Chicken and Escoveitch Sauce

Inspired by all the fish G brought home, I decided to see if a Fish Escoveitch recipe I had would work with chicken. Though this sauce is primarily used for prepapring fish, there are some web referneces to chicken escoveitch.

So what is this sauce? Redwood Creek Flavors of the Islands in Epicurious states that "Escabeche originated in Spain, where it means “pickled”; it’s a spicy cold marinade that was created as a way of preserving food. Escabeche followed Spanish culture around the world, with scabetche in North Africa, escabecio in Italy and escoveitch in Jamaica. The traditional recipe is made with fish fillets or small fish that have been deep-fried, then marinated for 24 hours. Escabeche is also used in preparations for vegetables, salads, poultry and meats."

My version adapted from Jamaicamekrazy:

Ingredients:

4 Skinless Chicken Breast cut into strips
1/4 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
oil for frying

Sauce:

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup water
pinch of salt; pinch of sugar
1 cup each of julienne strips of carrot, zuchinni, bell pepper
1 medium tomato seeded and cut in juliene strips
1 hot pepper, such as Scotch Bonnet (habanero may substitute)
1 large onion, cut in rings
6 pimento (allspice) berries

After you have cleaned and washed the chicken, pat dry.
Season with salt and ground black pepper
Fry chicken strips in hot oil

Boil together water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer about 15 minutes.

Pour sauce over chicken. Refrigerate for 4- 24 hours for best taste though may be served immediately.

Usually served with rice and peas.

Peruvian Green Sauce (Aji)

Blogging is a major means to stimulate your creativity. Survival Gourmet noted my post on taking more time to use and develop sauces. He posted a recipe for Peruvian Green Sauce (Aji) which is served as a condiment. It's like the official sauce of Peru. Many local Peruvian restaurants in Los Angeles always have a squirt bottle of this stuff on the table. It's use includes as a dipping sauce for bread, chicken and most any other meat or even potato.

I put together a batch of this based on SG's recipe. I added a couple of substitutes noted below.

Here are the ingredients per SG…

1/4 head of lettuce, torn into pieces (iceberg is fine, romaine is better)
3 jalapeno chiles, seeds and veins removed (I used a habanero from my garden- yep- very hot stuff though I only used one)
1/4 cup mayonaise
5 green onions
1/2 bunch of cilantro leaves (try to avoid the stems)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder (I sustituted with about 6-8 cloves of garlic- yea a lot)


(I used a blender instead of a food processor which meant I had to add about a 1/4 cup chicken broth to get it to move.)

Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and process until smooth. It should come out bright green in color.

Fresh Catch Sashimi and Dipping Sauces

Yellowtail



Fresh caught fish anyone? G returned from his 11 day deep sea fishing adventure with a freezer load of fish. Yellowtail, Yellow fin tuna, Wahoo, Pargo, Grouper and Dorado- yep that's right- good stuff for fish eaters (which I am not). Let me re-phrase that. I'm not a fan of cooked fish. I'm crazy about sashimi though.


There is nothing better than fresh, I mean really fresh sashimi, still glimmering bright and no smell. A few fish caught during the later days of the trip are held in a special chilled sea water bath- never frozen. This is what I had to choose from for dinner.

Yellowfin Tuna Belly

Most of the fish caught on board is fresh frozen immediately after the catch and then the fishermen either bring it home to cut up and package or they have a local San Diego company vacu-package it for them to bring home and refreeze.



Zoom In on Plated Sashimi
Saturday night dinner was a sashimi feast. I sliced up (the best I could as I'm obviously not a sushi chef) yellow fin tuna belly- YES- primo belly, Yellowtail, and Yellow fin tuna chunks. No sushi bar had any fresher than Sylvie's Kitchen.





... and the sauces for these to go with included a Ponzu Type Sauce (soy sauce, lemon slice, mirin, garlic and green onion), Soy Sauce with wasabi to taste and my own special concoction.



Sylvie's Combination Dipping Sauce

1/4 C Soy Sauce
1/4 C Chicken Broth
2 Tb Mirin
1 Tb Sesame oil
1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1 thin slice Habanero Chile
1 Green Onion sliced
1/2 tsp fresh minced ginger
1 thin slice lemon
1 tsp minced garlic

Cooking Detour- Sauces

So what do I mean by a cooking detour? You know when you get tired of that same old thing for dinner, cooking using the same old techniques and ingredients, going to the store and buying the same things week after week. Now I admit, I do cook a myriad of varying foods. You don't have to look very far to see my stab at a Shabu Shabu meal or plain old fried wontons. Well I just feel something else is missing.

