REC: Chicken teridakiri:
actually it's more like teri daiquiri and the only thing japanese about it is the kikkoman i used, but ya gotta start somewhere for a name.
it all started with hari's teriary education post a while back which reminded me of teriyari which (of course) is japanese for a college diploma marinated in soy sauce and mirin. i was then reminded of teriyariyari, a word with which you are indubitably familiar. but just in case, it's a japanese lullaby as crooned by bing crosby.
it should be no surprise that i had teriyaki on the mind. EVERYTHING reminds me of food. i cannot sing "ingrediente domino" in church without dreaming up recipes for carryout pizza. i cannot watch the belmont stakes and think more fondly of horses than aged beef. the list goes on.
so here i was this morning thumbing through my time life the cooking of the caribbean islands when what should i behold but a dominican republican recipe for Chicharrones de Pollo or fried chicken. it's pretty run-of-the-mill fried chicken except for the fact that the bird is first marinated in equal parts of dark rum, soy sauce and lime juice. well folks. manna from heaven. here's teriyaki and daiquiris in one recipe. problem is the fried part. i accepted a challenge from a friend to competitive weight loss and am trying to maintain a slight lead. besides, i had left over beer belly chicken from the previous night and needed to deal with it responsibly.
ok. i got a good start. the residual flavors of savory, beer and grapevine smoke weren't gonna be so essential as to be necessary to the recipe (although they won't hurt either). cool. now where do i go? i glance at the recipe for pollo a lo agriulce (puerto rican chicken, ham and sausage in sweet and sour sauce) on the facing page. it calls for brown sugar. that's all i the excuse i need to add some (hold your breath) cane molasses. "WHAT? not sorghum?", you may well ask. "close enough.", i respond. my favoritest sister (baby sisters excluded til i explain this to jules): knowing my penchant for sorghum and also knowing that my absolute favoritest sorghum is produced by loyd roe farms in pomeroyton, ky; found some of their cane molasses at jungle jim's and copped me a quart. it's a little different from the sorghum. it comes from a different corner of the same heaven. the very important part is that it isn't black strap or sulfured. if you haven't experienced real molasses or sorghum, TRY SOME. you'll like it.
in case you haven't gathered it by now, i feel somewhat strongly that if you don't use the absolutely best ingredients that you can find, you might as well go fast food. as the case with the molasses, they don't always need to cost more.
if you are thinking, "sheesh. and again i say, sheesh. this is the same man who expounds on the value of fat-free hot dogs for cat's sake!" it's different for me. one is cooking. the other is comfort. it's the age-old difference between rational and emotional thought. don't get me started or i'll point out supportive arguments such as the story of a dear friend of mine who would defend to her death the right of woman to choose an abortion, but was furious when my wife, laur refused to wear a hat along with her choir vestments (a fight that one cannot truly understand without a knowledge of anglicanism). oh. do i digress? ok. i'm back now....
the second recipe called for garlic, so i thought, "fine." few recipes (frozen zucchini daiquiris being one of several notable exceptions) are worth their salt without garlic.
it also called for oregano. vaguely remembering the utter lack of success i had with the addition of oregano to the zucchini daiquiris, i drew the line. since this recipe was in honor of hari in the first place, i substituted ground coriander. i thought that the coriander would be a better complement to the other ingredients than oregano and i wanted some herb or spice to make things a tad more complex. noticing as i read the lable on my coriander bottle that it was moroccan coriander, i became motivated to use toasted pistachios for a garnish. i might well have used cashews except for the fact that I’d eaten all of them.
salt was outta the question so early cause of the soy sauce (i did add a little later - i had used low-salt soy in the marinade). the choice of peppers was easy. hari had just discovered that she had a cayenne plant.
what was developing was something that would go well over rice. i don't at all like distinct grains of steamed any kinda rice that look like perfect little pearls but imnsvho (or, to those unfamiliar with tla's (which are three-letter acronyms {a computergeekerese term which inscrutably includes seven-letter acronyms}) in my not-so-very humble opinion) taste like cardboard. i opted for a mixed wild rice pilaf with a soffrito of onions, zucchini (the zucchini had to get in there somewhere) and parsnips. i would as lief have used carrots. alas, i was plum outta carrots. it made no perceptible difference.
the result bears repetition.
