Chicken Man

I somehow ended up with 3 bottles of toasted sesame oil in my pantry. Toasted sesame oil? That's potent stuff. What the heck ever am I gonna do with 3 bottles of something that I normally use as sparingly as Spam in my kitchen? Not that I'd equate sesame oil with Spam or anything... it's just that I don't know much about Asian cooking. I ended up with those little bottles after I overbought for a cooking demo awhile ago, and not one to toss, waste, or give away anything (not when you're livin' on a student budget, sugar), I put them on the shelf and wished for the fairy of Asian Cookery to descend upon my kitchen in a flourish of kimono and chopsticks spouting inspiration and Zen wisdom... Or at least just hand me a copy of Better Homes and Gardens with the dog-eared section "Fourth of July Egg Foo Young for 40!"

But eventually, and slowly, I began to use that oil on more and more dishes. I began putting it into salad dressings, tossing it with maple syrup, rice vinegar, soy sauce and hot peppers to pour over noodles, I started to think of it more as just another oil (albeit one with lots of personality) to use on things that, well, I use oil on all the time.

But opening myself up to using that oil meant I also began to use much more ginger, soy sauce, garlic and lime. What a revelation. I started cooking 'Asian' all the time. Yes, I know that using Asian ingredients doesn't mean the dish is 'Asian' but you gotta start somewhere. So when I was planning out our Sunday night supper to be shared with our friend Austin (who when asked what he liked to eat, he replied "meat"), I decided to do some sort of creative take on sweet and sour chicken. I don't cook chicken much, but I like to think that it's just like tofu, but with blood and stuff. Not too hard really.

So I pulled out that sesame oil, some organic chicken, and grabbed a recipe for Spicy Orange Tofu from Vegetarian Times (I realize now you may be appalled). In my head I pictured the plate, tasted the chicken and thought, "coconut rice." A chewy, creamy mound of Basmati rice with coconut milk and lemongrass would go so well lying right underneath that tangy and spicy skewer of chicken.

The dish turned out well enough that our meat-boy Austin was impressed, and the other meat-boy Mark couldn't help but eat the leftovers the next night for dinner - straight outta the skillet.

That's my boys.

Spicy Orange Chicken Skewers
adapted from a recipe from Vegetarian Times Magazine
serves 4 -6

1.5 pounds boneless, skinless organic chicken breasts
1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons dried hot chili pepper (whatever's spicy and hanging around your spice rack)
4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
1 small sweet onion, diced
handful chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
bamboo skewers

Cut the chicken breast into pieces small enough to skewer. Skewer the chicken on the bamboo, making sure to leave a few millimeters of space between each piece. Prepare the marinade. Mix all of the rest of the ingredients together and marinate the skewers from 1 hour to 1 day. The longer the better.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the skewers from the marinade and reserve the marinade. Place skewers on a broiler pan with a slotted sheet so that the liquid and fats may collect underneath. Cook until your tester skewer is no longer pink in the middle. A few times through baking, brush the skewers with the marinade. Add all of the marinade toward the end, so that it reduces a bit and gets syrupy. Serve the skewers with the sauce over coconut rice.

Coconut Basmati Rice
serves 4 - 6

You may use fresh lemongrass in this recipe, if available, but the dried is a good option too if you don't have access to an Asian market.

1.5 cups brown Basmati rice
2 cups coconut milk (lite or full fat)
1 cup water
2 tablespoons dried lemongrass

Bring the water to boil. Steep the dried lemongrass to make a strong tea. Strain out the lemongrass and set water aside. Bring the coconut milk and lemongrass water to a boil, then add rice. Stir once, then cover and cook until all the liquid is absorbed, about 50 minutes to 1 hour.