I looked over a number of recipes this week and discovered that there is one specific addition I rarely make to the foods I cook. Sauces. Where are the sauces? There are so many sauces out there from all over the world. Aioli, peanut, cuban garlic, Asian influenced dipping sauces, escoveitch, sesame ginger, Peruvian green sauce, lemon basil, cheese sauce, salsa, tomato sauce, etc etc etc to name a few.

G gets back from an eleven day deep fishing trip this Saturday. He'll have a heaping load of fish ready for cooking. There are so many ways to cook fish with so many sauces. How does Seared Tuna with Wasabi Butter or a Saffron Sauce or Ginger Aioli sound?

My mission is to cook each meal using a diffferent sauce each time. I'm not committing to a sauce a week or a sauce a month. No, just a different sauce whenever.

My first attempt tonight was a Cuban Garlic Sauce better known as Mojo. The official sauce of Cuba. Mojo is a citrus sauce combining oregano, cumin, garlic, sometimes onions with sour oranges if you can find them or you may substitute with lemon or lime mixed with fresh orange juice. In Los Angeles, we are fortunate to have a very good Cuban Restaurant named Versailles. Their specialty is a marinated half roasted chicken with a crispy skin served laced in this garlicky mojo sauce and covered with sliced onions. I didn't recreate it but did find a sauce remniscent of Versailles.

I had some leftover chicken in the refrigerator that I used this sauce on. Very tasty if I do say so myself. I'll have to tweak the recipe more to get closer to that Versailles flavor.

Cuban Garlic Sauce- Mojo (pronounced Moho not Mojoe)

1/2 cup olive oil
8-10 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
1 medium yellow onion thinly sliced
2/3 cups sour orange juice or substitue using 1/3 cup lime juice plus 1/3 cup fresh orange juice. (I'm going to have to play around with this ratio of lime to orange juice or maybe try using lemon juice in place of lime.)
1/3 cup water
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a sauce pan. Add the chopped garlic and onions cooking until a pale golden brown. Stir in the citrus juices and water plus the dry herbs and spices- cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil for 4-5 minutes. Add more salt or pepper to taste.

Remove from heat and let cool. The cilantro can be added at this time. Stir and enjoy. The sauce can be refrigerated and may be kept for several weeks.

Serve over fish, chicken, pork.

Heck- What To Cook?-Smoked Chicken, Wontons

I'm sitting at the computer when the phone rings. It's Survival Gourmet. The conversation went to "what ya doing"?

"Just on the internet looking for something to cook for dinner." G is somewhere on the Pacific doing macho testotesterone deep sea fish catching stuff, Ziggy is just keeping me company and I can't find anything that will quench my appetite.


Well after many suggestions,including pasta with carbonara sauce using smoked pork butt and a slew of other recipes, I still hadn't touched on anything I had a taste for.

So I just went to the freezer came up with some frozen chicken thighs which I seasoned with a name branded seasoning salt then smoked with pecan wood on the lil smokey joe and a bag of left over wontons stuffed with purple potatoes seasoned with garlic, watercress and smoked gruyeye cheese, parmesan cheese plus a large a ziplock filled with frozen tomatoes from my gardening efforts. Added some seasonings to the tomatoes including rosemary, cilantro, garlic, salt, pepper and chile peppers to make a sauce after running through a sieve.


Smoked the chicken thighs on the lil smokey joe


...and fried the wontons. Dipped the wontons in the the tomato sauce. Just sliced the chicken and ate as is. Not a matched treat but I'm not hungry now.

Smoked Chicken

I'm A Winner- Crazy About Cupcakes

Cupcake Queen (CQ) at 52 Cupcakes held a contest this past week which featured a prize of an autographed copy of Krystina Castella's new book Crazy About Cupcakes. Things went so well that actually two prizes were offered. Queue and I were the two winners.



Can't wait to receive my copy and looks like it will be in time for some holiday baking.