**************************
with the exception of the bit about the zucchini daiquiris, this was honest-to-god truly the process that i went through in coming up with this recipe. i'm a creative cook. if you sit me down and say, "hey boy. think me up a recipe (or think up anything on demand, for that matter)." i'll prolly fall flat. if i find a constriction to work within (brahms came up with an incredibly beautiful choral piece on a dare that a double canon at the ninth was so ridiculously pedantic that nothing of merit could be written within those constraints), or a very obscure pun to make, or an experience to react to; i do much better. the success of what can result stems from having a soul that dares to walk out toward the unknown region (thanks, walt (whitman, not disney) {oh jeez, can't you just imagine a disney production of leaves of grass? maybe done up as a sequel to the jungle book??}). i HAVE failed (and big-time). i very clearly remember my first venture into creative culinary (dare i say?) art. i was maybe 5. it was bev(of the wonderful gift of pure cane molasses)'s birthday and she had a party and i was feeling clearly neglected. i was feeling decidely poopy about the poopy fact that nobody was dealing with the poopy (at 5, i had a somewhat limited range of curses) fact that i was hungry. i decided that this all was within my grasp and made myself a ketchup and grape jelly sandwich. it was a recipe that i have never repeted or even attempted to tweak. nor (need i say) was my recipe for zucchini daiquiris. paying attention to the kinda mistakes i tend to make and the kinda successes i tend to have, though, has increased the percentage of of successes.
the point, i guess, is that if you have a secret desire for creative cooking, but fear any venture away from the printed word (quite possibly that of a cook who would never want do that dish again in precisely the same way); take the plunge. start out with little steps. use safeguards. there are still times that i have an idea that i feel will work, but i'm not ready to commit a whole meal to the results. if this happens, i take a small portion and add a tiny amount of whatever for a taste test. if it's something like an herb to add to a marinade that already is insinuating itself into a raw chicken, i hafta wait til the watchacallem scat-singing fish thingies (oh yeah, salmonella) are cooked dead and wait til the next time. your judgement will improve with time. occasionally, i trust a hunch despite a bad review on the taste sample. i had a bit of panic with this recipe (which i WILL eventually get around to sticking into this post (or you could skip the drivel {prize-winning drivel, i might add +i won a bumper sticker from a competition in the washington post that says, "how's my drivel? call (whatever)" +} and scroll down to the bottom) and get to the boring stuff) with the coriander. on initial taste it was ucky bitter. i was a bit perplexed cause not only did i feel strongly that it would work, but if there was no coriander the tie-in to "teriary" typo in hari's post on coriander woulda been sullied. so i bit the bullet (having recently bitten the last cashew and being forced into another last-minute substitition) and went ahead with the coriander. fortunately, it worked and we weren't forced to eat out that night.
INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cane molasses, sorghum or (as a last resort) brown sugar
1 tsp ground coriander
3 cloves of garlic, minced
a generous pinch of cayenne
2 cups pulled leftover cooked chicken
1/4 cup shelled pistachios
Heat up all but the pistachios.
Add the pistachios.
actually it's more like teri daiquiri and the only thing japanese about it is the kikkoman i used, but ya gotta start somewhere for a name.
it all started with hari's teriary education post a while back which reminded me of teriyari which (of course) is japanese for a college diploma marinated in soy sauce and mirin. i was then reminded of teriyariyari, a word with which you are indubitably familiar. but just in case, it's a japanese lullaby as crooned by bing crosby.
it should be no surprise that i had teriyaki on the mind. EVERYTHING reminds me of food. i cannot sing "ingrediente domino" in church without dreaming up recipes for carryout pizza. i cannot watch the belmont stakes and think more fondly of horses than aged beef. the list goes on.
so here i was this morning thumbing through my time life the cooking of the caribbean islands when what should i behold but a dominican republican recipe for Chicharrones de Pollo or fried chicken. it's pretty run-of-the-mill fried chicken except for the fact that the bird is first marinated in equal parts of dark rum, soy sauce and lime juice. well folks. manna from heaven. here's teriyaki and daiquiris in one recipe. problem is the fried part. i accepted a challenge from a friend to competitive weight loss and am trying to maintain a slight lead. besides, i had left over beer belly chicken from the previous night and needed to deal with it responsibly.
ok. i got a good start. the residual flavors of savory, beer and grapevine smoke weren't gonna be so essential as to be necessary to the recipe (although they won't hurt either). cool. now where do i go? i glance at the recipe for pollo a lo agriulce (puerto rican chicken, ham and sausage in sweet and sour sauce) on the facing page. it calls for brown sugar. that's all i the excuse i need to add some (hold your breath) cane molasses. "WHAT? not sorghum?", you may well ask. "close enough.", i respond. my favoritest sister (baby sisters excluded til i explain this to jules): knowing my penchant for sorghum and also knowing that my absolute favoritest sorghum is produced by loyd roe farms in pomeroyton, ky; found some of their cane molasses at jungle jim's and copped me a quart. it's a little different from the sorghum. it comes from a different corner of the same heaven. the very important part is that it isn't black strap or sulfured. if you haven't experienced real molasses or sorghum, TRY SOME. you'll like it.
in case you haven't gathered it by now, i feel somewhat strongly that if you don't use the absolutely best ingredients that you can find, you might as well go fast food. as the case with the molasses, they don't always need to cost more.
