Chicken Chili Verde

Chili verde. I don't know where they came up with that name. I don't even know who “they” are, but I would like a crack at their job – food namer sounds like an easy job. I could do that shit from home. Goodbye pants, hello financial security!

Anyway.

Chili verde, eh? Verde means green in Spanish (its English translation is "Spanish for the color green") and you do use green salsa, so that checks out. But chili? C'mon guy. I wasn't born yesterday*. That's not chili (we've been over this). Now, maybe if chili meant stew in Spanish (it doesn't), you'd have a point. Here's what I'm getting at: not to fuck with your mind or anything, but chili verde is actually stew (gasp). In fact, if it gets any thinner, you've crossed the border into soup country and you'd better hope you're carrying a valid form of ID, because the soup TSA doesn't fuck around.

comfort food (or food to listen to appetite for destruction to)

i hope you like fried chicken and guns n' roses. read on.

There are entries in our culinary lexicon, like foodie and comfort food that make me want to punch a baby penguin*. Foodie (cringe)? Really, you like food huh? Cool. I'm really big into breathing air. That's my thing: air. A need isn't a hobby. That's just being lazy (also not a hobby). And comfort food? Comfortable how? Comfortable like farting in front of your significant other? Comfortable like wade boggs settling in for a cross country flight? I don't need my food adjectives to evoke belucosity or the ballplayers of my youth tying one on**. Nevermind that comfort food is actually the gateway to discomfort (who doesn't overdo it?), it just sounds weird to me. Like calling food "fun". Why would you need to eat fun? You don't go to a picture show because you're hungry. And your stomach doesn't go "look, I'm really empty here and everything, but could you play that shake your ass song by Mystikal? I'm just looking for a good time." Dumb.

Whatever. That said, comfort food totally rules.

Yes, the term is a little twee***. It's also evocative & I get it. I'm thinking warm, filling, not-too-challenging to the palate stuff. Kids' stuff. Stuff that takes you back. Like Appetite for Destruction or whatever album you grew up on. Yes indeed, Appetite is the comfort food of sounds (honorable mention) & not a certain later GnR offering.****

In fact, where are you Weird Al? Appetite lays the perfect framework for a concept food parody album (appetite for consumption?):

maybe it's just the knife, but i'm comforted

Welcome to the Jungle-- Welcome to My Mouth Hole

Out to Get Me-- Out to Get Beef

Mr Brownstone-- Mr Brown..fuck...uhhh... pone… I don't know. Work in progress.

Think About You--Think About Food

Rocket Queen-- Refried Bean
(here's a haaaaam/and you're a refried bean/ooooh yeeeaaah…)

This stuff practically writes itself. Anyway, here's some food so comfortable you'll swear there's a Barcalounger in your mouth.

Notes: this is a bit of a rerun, as I already covered fried chicken. Ignore the old recipe. This is far far superior & I will always do it this way from now on. The combination of the buttermilk marinade & spiking the flour mixture with a bit of corn starch (thank you korean fried chicken for giving me that idea) gives the chicken a perfect, crispy, slightly crunchy crust. Plus pan frying in the cast iron is simple. Lastly, I had steamed broccoli and mac 'n' cheese with this. I can't do MnC better than the stuff from the box, so no recipe there. And the broccoli... steam it for 10 minutes. chop it up. end of recipe.



Pan fried chicken
(so comforting I ate it all. It's the equivalent of 10 chicken wings)

5 chicken wings (not the "wing" and drumette, the full-on wingage)*****
1 cup flour
1/4 cup corn starch
Oil for frying

for marinade:
1/2 pint buttermilk
seasoning (I used cumin, paprika, garlic powder)
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp hot sauce or to taste


mix together the marinade ingredients. pour marinade in a freezer bag with the chicken and toss to coat the chicken. refrigerate several hours.

stare vacuously at the ground.

mix the corn starch and flour in a bowl. take the chicken pieces out of the marinade, shaking excess off, & drop them in the bowl. toss to coat.

let the chicken stay out until it gets kind of a gluey sticky exterior. this is the buttermilk bonding with the flour & starch & is what's going to give you that great crust.

pour oil about half way up in a cast iron skillet & heat it to about medium, maybe a little less. do it slowly. If you get cast iron too hot, you'll have smoking oil and a pan that wants to stay too hot.

fry the pieces for about 20 minutes, flipping and rotating once, midway through. they should be brown and basically cooked through.

turn the heat to med-hi. fry 3-5 more minutes, flipping the pieces. This is just to get them super crispy. they'll look browner after being out of the oil a few minutes, so don't overdo it.

drain on paper towels, dust with salt, let the pieces rest a few minutes & enjoy.