Thanks CQ

Shabu Shabu Soul Fusion Style

This past weekend, G had a taste for Shabu Shabu. Now we haven't been out to dinner at a restaurant specializing in this style of food preparation in a couple of years so I guess it was about time. I searched through the web on sites such as Chowhound, Open Table, Foodie Universe and the Delicious Life for a restaurant in the West L.A. or even Downtown L.A. area. From this search I concluded that there are only a couple of recommendable restaurants in the medium priced range. Even more intriguing is what caught my attention in a post by Sarah. Not to quote but only paraphrase-'For someone who was brought up in a Japanese family, going out to eat Shabu Shabu at a restaurant is like ordering a $20 peanut butter and jelly sandwich at a restaurant to most Americans'. Whoa, that common?

With that in mind, I also took her recommendation to try to prepare this at home myself. Armed with my infrequently used electric fry pan filled with chicken broth, a thinly sliced tri tip steak, large tiger prawns, sliced chicken thighs, a bottle of soy sauce, mirin, wasabi and fresh veggies (including baby bok choy, shitake mushrooms, brown mushrooms,cabbage, bell pepper, carrots, green onions, sweet onions, raddish, garlic, bean sprouts, lemon grass, cilantro and ginger) from the vegetable stand, I prepared Shabu Shabu for my G. I had no recipe but only descriptions from post on the web and what I remembered from our previous venture. Now before you pooh pooh this adventure, I know my ingredient choices may not be typical but that's where the Soul Fusion comes in.

To follow is Sylvie's Shabu Shabu Soul Fusion Style.

Bok choy, cabbage, green and sweet onions, bean sprouts
Thinly sliced meats
Ready to sit down and enjoy
Yellow bell pepper, cilantro, shitake and brown mushrooms, raddish, carrot, garlic, lemon grass, sliced green onions, ginger
Large Tiger shrimp

Chicken broth with garlic, lemon grass, cilantro and ginger. Sauces: soy, mirin, sesame oil, chicken broth and the same plus hot chile peppers, green onions and garlic
Prepared and ready to eat

Small Baking Project

Planked Fish And Grilled Veggies

Planked grilling was this summers big hit. You couldn't read a food magazine without there being some reference to this technique for cooking outside. Well, the summer is over but that doesn't stop us Los Angelenos from doing a lot of backyard cooking. For this meal, I decided to cook some fish on alder planks. Cedar is also nice, but I just happened to have alder on hand.

To prep the planks, I soaked them for about an hour in water. This soaking is to assure that the planks slowly smoke and resist flaming. The smoke thus imparting a mild smoky flavor to the meat. G took some fish from the freezer which included some tuna and dorado caught by his own hands (rod and reel) from one of his past fishing trips. He has to make room for more fish that he's going to catch on an upcoming 10 day trip on the waters of the Pacific.

I seasoned the fish pieces with coarsely ground black pepper and salt. I placed the planks on the gas grill set on medium and placed the fish on top. I closed the grill cover and on we went with cooking.

The planks did smoke quite a bit and I had quite a few flames to ward off requiring me to open the grill cover quite a few times. I neglected to time it, but what seemded like 15-20 minutes later the fish was done. I also grilled some crooked neck yellow squash from my garden. Dinner was served.



For those of you who know me, you then know that I'm not fond of fish. However, I did eat this. Very tasty.

Cooking nearly complete. Some pieces removed from the fire already.

Weekend Dog Blogging

What is Ziggy diligently waiting for?

Any little treat to miracuously drop from from the table.



G and I were preparing to feast on a little something I put on the grill for Saturday's dinner. (Note the smoke filled sky and rainbow effect in the background. That's from the gas grill with a little wood for smoke flavor. Rainbow is probably a result of the neighbor's pool.)


Grilled Lamb Roast and tangerines.

Potato medley with red bell pepper, yellow crook neck squash and anaheim chiles.

...and did Ziggy get some? Of course.

Does This Look Like a Starving Students Kitchen?

I had the honor of accompanying my daughter back to school. With visions of my credit card and a rental car she actually asked me to go with her this year. Yes, the previous years I also went, but it was sort of assumed that this is what parents do for underclassmen children.

Well, after visits to Trader Joe's, Costco and varying other stores, a few dollars later she had the dream college student's pantry and refrigerator contents.

It was many years ago that I went to college and all I remember having was a nearly empty refrigerator with bareley enough pantry items to make a complete meal. Times have changed or am I just an over indulging mom?

