in Los Angeles. She also happens to be a choreographer and one of my former fashion models (pictured above).
Does converting Winner into a gerund constitute a celebrity copycat?
The best I could do this three-day weekend was lunch. Lunch, as in do-it-yourself sustenance and perhaps life-saving avoidance of mystery gloop from campus food vendors.
I would have done something more challenging, but I am determined to learn Federal Income Tax. Still, chicken noodle soup is simmering on the stove, and Lavazza coffee is brewing in my small but reliable Mr. Coffee. There is a heavy quiet in the room that even I am afraid to pierce.
So here you go. A little acidic and sweet from the leeks, and a creamy texture from the bean starch. I plan to eat this with brown rice or atop toast.
Chicken with Leeks and Cannellini Beans
Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
2 large leeks, washed and chopped (the ones from Whole Foods have giant white sections)
1-2 chicken breasts, cut into small pieces
1 can cannellini beans
Dry white wine like a Sauvignon Blanc
Cider vinegar
Salt and pepper
How To:
[1] Cut your chicken however you wish and season the meat with salt and pepper. Brown the meat in a heavy pan over medium high heat. Set aside the chicken.
[2] Add your leeks to the pan. Add a few glugs of white wine. Cook over medium to medium high heat until the leeks start to caramelize and smell delicious. Stir regularly. Don't let them burn. Add some cider vinegar to release the stuck bits from the bottom of the pan.
[3] Return your chicken to the pan, and cook them with the leeks for a few minutes, making sure your chicken is thoroughly cooked. Add some more wine or vinegar if you wish.
[4] Dump in an entire can of cannellini beans into that pan. Stir, letting the starch from the beans coat the chicken and leeks. Done. Eat with brown rice or maybe atop crunchy toast.
Cost Breakdown for Four+ Servings:
Two big leeks: $3.05
Air-chilled chicken breast: $3.17
Can of cannellini beans: $0.89
Brown Rice (~$0.50/cup x 4 cups): $2.00
Total: $9.11/4 days = $2.27/meal
[What, you think I eat lobster all day??]
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