 *not really. I usually think seafaring birds are bullshit (Because they are. What are you doing? Ever heard "it's for the birds"? They're not talking about swimming.), but come on…. look at these little bastards! I might even smuggle one home from a a zoo, only to realize later that raising a penguin is harder, less sitcom-ish than I thought & then abandon it in a field where it will be free.
**but I do like wade boggs getting hammered memes. also, Boggsy is purported to have eaten fried chicken before every game. No wonder he's in the Hall of Fame!
***kinda like the term "twee". I had to do the right thing and punch myself in the stomach after I wrote that.
****it's sure as fuck not Chinese Democracy. You took it too far Axl, especially when you ate Van Morrison and took to wearing his skin as a raincoat.
*****keeping the wing whole allows you to have sort of a chicken wing kebab. The chicken's wing provides the familiar drumette & "wing" you get with buffalo wings. This simply keeps it in tact, plus the wing tip acts as a little fried handle.

tikka tacos

Tex-mex and Indian food share a lot of flavors, if not necessarily a lot of similarities. Indian food  is more sophisticated, more varied. Dare I say...spicier? And given the relative newness of Tex-mex compared to Indian cuisine that makes sense. But think about it: you've got onions, cilantro, citrus, cumin, corriander seed, chilies, red sauces, garlic, rice etc running through both. Thats a lot of combinations familiar to two totally different palates. Even naan is like a big yeasty tortilla (the prawn to the tortilla's shrimp). And chili powder reminds me of a fischer-price "my first masala."

The idea here was to create a fusion of chicken tikka masala (drool) and a taco, but with a tex-mex twist in the tikka. Did it work? Weeeell, that depends on the goal. If the goal was to create a harmonious, subtle fusion of two cuisines (and dishes) that evokes both, then no. If the goal was to create a taco that tastes like tikka masala wrapped in a tortilla, then yes. Hell yes it worked. It wasn't, frankly, the pretentious taco I'd imagined, but yeah it kinda ruled...

notes: I got the tikka recipe outline here (I think). Basic tikka ratio (although like chili, there is no right and wrong) seems to be can of tomatoes, half a can of tomato paste, half an onion, a few cloves of garlic, 2 inches of fresh ginger & cream. Chicken stock too, if you want a thinner sauce. Here I subbed chili puree for tomato paste. Shoulda used a tbsp or two anyway. Next time. Also, the tandoori masala, I get from the dfm at this booth. Their spices are incredible, hand blended & from family recipes & I bet you could order them online.

chicken tikka tacos

don't get comfy

(good for 6 maybe 8 tacos)

for chicken:
two split chicken breasts or 2 lbs milanesa chicken if your grocery has it
1 cup greek yogurt
juice of 2 lemons
ground corriander seed
ground cumin
salt

for tikka:
2 cans of rotel (the stuff you put in queso)
1 new mexico or other dried chili, re-hydrated
half a yellow onion chopped

ouch, you cut me asshole!

3 cloves garlic chopped
2 inch piece ginger chopped
tbsp tandoori masala
tsp cumin
1/2tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp crushed oregano
pint of cream

flour tortillas
cilantro
hot sauce

take the chicken and sprinkle with salt, ground corriander and cumin (maybe a tbsp all combined. hey, i'm makin' up the rest of this shit. figure it out, i'm not your spice sherpa...) on both sides. place in a plastic bag.

mix the lemon juice and yogurt and add it to the bag o' chicken. toss to coat. let it marinade in the fridge for a couple of hours or at room temp for an hour or so.

puree the re-hydrated chili with a can of rotel until you get a smooth paste

sweat your onion, garlic  & ginger over med low heat until soft.

add spices and, bringing the heat up, saute a minute until fragrant.

add the can of rotel and the chili-rotel puree to the aromatics.

bring  juuuust barely to a boil, partially cap and simmer 20 minutes, maybe 30. don't let it loose too much liquid-- keep an eye out.

lower to burner as low as it'll go, just to keep the sauce warm. If it's too chunky, let half it cool then puree it.

i hope your grill (or broiler or whatever) is ready, because you need it now.

grill the chicken, trying to flip only once, about 10-12 minues. let rest a few minutes, then slice against the grain.

remove tikka sauce from heat. stir in heavy cream. don't do it all at once; stop when you like the color. you're looking for orangey like la madaleine's tomato soup.

serve on warm... dude, you know how to make a taco. if not, I CAN'T HELP YOU.


