Christmas wish-list

Ahhhh when money is no object…

A very loud wedding

Three times I got an alert from my Apple Watch saying that the sound in the hall exceeded 95 decibels (just FYI, anything above 70 is harmful).

But Pasifika weddings have never been small affairs; literally everything is big, the venue, the participants, the food, the tears and the unabashed show of affection and love.

You go home full, albeit with a slight ringing in your ears.

Chicken Karaage

Before there was Korean fried chicken, there was Japanese chicken karaage.

There are times when I just get sick and tired of KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) and its million and one variants, and all I crave really, is the simple taste of chicken and that hint of ginger and soy.

No cheese, butter laced gochujang, bbq sauce (the worst) or ranch. And no bones!

I’ve had so many versions over the years and I’m glad that Eric Kim of NYTimes Cooking has laid to rest that question of ‘what is the definitive recipe for chicken karate?’ (watch his video). The answer being, is that there isn’t one.

There was a time when I literally had something deep-fried every week, mostly on weekends, but I’ve been pacing that now but when I do, it’s karaage.

My recipe is almost identical to Eric’s but with one difference- I use an equal part of tapioca starch in my batter with regular flour. You could do the starch exclusively, but flour mixed in gives it a crunch that’s firm, but not too crunchy which is my preference.

Ingredients:
1pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch pieces
1(2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and finely grated (2 teaspoons)
2tablespoons soy sauce
2tablespoons sake
½teaspoon granulated sugar
½teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1large egg
1/2 cup tapioca starch mixed with 1/2 cup regular flour.
About 1 quart canola or vegetable oil, for frying

Step 1
To a medium bowl, add the chicken, ginger, soy sauce, sake, sugar and salt. Toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Step 2
Place a wire rack over a large, paper towel-lined sheet pan. Crack the egg into a small bowl and whisk. To a large bowl, add the starches. One by one, dip the chicken into the egg, then into the batter mixture until evenly coated. Set the coated chicken pieces on the left side of the wire rack.

Step 3
To a medium saucepan, add enough oil to fill a third of the way up. Heat the oil over medium-high to 320 degrees. Turn your hood vent on, if you’ve got one, and open a nearby window, if possible. Working in batches, fry the chicken until crunchy and light brown, adjusting the heat so the oil temperature stays between 300 and 320 degrees, 4 to 6 minutes per batch. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, transfer the fried chicken to the right side of the wire rack, away from the portion that was exposed to the raw chicken, to rest slightly.

Step 4
Serve with the optional (but very delicious) lemon wedges and mayonnaise dusted with togarashi.

Friday's Mac and 'Cheese'

The sixth consecutive food post that made me think, since eating seems to be the only thing of significance I do in my life, I might as well do a food blog. Our kitchen isn’t the best though- for shooting cooking videos that is, so I need to be creative with my shots.

I’ve been mulling whether to buy this clever camera stand as well as a whole slew of stuff from this site which means that at the end of it all, I’d probably be fat and poor.

Anyhow, another week done and we’re already hurtling towards the holidays which is funny, because in mid-August I started getting a lot of pumpkin-pie, pumpkin-anything stuff on my social feeds. I also got an email from Nespresso hawking their limited-edition pumpkin-spice cake pods.

It’s a shame the Z station near our office burned down; Z Energy Cafes sell the BEST PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES in the country. It was so good, that I had one every other day last year for the duration that it was available.

I have a can of Libby’s Pumpkin Puree that an American (obviously) friend gave me- might do that pumpkin flan I’ve been wanting to do.

I was all set to have Spam and eggs for dinner when I spotted three large capsicums in my fridge that I had meant to make into a sauce; one was already on its way out but the other two (large) ones were still okay. So I popped them into the oven to grill. Peeled and de-seeded, you saute them in olive oil and butter with a couple of cloves of garlic. And the magic ingredient that makes them taste as if you’ve put dollops of cream and cheese? A chicken flavour cube.

It’s then pureed and mixed in with the macaroni. Since I didn’t have cheese which usually makes the topping along with bread crumbs and butter, I had to use this salad topper mix that had moorish yeast flakes, toasted seeds and crispy onions.

I very briefly put the mac under the grill just enough to heat the topping- it didn’t have cheese anyway so there was nothing there to melt- because I actually like my pasta runny.

Boun appetito!

