san bei ji, taiwanese three cup chicken



So the plumber came and fixed our sinks and now I can cook again. Joy.

I'd gone to Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco St in Chinatown to pick up some Thai basil for this and ingredients for pad thai (which I haven't made in a few years).

Since I'd had them for a few days the basil leaves were starting to wilt and go dark.

I had a clay pot from the awesomest takeout idea ever at A-Wah. When you order a clay pot dish from them to go they give you the clay pot to take home in a handled paper bag.

So I wet the pot in the hopes that I hadn't left it too long and to prevent it from cracking during the cooking process.

I used a couple recipes online to make something that I think tastes ok.

~1/4 c sesame oil
1/3 c rice wine
1/4 c soy sauce
black sweet soy sauce ( I used the Healthy Boy brand I got from the Thai grocer).
ginger
garlic
scallions
a pinch of palm sugar
a dash (or more) of aleppo pepper
chicken (I used a family pack of chicken thighs that I cut up into bite size pieces but left the bones with some meat on them and included them as well)

This is pretty much all I used except that I happened to have cooked bacon in the skillet earlier so I used some of that oil mixed with the sesame oil.

Ok, so take a skillet and heat the oil up. While you're prepping this, get your clay pot all nice and toasty on another eye so that the temperatures will be about even.

I didn't measure the sesame oil but I poured quite a bit into a skillet and sauteed the scallions, ginger and garlic till the garlic started to go golden.

Add the chicken in and brown a bit.

Add the rest of the ingredients and toss a few times then, using tongs, place the chicken into the clay pot.

Carefully pour the liquid from the skillet over top the chicken and cover.

It's ok if you have liquid left over. I reduced it a bit in the skillet then added it to the clay pot when the liquid level had decreased enough to warrant it.

Cook for about 20 mins or as long as it takes your rice/rice cooker to be ready. I cooked it longer as I wanted the liquid to reduce more.



 Serve with vinegar on the side for a bit of extra kick and to cut some of the oily goodness.

gramercy tavern & how I almost got sick before the meal started

So I love bread and I love butter, right?

Gramercy Tavern has awesome bread while you wait, right?

Well we went there for our anniversary on the 18th and I lovingly slathered soft butter all over a piece of bread. I sprinkled a pinch of sea salt they provided and then I began to devour this piece.

Moments later I had that feeling.

Y'know, the feeling you get when you're allergic to something and you get nauseated?

The feeling of saliva rushing from the depths of your mouth to flush it clean of the offending item. The feeling I hadn't had since I ate a raw almond offered at a Hindu temple in high school.... yeah that one.  It hit me full force and nothing on the table could cure me of the feeling.

And I still don't know what it was. I refused to experiment lest I get sick and not be able to eat anything.

After I ran to the bathroom to rinse my mouth out with water I felt much better.

Now onto the food.

For starters I had the special which was lamb with corn, roasted baby peppers and these cute little tomatoes I forgot the name of.


He had the paparadelle with lamb ragout which looked mouthwatering, but he said had too much swiss chard. I ate what he didn't.


For the main course he had the hanger steak with fingerling potatoes, red Russian kale and bourbon sauce.


Lots of kale, not too many potatoes. I ate the kale since he's not as fond of it as he thought.

Now onto my main course... you're going to frown at me when you find out what I ordered because I let out a deep sigh once I saw it in front of me.

I got... the meatball.


It's just one huge meatball and I think I might have enjoyed the ones I got at the meatball place on the LES better.

The potatoes were the best part.

I made up for it with dessert.

He got the chocolate pudding with salted caramel brioche croûtons.


I got the apricot bread pudding with sour cream ice cream and caramelized white chocolate. I also got one of the croûtons as garnish cause he's cute.


I wasn't too enamored of the ice cream but the pudding and caramelized white chocolate combined with it to make something amazing happen in my mouth. It almost completely erased the memory of my nausea earlier.... until I crunched down on one too many hazelnuts.

wordle tag clouds


So as I search for a new way to display my tags I happen upon Wordle.

It's a cute little applet that will take all your words on a blog (or those you give it to use) and make a cloud out of them.

It'd be a little too involved to link the whole thing up like an image map, but who knows? I might put my actual tags in and try it out.

Here's what I did just using the  blog's url:







hamburgers with swiss and cripsy salami


So we're out of bacon and I didn't feel like going out.  I had some salami I bought at Cerellio today and figured, "why not?"

I smushed garlic powder, toasted onion powder, soy sauce, worchestershire sauce, smoked paprika and a dash of liquid smoke into a pound of ground beef. I formed this into 5 balls and let it sit.

Heated the oven to toast the buns and crisped salami in a cast iron skillet.

After I removed the salami I formed each ball into a patty and placed it inside the skillet with a  pat of butter.

I sliced thin bits of swiss and when I flipped the burgers over I placed these on top to melt.

Once they were done I briefly dipped the buns into the oil and assembled the burgers.

Served with easy peasy nathan's fries.