Battle of the Asian Chickens, or, Asian-Chicken Two Ways

Today I present to you two different recipes for Asian-inspired, bone-in chicken… one delicious, and one so caustically salty that you probably should stay away from it unless you are either a goat or just want to know what it feels like to live inside a salt lick.

First of all, let’s discuss the medium: this is really embarrassing, but when I was a broke single girl, my favourite payday treat was buying a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, and then eating it for three meals a day for three days straight to try to get through it all… but, because I only had ever bought these from the store and don’t (obviously) have a rotisserie in my kitchen, I just always figured I would never be able to make roast chickens as good as the ones from Kroger. (I told you it was embarrassing). Oh well, we all start somewhere.

Consequently, I’m always still amazed when I make a chicken dish that is delicious—but the truth is, it’s hard NOT to make delicious chicken when you’re working with a whole chicken instead of dried-up, flavourless, boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I remain, however, confused as to why every chicken recipe in the box seems to require ‘a whole chicken, cut-up.’ Using our knives, which are fairly decent, sharp, and new, I can’t cut up a chicken and even Judson is always kind of at a loss when it comes to hacking through the breastbone. Are chickens today eating more calcium and thus growing up with stronger bones? Did everyone in the 1950s own a cleaver and butcher block? Did whole chickens used to be sold cut up into their component pieces? Did housewives walk around with biceps like bodybuilders from cleaving chickens every day? These are the questions I just don’t know the answers to, but luckily I have a cooking partner who helps whenever there is knife requirements that my puny arms won’t handle.

Anyway, the more delicious of these two recipes does require you to remember to marinate the chicken—ideally overnight, but a few hours or even less will do if you’re in a rush. Seriously, though: if you have time to marinate this for a night, do it. You won’t be sorry. The acid in the grapefruit juice make the chicken so tender and the soy sauce leaves the skin tight and glossy when it’s done roasting (or barbecuing, if you somehow live somewhere that’s not a frozen tundra wasteland right now). We ate it with roasted green beans, and it was quite possibly the best meal I’ve had all month.

The other recipe requires just as much soy sauce but the chicken is boiled in it instead of marinating in it, and the sauce reduces into a sticky glaze that’s more salty than flavourful. We still ate it, but it wasn’t worth it. Also, in an unrelated funny fact, this recipe was supposed to be for chicken wings only, but the night I decided to make it was in the middle of the floods that are (still) paralysing Northern England, and a weird side effect of Northern England being flooded out is that deliveries can’t make it to Scotland. As an American, it didn’t occur to me that if England was blocked, nothing would be able to get through to Scotland, because I’ve never lived on an island this small. But the day I went to pick up the ingredients, the grocery store looked like the grocery stores in Florida used to look when a hurricane was on the way. So, without access to ‘just wings,’ I ended up with a box of something called ‘thigh tenderloins,’ which did the job well enough but I still wouldn’t recommend this recipe unless you’re looking for a satisfying way to dehydrate yourself.

For previous battle recipes, see Apple Crisps, Macaroons, and Strawberry Shortcakes here and here.

The verdict:
Soy Chicken 1: Crispy, Tender Roasted Asian Chicken

5 spoons out of five. I still have some grapefruit juice leftover and this chicken is so good I’m considering making it again this weekend. Put it in to marinate tonight and you’ll be eating in high-style tomorrow night!

Soy Chicken 2: Soy-Glazed Chicken Tenderloins

2 spoons out of five. These weren’t a total disaster—as I said, we ate them. But they were too salty to impart any other flavours, and the texture was overall a bit too tough for us.

The recipe:

Crispy, Tender Roasted Asian Chicken

The directions:

In a large, shallow dish or Ziploc bag, mix together soy sauce, grapefruit juice, sugar, and ginger.
Add chicken pieces and stir thoroughly to coat.
Cover and marinate in refrigerator for several hours or overnight.
Remove chicken from marinade and brush with oil.
Roast 30 minutes at 200C/400F, then place under broiler (grill for you Brits!) for an additional 5-10 minutes, depending on the strength of your broiler.
Chicken is done when it's glossy on the outside and the juices run clear when it's cut.

The ingredients:

1 c soy sauce
1 c grapefruit juice
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 chicken, cut into pieces
1/4 c vegetable or other neutral oil

The recipe:

Soy-Glazed Chicken Tenderloins

The directions:

Put oil in a cast-iron pan and heat until shimmering.
Add chicken and saute until chicken is yellow.
Add soy sauce until bottom of pan is covered, then sprinkle brown sugar over the pan and stir to combine and coat chicken.
Cook over low heat and allow soy sauce and sugar to reduce into a sticky glaze.
Saute chicken 20 minutes or until done.

The ingredients:

1 tbsp olive or other neutral oil
1 package chicken wings or tenderloins
1 c soy sauce
2-3 tbsp brown sugar

"I Told You I'd Be Back Eventually" Cheesecake, or, Double-Chocolate Layer Cheesecake

Well, I’m back from my wee break. And though the break was awesome, I’m excited to be back and have so much to say!

Taking two weeks off after posting every day for a month was a much-needed break. Even though December’s Holiday Almanac posts were short, they were still time-consuming to do every single day and it was great to have some time off on hols in Austria and then here in Edinburgh, cooking all the things that I’ve been wanting to make that DON’T have a place in the box… things like Broccoli with Oyster Sauce, Smoky Bean and Kale Soup, Sriracha Mac and Cheese, Baked Coconut Milk Chicken and a Galette des Rois for Epiphany.