if you are thinking, "sheesh. and again i say, sheesh. this is the same man who expounds on the value of fat-free hot dogs for cat's sake!" it's different for me. one is cooking. the other is comfort. it's the age-old difference between rational and emotional thought. don't get me started or i'll point out supportive arguments such as the story of a dear friend of mine who would defend to her death the right of woman to choose an abortion, but was furious when my wife, laur refused to wear a hat along with her choir vestments (a fight that one cannot truly understand without a knowledge of anglicanism). oh. do i digress? ok. i'm back now....
the second recipe called for garlic, so i thought, "fine." few recipes (frozen zucchini daiquiris being one of several notable exceptions) are worth their salt without garlic.
it also called for oregano. vaguely remembering the utter lack of success i had with the addition of oregano to the zucchini daiquiris, i drew the line. since this recipe was in honor of hari in the first place, i substituted ground coriander. i thought that the coriander would be a better complement to the other ingredients than oregano and i wanted some herb or spice to make things a tad more complex. noticing as i read the lable on my coriander bottle that it was moroccan coriander, i became motivated to use toasted pistachios for a garnish. i might well have used cashews except for the fact that I’d eaten all of them.
salt was outta the question so early cause of the soy sauce (i did add a little later - i had used low-salt soy in the marinade). the choice of peppers was easy. hari had just discovered that she had a cayenne plant.
what was developing was something that would go well over rice. i don't at all like distinct grains of steamed any kinda rice that look like perfect little pearls but imnsvho (or, to those unfamiliar with tla's (which are three-letter acronyms {a computergeekerese term which inscrutably includes seven-letter acronyms}) in my not-so-very humble opinion) taste like cardboard. i opted for a mixed wild rice pilaf with a soffrito of onions, zucchini (the zucchini had to get in there somewhere) and parsnips. i would as lief have used carrots. alas, i was plum outta carrots. it made no perceptible difference.
the result bears repetition.
**************************
with the exception of the bit about the zucchini daiquiris, this was honest-to-god truly the process that i went through in coming up with this recipe. i'm a creative cook. if you sit me down and say, "hey boy. think me up a recipe (or think up anything on demand, for that matter)." i'll prolly fall flat. if i find a constriction to work within (brahms came up with an incredibly beautiful choral piece on a dare that a double canon at the ninth was so ridiculously pedantic that nothing of merit could be written within those constraints), or a very obscure pun to make, or an experience to react to; i do much better. the success of what can result stems from having a soul that dares to walk out toward the unknown region (thanks, walt (whitman, not disney) {oh jeez, can't you just imagine a disney production of leaves of grass? maybe done up as a sequel to the jungle book??}). i HAVE failed (and big-time). i very clearly remember my first venture into creative culinary (dare i say?) art. i was maybe 5. it was bev(of the wonderful gift of pure cane molasses)'s birthday and she had a party and i was feeling clearly neglected. i was feeling decidely poopy about the poopy fact that nobody was dealing with the poopy (at 5, i had a somewhat limited range of curses) fact that i was hungry. i decided that this all was within my grasp and made myself a ketchup and grape jelly sandwich. it was a recipe that i have never repeted or even attempted to tweak. nor (need i say) was my recipe for zucchini daiquiris. paying attention to the kinda mistakes i tend to make and the kinda successes i tend to have, though, has increased the percentage of of successes.
the point, i guess, is that if you have a secret desire for creative cooking, but fear any venture away from the printed word (quite possibly that of a cook who would never want do that dish again in precisely the same way); take the plunge. start out with little steps. use safeguards. there are still times that i have an idea that i feel will work, but i'm not ready to commit a whole meal to the results. if this happens, i take a small portion and add a tiny amount of whatever for a taste test. if it's something like an herb to add to a marinade that already is insinuating itself into a raw chicken, i hafta wait til the watchacallem scat-singing fish thingies (oh yeah, salmonella) are cooked dead and wait til the next time. your judgement will improve with time. occasionally, i trust a hunch despite a bad review on the taste sample. i had a bit of panic with this recipe (which i WILL eventually get around to sticking into this post (or you could skip the drivel {prize-winning drivel, i might add +i won a bumper sticker from a competition in the washington post that says, "how's my drivel? call (whatever)" +} and scroll down to the bottom) and get to the boring stuff) with the coriander. on initial taste it was ucky bitter. i was a bit perplexed cause not only did i feel strongly that it would work, but if there was no coriander the tie-in to "teriary" typo in hari's post on coriander woulda been sullied. so i bit the bullet (having recently bitten the last cashew and being forced into another last-minute substitition) and went ahead with the coriander. fortunately, it worked and we weren't forced to eat out that night.
INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cane molasses, sorghum or (as a last resort) brown sugar
1 tsp ground coriander
3 cloves of garlic, minced
a generous pinch of cayenne
2 cups pulled leftover cooked chicken
1/4 cup shelled pistachios
Heat up all but the pistachios.
Add the pistachios.