All About Chicken
So, something that I like to cook is a baked chicken, because it's so cheap. For about $25 I can usually get a chicken, a vegetable, and some potatoes, and then some things for making stock like onion celery carrot ginger and garlic and lemon, and then some bread and a tasty thing like some cheese or something. On Tuesday night I baked the chicken - I like to bake chicken at a high temperature, because it stays juicy that way and the skin gets crispy and delicious. I mixed grated ginger root, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, olive oil, and room temperature butter in a bowl and then after I cleaned the chicken I shoved that mixture up under all the skin and rubbed it over the skin and generously salted and peppered both sides. I stuck half a bulb of garlic inside and the lemon I used for the zest cut in half, and I poured a little ponzu sauce on the lemon halves. I filled the bottom of the pan with golden potatoes.
I sauteed the livers (for some reason, chickens come with two livers... do they have two??) with butter and old wine and chopped rosemary from my garden and Minh and I ate them on crusty bread. This is not a Chinese thing. She was shocked that I did this with livers. It IS a Chinese thing to eat all the parts of the chicken, feet, head, lungs, everything, but I guess she never had livers like that before. I hadn't either, but google said (when I asked "what do I do with the stuff inside the chicken) that it was a delicacy to sautee liver and onions and have it on toast so I figured those of us who eat liver (just me and her) had better have it that way. I didn't feel like having onions but after tasting it I think it would've been much better if I did fry it with onions after all.
I set aside the neck and the heart and the gizzard, the extra ginger and the really fibrous part of the ginger that wouldn't grate, and the fibrous ends I cut off the asparagus that I made to go with the chicken, and set them aside for stock. After we ate I pulled all the chicken off the carcass and dumped the whole thing in a pot along with the stuff I had set aside earlier and everything that was cooked inside the chicken and my chopped onions and celery and half the matchstick carrots and sliced the extra ginger and filled it all up with water and simmered it overnight.
The next day I used a cup of the unfiltered stock plus two cups of water to make a pot of wild rice that I mixed with the shredded leftover chicken, diced raw cucumbers and carrots, and Jason's special Chinese garlic sauce (that is not the same thing as what you get at Chinese take-out) and then for the day after, I used the rest of the stock for a soup with the last of the carrots, some frozen peas, and the leftover rice and chicken, and a chopped brown potato. Baking potato? Russet potato? I don't know. The big brown kind.
I am getting much better at making chicken stock/soup. I've learned a lot from the last few times I made it. I think next time I want to put chicken sausage in it though. Also, I made the chicken with grated ginger this time because Jason cooked some delicious ginger chicken one night and I loved it. His had ginger and scallions shredded up together (with a lot of salt, I think) but for some reason, the last THREE times I've been to the supermarket, I couldn't find the scallions! What's up with that??
I sauteed the livers (for some reason, chickens come with two livers... do they have two??) with butter and old wine and chopped rosemary from my garden and Minh and I ate them on crusty bread. This is not a Chinese thing. She was shocked that I did this with livers. It IS a Chinese thing to eat all the parts of the chicken, feet, head, lungs, everything, but I guess she never had livers like that before. I hadn't either, but google said (when I asked "what do I do with the stuff inside the chicken) that it was a delicacy to sautee liver and onions and have it on toast so I figured those of us who eat liver (just me and her) had better have it that way. I didn't feel like having onions but after tasting it I think it would've been much better if I did fry it with onions after all.
I set aside the neck and the heart and the gizzard, the extra ginger and the really fibrous part of the ginger that wouldn't grate, and the fibrous ends I cut off the asparagus that I made to go with the chicken, and set them aside for stock. After we ate I pulled all the chicken off the carcass and dumped the whole thing in a pot along with the stuff I had set aside earlier and everything that was cooked inside the chicken and my chopped onions and celery and half the matchstick carrots and sliced the extra ginger and filled it all up with water and simmered it overnight.
The next day I used a cup of the unfiltered stock plus two cups of water to make a pot of wild rice that I mixed with the shredded leftover chicken, diced raw cucumbers and carrots, and Jason's special Chinese garlic sauce (that is not the same thing as what you get at Chinese take-out) and then for the day after, I used the rest of the stock for a soup with the last of the carrots, some frozen peas, and the leftover rice and chicken, and a chopped brown potato. Baking potato? Russet potato? I don't know. The big brown kind.
I am getting much better at making chicken stock/soup. I've learned a lot from the last few times I made it. I think next time I want to put chicken sausage in it though. Also, I made the chicken with grated ginger this time because Jason cooked some delicious ginger chicken one night and I loved it. His had ginger and scallions shredded up together (with a lot of salt, I think) but for some reason, the last THREE times I've been to the supermarket, I couldn't find the scallions! What's up with that??