It’s been a lot of fun, but I’m excited to get back into the swing of things and I’ve been easing myself into it cooking a few recipes over the last week when the mood struck.

And to celebrate my return, what better way to start 2016 than with the FINAL Cheesecake recipe of The Recipe Box?

You may have noticed that (for the first time since starting this blog!) I skipped making a cheesecake in December because I figured baking a different thing each day was enough, but that still means I’ve made a total of eleven cheesecakes over the past year, and I’m proud to say I’ve learned a thing or two in the process.

  • First of all: don’t discount an easy recipe! The easiest cheesecake I made over the past year was my favourite, and it didn’t even require a spring form pan!
  • In the absence of graham crackers and zwieback, my preferred crust is rich tea biscuits—not digestives, which are too grainy and disruptive. But if you’re up for something a little more exciting, grinding up a heap of chocolate bourbon cream biscuits in the food processor and adding just a wee drizzle of melted butter makes for a decadent and delicious chocolate crust.
  • I prefer cream cheese based cheesecakes, none of this ricotta and pot cheese and sour cream nonsense.
  • The more eggs in a cheesecake, the more of a pain it’s going to be to make… and the more dishes it’s going to dirty when you try to.
  • ‘Layered’ cheesecakes are so much harder than they look and I still haven’t made one that looks as pretty as the pictures always do.
  • Last (and perhaps most importantly), no one in your taste-testing audience is going to care if your cheesecake has a crack in it, or if your layers are slightly less… layered than the photos of cheesecakes they’ve seen on menus and Pinterest. Making cheesecakes is a learned skill, and every recipe is different. They’re temperamental and prone to drastically different results from miniscule changes (were your eggs actually room temperature? Did you open the oven? Did your mixer get too full to really blend the milk all the way into the batter?), and they take more practice to get right than anything else I’ve ever baked. I’m still no expert, but the people who have tasted one (or more!) aren’t complaining about my lack of expertise. They’re just excited they got some cheesecake.

This is a bigger lesson I’ve been trying to remind myself of this year: Julia Child may have said it best when she said that cooks should never apologise for their food, and the same goes for their cheesecakes. Stand up and be proud of your cooking—and your baking—even if it ends up being a massive disaster. The worst that could happen is that you end up with an awesome story to tell.

This cheesecake, however, will not be one of those disasters. I saved it for last because, even though it just comes from a Philadelphia cream cheese ad, it involves some pretty exciting things: a crunchy chocolate crust made with chocolate sandwich cookies, a layer of plain cheesecake, a layer of deep dark bitter sweet chocolate cheesecake, marshmallow crème, and you don’t even have to bake it! (And did I mention that this recipe gives you an excuse to buy marshmallow crème?

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. DID I MENTION THE BOURBON CREAM CRUST AND THE MARSHMALLOW CREME STIRRED INTO THE BATTER?

the recipe:

Double-Chocolate Layer Cheesecake

the directions:
crust:

Mix together crumbs and melted butter until the mixture has a sandy texture.
Press mixture into the bottom of a springform pan, and press up the sides as much as possible.

filling:

Whip the cream until light and fluffy, then set aside. 
Wipe out your mixing bowl and continue.
Sprinkle gelatin over cold water and allow to soften while you beat together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until very smooth.
Heat gelatin very slowly (in the microwave using 15 second bursts or over low heat on the stove) until gelatin has dissolved into the water.
Gradually add gelatin mixture to cream cheese mixture, beating well until blended.
Beat in marshmallow creme and make sure not to leave too many big marshmallow creme lumps.
Fold in whipped cream gently, just until blended.
Pour 2 cups of cream cheese mixture into a medium-sized mixing bowl and beat in melted chocolate quickly (the melted chocolate will seize as soon as it hits the cold cream cheese mixture, so try to work as fast as possible with a whisk to blend).
Pour the plain cream cheese mixture over the crust and carefully spoon over the chocolate mixture, noting that you won't be able to spread it so try to spoon it evenly.
Chill until firm (this took me overnight).

the ingredients:
the crust:

2 c chocolate wafer crumbs (I used bourbon creams, but if you're Stateside, you could use Oreos)
1/3 c butter, melted (if you're not using sandwich cookies, increase this to 1/2 c)

the filling:

1 c whipping cream, whipped
4 tsp gelatin, unflavoured
1/4 c cold water
16 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
7 oz marshmallow creme (for me, this was a regular-sized jar from the American grocery store in town)
1/2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips or baking chocolate, melted

Holiday Almanac December 31: Happy New Year!

For more information on the Holiday Almanac, go hereOr to see what I've been up to on past Holiday Almanac days, check out this page.

Today's task in the Holiday Almanac isn't a task so much as a wish for an amazing 1960... or, in our case, a wish for an incredible 2016.

It also comes with a 'hope that our Holiday Almanac has helped make your holiday season happier and easier.'

Ahem, I think I can speak for all of us when I say that it may have made my holiday season more challenging and fun, but easier, it definitely did not.

So from The Recipe Box Project kitchen to you, happy new year and best wishes for an amazing 2016! I'll be taking a wee holiday at the beginning of January (all this December baking has my oven-- and my waistline-- in need of a break!), but I'll be back soon, and in the meantime, take a browse through the archives if you're in need of some good January meals... we EXCEL at wintry comfort food here at the Recipe Box Project!

the verdict:

2015 gets 5 spoons out of five from me, it was a pretty great year from start to finish.