What's Cooking?

[ness]

17 minutes ago, BilletHead said:

Nice. Looks great. Have thinly sliced goose for Sichuan marinating now. It will get the Velvet treatment as soon as we get home. 

Nice!

I need to reverse engineer the same restaurant's Szechuan chicken recipe too. Very good too. Sauce is dark, garlicy, spicy, winey. Interesting -- they use jicama instead of water chestnuts. Much better crunch. 

[rps]

3 hours ago, ness said:

Nice!

I need to reverse engineer the same restaurant's Szechuan chicken recipe too. Very good too. Sauce is dark, garlicy, spicy, winey. Interesting -- they use jicama instead of water chestnuts. Much better crunch. 

Interesting task. I would start with sherry and unseasoned rice vinegar, soy, fish sauce, garlic, a touch of oyster sauce, chili oil and several drops of sesame oil, and corn starch.

[rps]

We, the residents here in garden homes, were planning to have a Saturday evening , socially distanced, outdoor, 4th of July grill party. I made tabouli and Lebanese steakhouse style hummus. This morning we received a notice the six employees tested positive and contact tracing had begun. They closed, again, the public dine in facilities. This spooked our prospective attendees. We all agreed to cancel. I had already made a huge batch of tabouli and a batch of Lebanese steakhouse style hummus. The wife and I spent the afternoon delivering  portions to our neighbors.

Tonight we will have pork tenderloin, tabouli, and hummus.

[ness]

35 minutes ago, rps said:

Interesting task. I would start with sherry and unseasoned rice vinegar, soy, fish sauce, garlic, a touch of oyster sauce, chili oil and several drops of sesame oil, and corn starch.

No heat, no color, no vinegar bite.

Scaled up for dinner and added rice. Very good but needed more sauce. 

[BilletHead]

48 minutes ago, ness said:

No heat, no color, no vinegar bite.

Scaled up for dinner and added rice. Very good but needed more sauce. 

     So we have learned to double the sauce part in the recipe we use.

     Ness what temperature did you velvet the chicken at? Our meat is sliced pretty thin. About 1/8 th inch. Hit 275 and pitch a handful into the hot oil for 45 seconds. Spider it out. Let oil hit 275 and repeat until all is cooked.

[ness]

9 minutes ago, BilletHead said:

     So we have learned to double the sauce part in the recipe we use.

     Ness what temperature did you velvet the chicken at? Our meat is sliced pretty thin. About 1/8 th inch. Hit 275 and pitch a handful into the hot oil for 45 seconds. Spider it out. Let oil hit 275 and repeat until all is cooked.

The velveting part is in boiling water with chicken probably ⅛ inch thick.  About 2 minutes then pull. Using very little oil in our stir fry. 

[Johnsfolly]

7 hours ago, ness said:

Been trying to reverse engineer a recipe from our favorite local Chinese place they simply call Chicken and Snow Peas. I've had it at other places, so I know it's not a one off. Web searches were all over the board and none seemed very close. So I struck out on my own and got it very close.

First step was to 'velvet' the chicken. Sliced chicken thinly and marinated them in a mixture of cornstarch and sherry. Lotsa velvet recipes I saw included vinegar, egg white and other stuff. I figured the cornstarch was the key so I kept it simple. Mixed that in with the chicken and marinated for about 15 minutes. Then I dropped the chicken pieces into boiling water for a couple minutes to get the cooking started then removed. It was very soft, juicy, slightly underdone chicken at this point.

Then it was a pretty basic stir fry -- chicken, thinly sliced onion, snap peas (I had a bunch from the garden so I used them instead of snow peas) and garlic. Done quickly -- no browning. 

Then the sauce. I couldn't find anything that sounded right so I winged it. The ones we've had are pale, almost white, savory, thin sauces. I remember savory, wine, garlic, chick broth flavors. So I went with sherry, a touch of soy sauce, a little chicken bouillon, water and a little corn starch. Threw all that in the hot skillet and let it go a a minute or two to pick up flavors and thicken slightly. Turned out very good -- it's a keeper.

 

Looks great Ness. I used to velvet chicken all the time, then just stopped doing it. Not sure now why, maybe due to the extra pot to clean or time. I would make something similar to this dish, but have straw mushrooms in the mix. Was one of my daughter's favorites.

[Dutch]

Fourth of July dinner.  Lamb kabobs with onions, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and pineapple.  Washed down with some elderberry mead. 

[Fish24/7]

Basically a chicken pot pie filling served over biscuits

[rps]

Main course: smoked bratwurst with onions and burst tomatoes with a balsamic finish, served over cheesy yellow corn grits.

Dessert: Free form fresh peach tart.