Sooo, the tikka didn't turn out right color wise. I used too much cream and, not thinking, less tomato than usual, which I adjusted in the recipe. A tbsp or so of tomato paste couldve helped too, but since I didn't use any, I left it out rather than completely lie to you. It really wasn't south of the border so much, unless you live in Nepal (north of India dick)*. But I think that shows some of the similarity between Tex-mex and Indian flavors-- you can jam something full of Tex-mex and still have it taste Indian. Take away the cream and the ginger and change the tandoori powder to chili powder and tell me you don't have chile con pollo. Actually that woulda been good, because the yogurt marinade on the chicken gave it a nice Indian flavor. Goddamnit! Why don't I think this shit out in advance?? Maybe throw some ginger in with the chicken marinade and do half tandoori and half chili powder in the tikka...And some cotija & lime. FUCK!! Why now brain, why? All in all, it wasn't the right color & it wasnt as tex-smexxxy as I had hoped. However I did strangle these tacos with my body, unhinge my jaw & jam them down my throat without chewing, much like a python. They were reptilian good. I still have taco shaped bulges in my mid secion**.

*although tikka masala as we tend to think of it is more of a traditional dish in england than in india. that'll teach me to make a geography joke. well, maybe just one more, and it's more of an observation than a joke: rand mcnally is a pussy.
**and a fresh one now, because i ate another taco while i typed this a day later.

posole

So what the hell is posole? I never heard of the stuff until an episode of... I mean that a friend described....I wasn't, I mean I...  Oh. Hell with it. I was watching diners, drive-ins and dives. Happy? As I was saying... the episode featured this place, which served posole, a spiced pork and hominy soup/stew. It looked amazing. Now, I don't have a mind of my own. I just do whatever the television says. I'm grateful for the simplicity of the arrangement. So I went there and the posole was great and I've never seen it anywhere since. Not that I walk into places and ask "hey mister, you got any uh that po-so-lee back 'ere?" all that often.

Later, turned out the uptick in business from the appearance on ddd opened up a family feud (not the family feud where Richard Dawson always seems a little buzzed and rapey with the older ladies, the bad kind). And the guy that appeared on the show ended up leaving and starting this place. 

The point is this: diners, drive-ins and dives ruins families (this feels like an NBC "the more you know" PSA. Where are you Blossom?). One day you're working in the family business. Happily. Then Guy Fieri comes up in his convertible and is like "bro, these nacho kebabs make me wanna shoplift bisquick in lipstick. Killer! Bump it (theme music)..." or whatever. Six months later, you have no family. 

But even Guy Fieri can't take away the memories.*

As I hinted at before, I really don't know anything about Posole. I did a chicken variation here, because I was in the mood for some kinda chicken soup. I also didn't want to cut any veggies, so I bought a bag of frozen stew vegetables. I did quarter the potatoes & some of the larger carrot pieces though. Not true posole, which I think is firmly in Camp Pork, but a mild flavorful soup that's pretty similar to tortilla soup. And exactly similar to what I'm having for lunch tomorrow.

Pseudo-sole

(makes 3 or 4 big bowls or 300 thimbles full)

needs:

1/2 chicken

can of white hominy

1 chicken & tomato boullion cube

1 cup frozen stew veggies. larger pieces cut up

several tbsp chili sauce (or tomato paste or chili puree)

a few splashes of soy sauce

corriander seeds

chili powder

cumin

oregano leaves

(a little of each. you gotta figure it out for yourself what you like)

garnish for garnish**

toast the corriander seeds in a dry skillet for a minute or so. then grind 'em up.

into the pot with all of it along with enough water to mostly cover the chicken. bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. partially cover. 35-45 minutes.

when the chicken is falling off the bone, pull it out of the pot. Let it cool down some so you can handle it. shred it up and add it back to the pot. don't let your dog eat the chicken bones. But do give him a treat. Who's a good boy??

This would be great finished with a splash of fresh orange juice and a sprinkle of cinnamon, although lime, jalapeno & cotija was good. It's pretty mild, so hot sauce is a good idea.

*He could if he lit a Q-tip and shoved it deep onto your ear canal past that point that feels "too far".

**no, I don't feel like "being more specific."