My Cookie's Better

These days, anything can become famous. If you want to pass around a funny video of your kid on YouTube drugged up and babbling after his dentist appointment in a manner of hilarity approximating your putting a little herb into his brownies, it can become famous. If you want to create an internet community, linking your friends with each other and then their friends with each other until you prove beyond a reasonable doubt the Kevin Bacon phenomenon, you can become famous. If you decide to use your first karmic lifetime as the blond, snotty daughter of a hotel investment baron and flash your cookie to the cameras upon exiting your limo, well… you get the picture. Hey, I want my cookie to become famous too. However, before I go showing it off to you shamelessly, I must express to you the utter superiority of the cookie in question.

First, a bit of history. My cookie was actually discovered quite by accident. You see, I was fooling around in the kitchen one afternoon, feeling experimental and even a little shy with having to tinker with someone else’s cookie. I’m usually not so shy about these things (normally I go at it with wild abandon), but this cookie was so delicate and, may I say, tasty to begin with that I hesitated to even begin flirting with that seductive, addictive thing. But I had to. There was no way around it. I needed a cookie, and I needed one right away. I was out of my usual cookie-making supplies and I had to do something. Fast. I knew I had to win that cookie over, romance it even, with chocolate.

But no chocolate bars? No hot coconut oil either? Would this rendezvous end in calamity?

The cookie would eventually see it my way.

Yes, the cookie yielded, and became mine. Cocoa powder was thrown into the air, olive oil slicked the kitchen tiles as the intense heat poured from the oven, steaming the windows and increasing my passion. I stirred and sifted and poured molasses all over. I rolled and sweated and used all the sugar in the house. The cookie looked pleased, covered in chocolate, hot and chewy. Yes! Yes! Yes! My cookie is the one! My cookie must be shown to the world, displayed in all its gooey sweet goodness!

My cookie is special. My cookie should be famous. If the requirement to be famous these days means you gotta show a little cookie, then that’s just what I’ll do.

The Money Shot

Chocolate Passion Cookies

Recipe by Chrissy and Mark

And now a word from Mark, my baker in crime. “I love chocolate chip cookies, so what could bring out the spontaneity, the passion, the indulgence, and a unique turn on the established, supreme reign of the traditional chocolate chip cookie? Bring on the chocolate-chocolate chip cookie. But what about a nod to fudge? What about dark chocolate? What about molten-lava cake? This cookie combines all three. It’s about richness, it’s about the moist draw of something…. I needed a cookie that fulfilled a special place—in my tummy—and fulfilled a special role in my heart.

Behold… the modified recipe!

I propose two of the most interesting qualities of this cookie: The molasses that gives it the edge of a very slight fudgy-ness, and the final step: gingerly pressing 3-5 chocolate chips into the tops of the cookies as they are cooling. Yay to spontaneity! And in that spontaneity, may you all find your inspiration to create something—anything—and may it be something new.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup white flour (spelt or all-purpose)

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup finely shredded unsweetened coconut

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup butter, olive oil OR coconut butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 heaping tablespoons of molasses

1/2 cup maple syrup (the real stuff)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chocolate chips (see below for variable quantity)

Preheat oven to 350, combine flours, coconut, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Melt butter in small pan, combine with sugars, maple syrup, molasses and vanilla. Beat well with large whisk or electric beater. The mixture should be creamy & integrated.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Bake 10 - 12 minutes. No more, no less. The cookies should almost seem underdone, but as they cool they will remain chewy and perfect!
After coming out of the oven carefully and gingerly push approximately 5 chocolate chips into each cookie (depending on size of cookie: if smaller cookies, go with 3, or simply add or subtract to your heart's delight).
Let chocolate melt into cookies, and let cool completely.

A Perennial Favorite

Before I moved to the Pacific Northwest, the word ‘lavender’ evoked nothing more than the color of sweater sets, smelly hand lotion from that chain body products store in the mall, or maybe a perfume that a grandma would give you for Christmas.  I knew it was a flower of some sort, but all I could tell you was that it was purple, and it must only grow in the high plateaus of Tibet or something because nothing exotic like that could grow in cold and windy Chicago.  There, we grow crab grass for fun (Look!  It’s Green!!)

