Today’s dinner menu was fried chicken fried in leftover peanut oil from my deep fried turkey.
Yesterday I bought two whole chickens from the Tekka wet market, chopped them up, and marinated them in buttermilk over night.
This evening I made up a batch of seasoning (cayenne, garlic powder, salt, paprika) and when I asked Matilda to get me my chicken, she pulled the frozen bowl out of the deep freeze………
…yes.
She misunderstood me yesterday, and put it in the freezer. I didn’t even bother. There was no way the buttermilk was effective. No chicken today. Let it thaw, marinate for another day, and try again tomorrow.
That meant Random Dinner Night at the Slaters. {Tough shit} I dug through the refrigerator and found another two boxes of mushrooms. Pulled out a giant white onion, and the leftover yakitori glaze from yesterday. I imagine everyone’s eyes rolled at another round of 1600F grilled mushrooms, but I wanted to play with my toy again. I need more practice with it. How to load the grill, how to read when stuff needs turned, how to keep some things from sticking. etc. (For reference, I charred the onions quite badly)
Simultaneous to all this, I was preparing my lunches for the first part of this week. I wanted to make refried beans from scratch. So in one pot I had a dutch oven frying some bacon and old turkey livers, while other beans (which I soaked since yesterday) boiled in the collagen-thick stock from the two chickens + turkey parts I boiled down yesterday.
I wanted homemade taco sauce, so I grilled some Guajillo chillis (yes, I still have ample supply of chilies from my buying spree in Pittsburgh 18 months ago), roasted two tomatoes on the Rinnai grill for 15 minutes, and roasted some garlic in a pan. Then I blended it all together. It tasted flat to Matilda and I, so I toasted a handful of (hotter) Arbol chilies. I asked Matilda, “how much of these chilies should I add?” “All,” was her answer. It sounded fun, so I tossed them all in, seeds and skin. [no one ever uses stems]. Blended that up, tempered its taste with some lime juice and salt, and suddenly we had a fantastic-tasting sauce. I can’t wait to eat that with rice, beans, and a tortilla tomorrow for lunch.
I’ve also lately been having hard-ons to make homemade tater tots.
I found a recipe for something called a potato “bite” or something. I took their idea yesterday, added substantially more spices, and tried them out. Ling has some ultra-small cupcake tins. Maybe a tablespoon of dough fits. Perfect for a tater tot. The first round looked beautiful. At the last minute I sprinkled them with cheese, let that brown, and then served them with dinner. Problem was they were stuck in their tins. So everyone sat around digging out would-be tater tots and piling them into a big, disgusting tater-tot carcass-pile. They liked them, but it was a revolting sight.
I still had half the potatoes left today, so I decided to try again. I wondered if crisco-ing the tins would help. Short answer? Yes, it did. They came out fine. Thing is, their bottoms were no crispier than those of the ones I made in the handy silicon cupcake tray, so why not use that for simplicity. Also, I told Matilda to add 50% more baking powder. I think that helps. They immediately puff up into cut little crowns. They look more like spiced potato cupcakes than tater-tots, but the taste is there. Matilda diced my potatoes into 3mmXside cubes. They still cook into a pretty consistent mash.
Now I’m upstairs. The beans are simmering downstairs, monitored by Emily, and I can hear Matilda grinding up tonight’s vegetable juice. Just now I ate a couple of the oatmeal raisin cookes I made last night. But I think they suck. This recipe totally sucks. It’s got way too much oatmeal. I feel like I’m a horse eating oats from a feedbag. The oats demand more liquid than the recipe provided, and there was a lack of any nice secondary flavors, particularly enough vanilla. I remember today that the Staff Meals book has a far superior recipe.
Entries (RSS)
# away