If you're thinking this is all, then you're wrong. There's another couple of cabinets which I neglected to get pictures of that are stuffed with items not limited to cereal, rice, noodles and nuts.

Actually, I quite enjoyed helping T get her apartment together. This is such a fun time in life and the joy that goes with having your own place and stuff is priceless.

Stuffed Zucchini- An Alternative for Leftovers

I was so impressed with a recipe Elise at Simply Recipes posted this past weekend for Stuffed Zucchini with Ham and Mushrooms. This recipe stimulated my curiosity of what a great way to re-present yesterday's leftovers. Instead of zucchini as a side dish, let's include it as the main attraction.

Now I know very large zucchini are not something we all have stocked in our refrigerators, but then this time of year they are very accessible. I just happened to have one of the very last zucchini that grew in my garden. Sunday's leftover posole just seemed to go right with this recipe. Of course I drained off much of the liquid and just used the meat and corn (posole) remaining. Following Elise's method of prepping the zucchini, I skipped the ham and mushroom stuffing prep and in place I stuffed the zucchini with the drained leftover posole mixture. I topped this with panko bread crumbs and cheddar cheese. I then baked the stuffed zucchini until the stuffing was heated through and the cheese was melted.

The presentation was pretty and the taste was even better than the posole alone.

Watchdog- Ziggy Keeping An Eye On Everthing

Weekend Dog Blogging has rolled around again. Ziggy just chilling playing watchdog.

Thanks to Cate at Sweetnicks. Drop by and see all the other best friends of food bloggers.

Posole

So I'm crusing around the isles at Surfas, picking up stuff I don't need but must have when I come across a bag of dried posole. Memories surfaced of how I tried to cook posole a number of years ago but with not so good results. Why not give it another try?

Knowing I had the ingredients at home to put this together, I bought the bag. I don't even remember how much it was. Something like $3.70 for a pound I think. Heck, I don't even know how much a can of hominy would cost in the grocery store.

The label says this has already been skinned so I'm thankful I don't have to do that limestone thing with it. (Wouldn't have bought it if that was the case.)

I found a couple of recipes in the vast number of cookbooks I have. Using these recipes as a base, I went for what I thought was basic. I pulled some already cooked smoked pork butt and brisket from the freezer, along with a turkey carcus left from some holiday meal. I cut up a couple of medium sized onions and roughly chopped about 4-5 garlic cloves (did I ever mention that I love garlic?).

After washing/rinsing the dried posole, I added it to a pot of water with about a quarter of the onion and one close of garlic. I brought the water to a boil and then lowered the heat to a simmer. I found this would be a 2-3 hour process to get the dried posole (hominy)to plump up and soften (soaking overnight may have saved some time).

Meanwhile, I put together the soup base. I added the remainder of the onion, the garlic, three cut up and seeds removed cayenne peppers, three sliced medium anaheim chiles, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground black pepper, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp cumin, 1 can stewed tomatoes and the pork butt (1/2 lb), brisket 1/2 lb) and a turkey carcus to a dutch oven. This was to simmer for about an hour.


Once the posole was softened, I drained the water and added it to the soup base. This was cooked another 30 minutes. The seasonings were corrected with a little more salt to taste.

Sylvie's Posole was served.

Italian Sausage Fattie, Chicken and Zuchinni

Had some cousins over this past Sunday and I decided to put together some little snacks. Of course when I say snacks it turns into a full meal. I decided that since I put on the smoker, I might as well put on a chicken too.

What is a fattie? It's sausage formed into a large bullet shape and then smoked. The meat is usually something like breakfast sausage but I decided to remove the casing from some itallian sausage and mold the meat into the sausage shape. Typically it is also stuffed with varying foods such as chopped veggies, cheese, or whatever other treat you want to bite into. These were stuffed with bell pepper and onion.

Chicken (picture taken before sauce carmelized)

Weekend Dog Blogging

Ziggy is back for another week of dog blogging. We missed a couple of weeks while I was off with my daughter in Philadelphia. (I am also preparing a post on filling a college kids pantry for move into an apartment or dorm room. Now every kid is different but my T has some really "out there" culinary choices.)