Therefore, moving to Seattle was an eye-opening experience for all things ripe, green, and colorful long past Labor Day.  The first winter I spent here I was stunned to find my good German neighbor tending his garden beds in January.  What? January??  The idea that things grew and thrived year-round was a revelation to me.  His garden was full of richly-colored leaves.  His kale was green and plucky, thick and deep in color, the leaves fat with the cool winter rain of the day before.  I thought, well, if those little plants can thrive here year-round, I suppose I may also.     

When I eventually made my way down to Pike Place Market on an exploratory mission with my foodie friend Beth, also new to the city and a future nutritionist, we were delighted to find the most exuberant flowers in every color imaginable (and some I never imagined.)  Wrapped in cool weather jackets and scarves, the oranges and yellows cried out from their brown paper wrapping – won’t you take me home?  Irresistible as golden puppies.  I wanted to take them all home.

 

Mark's lavender sketch

Beth and I eventually stopped at a stall that was covered in purple flowers.  There were sweet-smelling sachets of burlap to put in drawers, lip balms, and tiny jars of even tinier purple flowers.  Lavender.  The jars were labeled ‘culinary lavender’ which meant, of course, that one would be mine.  The lavender scent was distinctive, but also somehow familiar to me, jogging memories as to when I was working as a server at Chicago’s Hot Chocolate restaurant and the chef made a batch of lavender shortbread for the cookie display case.  It stuck in my memory because I’d never seen or tasted anything like it, sweet and floral but not heady and overbearing like the scent of roses can be.  Lavender, you are such a shy and seductive one. 

Beth and I bought one jar each, tucked them into our purses, and made a commitment to finding out what all the fuss was about with this little perennial.    

At Beth’s house we went straight to her computer and found online so many recipes that called for lavender… lavender biscotti, scones and cookies, meringues, muffins and even pizza.  We wanted something quick and simple - instant gratification.  Lavender Honey Bunches: six ingredients, not including the lavender, and all basic pantry items.  Oats, honey, butter, coconut oil, coconut flakes, and we used sucanat in place of the brown sugar.  Ooohh so good.  And they’re even mildly virtuous with all those oats, coconut and honey!  These two soon-to-be nutritionists were sighing and hmmmm-ing and congratulating ourselves because, well, we must be the first ones on earth to make this recipe (with modifications) in such a superior and tasty way.  We both like to think we put Martha to shame.

 

Two years and one thousand batches of various baked goods later, I have returned to this recipe and still feel it’s one of my favorites.  So I make these once again, on the occasion of our friends Eric and Cristina’s baby boy being born.  These sweet bunches should enliven our sleep-deprived friends, I hope. 

This time I pluck the lavender from our friends’ own flower garden, smiling and smelling my hands.  Now it is a familiar friend, a way to say goodbye to August, with a bloom that makes me stop and stoop to put my nose near like a bumble-bee searching for sweetness.   

Coming to Seattle two years ago sweetness was what I was searching for, and it seems I’ve found it in so many ways.

Lavender Honey Bunches

Modified from a recipe from Purple Haze Lavender Ltd’s website

 4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

2 cups unsweetened flaked coconut

½ teaspoon sea salt

2/3 cup sucanat (or brown sugar)

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 teaspoons dried lavender

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take one cup of the rolled oats and whirl in a food processor until it becomes a coarse flour.  Combine this flour with the rest of the oats, coconut and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a heavy saucepan bring sucanat, honey, butter coconut oil and lavender to a boil. Pour over dry ingredients and mix well. Drop dough by the spoonful into a muffin tin, pressing them lightly so they form into the round shape of the tin, until the mixtures reaches the top edge of the muffin cups. Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden, being careful not to overbake. Now this next step is important, after taking the cookies out of the oven, let them cool completely so that they set and firm… or else they will fall apart when you try to remove them.  These should come out chewy, if not reduce baking time by a few minutes.