The weekend

We had a lunch catch-up with Bertam her mum Val and Jenny at Winner Winner Chicken in Pukekohe. I had such high hopes and probably bit into the piping hot fried chicken way too soon and burned my mouth. But when it cooled down, it wasn’t any better unfortunately. I took some photos but none of them turned out to be worth posting (the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s wide-angle shots are just too distorted) because everything looked BROWN. For sides we ordered Mac and cheese, tater tots, fried mushrooms and the loaded fries which was the best one of the bunch.

They had good gravy which made me think that should we come this way again, the chicken to order would have to be their grilled one which is their signature chicken anyway.

The fried chicken pieces were just too small with a heavy batter and the chances of over-cooking them high which I think happened in our case.

We skipped dessert- they have famously good cabinet pies- because we brought Farro Fresh sticky-date pudding which we ate at Berta’s house, served with vanilla ice-cream and do-it-yourself-instant-coffees as we all talked about the upcoming elections, the public transport system and dealing with burial plots.

Berta gave me some pretty purple broccoli to take home (she said it tastes slightly more bitter than its green counterpart).

Sunday was a trip to Mitre 10 for some pots (we have a calathea plant with new shoots that we wanted to repot) and another opportunity to ooh and aah at all the plants we couldn’t afford. On my Wishlist are:

  1. Variagated monstera

  2. A 1.5m olive tree

  3. Swiss-cheese plant

  4. Philodendron Birkin

  5. Fiddle leaf fig

We had been mulling to buy a cherry blossom but we couldn’t decide which one. There were a couple on sale, but at over a meter and a half long, how were we going to transport it home in our little, compact cars??

We also looked at some mobile pools. Apparently, El Niño is going to bring in a scorching summer so we need to prepare for it- plus we don’t know what to do with the empty ex veggie patch; a pool might just cover up that bald patch!

We thought of an actual pool (starts at $50k for those trendy, shallow lap ones) but someone told us that should we think of putting our property on the market, a pool doesn’t actually push the price up nor make your listing more attractive. You’re better off using that $50k for interior renovations.

Cookie Wednesday

I could be wrong, but I’ve never made cookies before. Full disclosure- not too fond of them. I’d eat them for sure if they were offered, but I don’t go crazy for them. We have a steady, free supply of cookies and biscuits at work and I do have one or two every day (!) but it hasn’t become a habit. Given the choice between a packet of choc-chip cookies or a deli pork-belly roast, I would always pick the latter.

Fact: I love a rum-raisin cookie though and on the rare times I get a Subway sandwich, I always get one if it is available.

But I decided to make this cookie because I saw it on Instagram- the current source of culinary inspiration- and the guy just did it well, plus, it was salted caramel, with emphasis on salt (using Maldon sea salt) which is my go-to flavour for sweet stuff.

Alas, I neither had the time to make the caramel (didn’t feel like watching a pot of simmering sugar) nor had Maldon sea salt. Tried to use Himalayan, but it’s not really fine and flaky as Maldon.

But I was committed and in lieu of caramel, I bought a packet of cranberries. The recipe is as follows if you want to make the caramel:

Ingredients:
200g granulated sugar
a pinch of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
Cookies
210g unsalted butter, cubed
200g dark brown sugar
100g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
330g all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
1 tsp Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
300g dark chocolate, chopped
Maldon Sea Salt Flakes for finishing

Method
1. To make the caramel, add the granulated sugar to a small saucepan. Over a medium heat, melt the sugar until you reach a golden amber colour, swirl the pot to mix the caramel
2. Season the caramel with a pinch of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes, then pour it onto a heat proof surface covered in greaseproof paper and set aside to harden
3. Add the cold butter, with a pinch of salt to a saucepan and melt. Once the butter has melted, continue to cook until it starts to develop a darker colour and smells almost nutty. Then, pour the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and let it cool for 15-20 minutes
4. While the hot butter is cooling, get all your dry ingredients ready in a separate bowl, chop your chocolate into large chunks, and smash the caramel into small coin size pieces
5. Once your butter has cooled slightly, add both the sugars to it. Mix using the paddle attachment. Once the sugar has dissolved into the butter, add the eggs one at a time and beat until the eggs have emulsified
6. Add your dry ingredients to this in 2 or 3 batches, at this point you’re trying to bring the batter together - you don’t want to overwork it
7. Add the chopped chocolate and caramel and mix for another 2-3 minutes
8. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and give it a light spray with cooking oil. Roll the cookie dough into balls and place them on the tray evenly spaced apart. Pat them down so they form a slight disc shape, then finish them with some Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
9. Bake the cookies at 180°C for 10-12 minutes. Take them out of the oven while they’re still a little bit soft.