Back to Ziggy. I posted a little blip about something I was overjoyed about when I returned from Phillie. A special introduction for Ziggy. Well, as somethings go, this didn't turn out the way I planned. Without thinking about it, I placed a deposit on another little Yorkie puppy. His name is Mr. Miyagi and he is 7 1/2 months old. His owner needed to sell him because of some lease/rental problems with pets. It turns out, she didn't have all the stated papers she said she had for him so I had to cancel the purchase and she refused to lower the ourchase price. He was so sweet and cute, but things turn out the way they do for a reason.

Sweetnicks hosts Weekend dog blogging every week. Visit her site to see all the other cute pets.

Five Things to Eat Before You Die

I've been tagged by Curt at Bucky's Barbecue Blog for another meme that's going around with the folks at The Traveler's Lunchbox listing all the responses from bloggers all over the world. The title of this event is called the Foodbloggers Guide to the Globe .

The goal this to list five and only Five things to Eat Before You Die with the object in mind of what you think everyone should eat at some point in their life.

I made the mistake of reading through the responses of other food bloggers which made my first choices not seem so unique. Then I just decided to go with what I eat and love. There are so many regional favorites in the U.S. My choices include a "Soul Fusion" of foods with a southern U.S. flare mixed with traditional American style cookies plus a tribute to New Orleans with oysters on the half shell. Anyway, this is what I came up with. Each is a treat I love.


1. Fried Chicken with a cripsy crust. I like it home fried in a cast iron skillet with a dusting of flour and seasoning. Growing up, my mother cooked this once a week with french fries from potatoes she sliced by hand and also fried in crisco oil.
2. Southern Greens (mustards and collards). A southern treat cooked in a broth flavored with a smoked hamhock, onion, garlic, salt, pepper and a bit of hot pepper.
3. Raw Oysters on the halfshell with hotsauce and lemon plus a dab of horseradish. I remember this as a special treat I had at the oyster bar in New Orleans called the Acme Seafood Company.
4. White chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies. My own special recipe which make a flavorful soft cookie.
5. BLT Sandwich (Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato). Simply cooked bacon with bread slices slathered with mayonnaise with tomato and lettuce slices.

These are my choices. I'd like to tag a couple of folks. Hope they will join the Foodbloggers Guide to The Globe.

Peanut Butter Etouffee
Oishi Eats

I'll Show You Mine

This months edition of "I'll Show you Mine" highlights the one item in your kitchen that you can't do without. From first look, I'll bet some would say the stove. No, though a close second. The cast iron skillets on the stove are my # 1 kitchen items. I use the larger one almost every day and it is always majestically perched on a burner, ready for its next job.

Though this entry is late, I'm still thankful to Cate of Sweetnicks for hosting .

I'm Bubbling With Joy

Why? Well, I'll let you know more by Wednesday. Let me just say that Ziggy is going to meet Mr. Miyagi. This could be interesting.

Labor Day Weekend In Philadelphia

Well it has bee a rather exciting week. That is if you call a week of rain, drizzle and cooler than normal temperatures in the midst of the last summer holiday weekend fun. I can see it now. Return to L.A. and back to work. Someone politely asks how was your vacation. My response if I'm truthful would be that I spent it spending money on my daughter for food, clothes, apartment necessities and sleeping on a hard futon bed which I had to share with her.

We walked in the rain (great exercise) to most local University of Pennsylvania eateries and campus destinations. My suitcase was full of summer clothes with the exception of an umbrella and basic blue jeans. I had to buy a sweater for the cool temps.

The highlight of the week for me was supposed to be the reservations I made for the "Striped Bass" on Friday and "Morimoto's" on Sunday with my vegetarian, non foodie daughter. Well, needless to say, we did keep the "Striped Bass" reservation. We selected the tasting menu at $85 per person. I had a 7 oz glass of a very fruity wine along with a bottle of Pelligrino for the table. Tax and tip, it was a $250 meal for two. Christopher Lee, the noted chef was no where to be found. Note to self- Never take daughter to another expensive restaurant unless she has proven that she can fake interest or truly enjoy it. I must admit, I was a little disappointed in the food so she was a little correct. Anyway, I cancelled the Morimoto reservation for today. Per T, she would prefer I spend the dollars on a nice outfit for her rather than "Omakase" at $120 per person regardless of whether it was at a real Iron Chef's restaurant or not and did I really think he would be there to cook for me.

So, we are now heading to the SEPTA to shop in Center City. I do have a rental car, but parking and navigating the Phillie roads is quite taxing on the nerves.