Archive for the ‘Dining’ Category

I am having a marathon chicken week. I have eaten three different preparations of chicken: fried, roasted and in a pasta sauce. I think I can have chicken all day for a week and not repeat a single dish. I think it’s the most versatile and most available meat in modern history.

It seems every family and every restaurant the world over has its very own chicken specialty. In fact, Randal Caparoso (one well traveled gourmet, sommelier and author) attests that a restaurant’s caliber can be judged by the chicken it serves. That is: great chicken dish = great resto (or maybe he just loves chicken). Because chicken is a more widely accepted meat source compared to pork or beef, any menu should have at least one chicken dish.

One the other side of the gustatory spectrum, when we dine on unfamiliar ‘meat’ we say that it ‘tastes like chicken’. We have heard that from people feasting on rats, frogs, snakes and what have you. It seems that everything out of the ordinary gets in this flavor category. An evolutionary biologist claims to have an answer here. They basically are saying that commercially grown chicken tastes bland like most other exotic meats. They lack flavor when compared to say beef or pork.

Whatever scientists say, I’ll still go on culinary adventures in and out of my kitchen - with or without chicken because those weird stuff are bound to taste like chicken to me anyway.

In Asia, noodles are often added to soups to make a quick and easy one-dish meal. A favorite of mine is the Chinese Chicken Noodle Soup. Feel free to try the recipe below:

• 140 g dried shitake mushrooms
• hot water
• vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup carrots, julienned
• 800 ml low-salt chicken broth
• 1 1/2 tsp. light soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp. your prefered spices
• 200 g boneless, skinless chicken breast, cooked and shredded
• 100 g cabbage, shredded
• 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
• 140 g bean vermicelli noodles
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• salt

1. In a bowl, soak dried mushrooms in hot water until soft (around 15 minutes). Drain and slice mushrooms. Remove tough parts.
2. Saute dried mushrooms and carrots around 4 minutes. Add chicken broth, soy sauce and spices. Boil.
3. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 more mins. Stir in chicken breast, cabbage and sliced mushrooms. Cook until vegetables are tender.
4. Add noodles and cook until noodles are soft (see the package directions). Season with salt and pepper.

You may substitute or add your favorite vegetables or other vegetables in season for the suggested carrots, cabbage and mushrooms. You can make this recipe vegetarian by substituting vegetable broth for the chicken broth and altogether omitting the shredded chicken.

I never thought donuts could be so addicting. Last week, I brought home a dozen of a variety of Krispy Kremes for me and my wife. She likes them a lot, so I thought it would be nice to bring her some. Little did I know that it was me who would be hooked.

I kept thinking about them. How nice they looked and how yummy they are. I ate 2 or 3 of them at a time. While that may not seem excessive for most people, it was for me. They should have named those things Krispy Krack.

My obsession did not end with eating them. I kept thinking about them as I worked on my computer. As a result I ended up visiting a lot of Krispy Kreme related sites. So in this post, I would like to share them with you.

First , I looked for good photos of the donuts on flickr and I found a lot. Some are here, here and here. I even posted some of them below for you to drool on.

I also ended up going to the official site, the wikipedia site and this article on how the donuts are made. All very interesting, but all filled with information that is of no use to both you and me. I even found a lot of copy cat recipes from various recipes sites (again recipes here, here and here).

I hope you enjoyed this useless and worthless rant about my donut addiction and obsession. I just wish that writing this would actually get the obsession out of my system and help it go away. I apologize for the incoherent style and the bad prose. It must be the donuts. For those who suffer the same affliction as I do, I suggest the google query “trans fat”.