It’s funny when you get recipes that call for eye-balling the amount of dough or using an ice-cream scooper where there’s really no guarantee of scooping consistent quantities. Use a digital scale- I have one which I got as a Christmas gift- and you’ll always get your quantities and sizes correctly. Turns out, the weight dictates the eventual size.

And don’t believe what you see on social-media; 9 times out of ten, the quantities they prescribe don’t match what you just watched. In the video, the guy made FOUR cookies.

I weighed the entire thing before portioning them out and the grand total was 1239 grams. I ended up making six 100 gram cookies; four 46 gram ones; three 80 gram ones and three 75 gram ones (these are not exact weights- some of the cookies were a couple of grams smaller).

As expected, they were delicious especially when they were still warm. But also so rich that I couldn’t finish even half a (large) 100 gram cookie. Since everyone in the house is dieting, will be bringing them to work instead.

The reliables

Sometimes, I just want to be done with it, preparing a meal, but it doesn’t mean I have to make a goddamned sandwich.

And so you pull out the familiar recipes and end up being surprised how for such simple things, there is so much satisfaction and flavour for so little effort.

Arroz Caldo
I like it thick which means a rice-cooker cupful (doesn’t seem like a regular cup) of rice to about four cups of water; this is about two generous servings. I don’t season it as much because I like to do the seasoning afterwards with lemon juice and patis. A dollop of garlic chili-oil gets it ready for eating.

Sinigang na baboy
I would prefer to use pork-ribs, but a $35 baby rack which we currently have in the freezer may be too rich. So I would divide a 1kg pork belly for this- the other half to be made into binagoongan- and simmer it in a sinigang mix (I like the Gabi variant). For the greens, it’s a mixture of swamp spinach and water-cress.

Binagoongan
It’s simply letting the pork-belly pieces cook in water until the liquid evaporates and it begins to render and fry in its own fat. A whole clove of diced garlic goes into this, and then the fish-paste. It’s not the best bagoong-alamang from Pangasinan, but it would do. I would do a fried rice with the leftover bits and pieces in the pan.

Smashed burgers two ways

I’ve been trying to eat a bit more red meat; you know, for the testosterone, B vitamins, zinc and iron. Since I really can’t do Wagyu beef all the time, I get really good Wagyu mince on some days.

But my cooking repertoire is quite restricted because I really don’t want to do the usual minced beef suspects like beef and pasta (not fond of pasta), or meatballs (I prefer pork or lamb for this) or maybe a shepherd’s pie.

So it’s mashed burgers which is how I do my burgers all the time these days. We got the brioche buns from Costco, not the best I must admit but in Auckland it’s crazy that there’s only one brand that sells brioche at the supermarkets and I haven’t seen any lately (people eating a lot of brioche buns in this economy?).

I didn’t have lettuce, so for crunch, I did cornichons for one burger, and kimchi for the other.

But I could only manage to finish one burger (the kimchi one).

End of the week

Winter reading

Notes

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipul
Salim journeys into the heart of Africa, into the same territory explored by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness nearly eighty years earlier—but witnessed this time from the other side of the tragedy of colonization. Salim discovers that the nation’s violent legacy persists, through the rise of a dictator who calls himself the people’s savior but whose regime is built on fear and lies (familiar isn’t it?).

Fires by Raymond Carver
One of my favourite authors, he says of why he chose to write short-stories: Nobody ever asked me to be a writer. But it was tough to stay alive and pay bills and put food on the table and at the same time to think of myself as a writer and to learn to write. After years of working crap jobs and raising kids and trying to write, I realized I needed to write things I could finish and be done with in a hurry. There was no way I could undertake a novel, a two- or three-year stretch of work on a single project. I needed to write something I could get some kind of a payoff from immediately, not next year, or three years from now. Hence, poems and stories.

Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame
When I was younger and struggling to find something to write about, I had actually wished that my circumstances were different. I actually believed that if I had struggled, I would have something substantial to write about. Well, I wonder what Janet would say about this: Frame was born to a railroad worker and a sometime-poet who had been a maid for the family of writer Katherine Mansfield. Her early years were marked by poverty, the drowning death of her sister, and the disruptions created by her brother’s epilepsy. In 1945, while studying to be a teacher, she suffered a breakdown. Misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, she spent nearly a decade in psychiatric hospitals. From 1947, following the drowning death of another sister, she endured repeated courses of electroconvulsive therapy. During that time she read the classics voraciously and cultivated her writing talent.