Charcoal-Grilled Thai-Style Chicken with Spicy Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce (CI)

This is completely unrelated to the recipe I'm featuring in this blog entry, but I didn't exactly want to do a full travel blog entry about the food I ate while on vacation in NYC a couple weeks ago.  Especially now since I have a smartphone and can post pictures and updates right to Facebook these days.
However, for the people I'm not Facebook friends with, this was hands-down the most amazing meal I had in the city that week and also representative of my NEW FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Mission Chinese Food at 154 Orchard St in the Lower East Side.

Picture here is the Beef Heart & Hokkaido Scallop Sashimi (sublime), the ridiculously popular Thrice-Cooked Bacon (ooh, spicy!), and some rye-based cocktail with a name riffing on Twin Peaks.  I assume that's what I had to drink.  They don't list their cocktail menu on the internet.

In other food related ventures over the course of the handful of days I spent in NYC, I ate at Acme, Fatty Crab, M Wells, Hide-Chan Ramen, Tacos Matamoros, and Crif Dogs.  I sipped a few cocktails at PDT and a soju slushie and Momofuku Noodle Bar.  Also drinks at less notable bars.
Anyway, the entry on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010 issue.

Chicken and Brine

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup table salt [I don't really believe in plain-Jane iodized salt.  I know that kosher salt is not at all a one-to-one swap with table salt, but I use it anyway in brines.]
• 4 split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, about 12 ounces each
• Disposable aluminum roasting pan   

Dipping Sauce

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 limes
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 3 small garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (1 1/2 teaspoons)
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Rub

• 2/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 to 3 limes
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1/4 cup)
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for cooking grate.

Brand new grill, brand new chimney starter, and natural hardwood charcoal briquettes.

Sorry, folks, starter fluid and gas grills are for sissies.

The dipping sauce resembles the condiment my parents perpetually make and have on hand in the fridge.  Except instead of red pepper flakes, they use fresh Thai chiles.

I had my parents take home a piece of each part of the resulting food I made, but I figured they didn't have to take any of this sauce home with them.

The rub involved a stupid amount of prep.  I'm really not sure how long exactly it took me to microplane all that garlic, but it was a long-ass time on top of everything else.  Plus I was grill-roasting sweet potatoes in the meantime which meant I dash up and down two flights of stairs every 15 minutes.  Christ, what a pain in the ass.

Brine the breasts for at least 30 minutes but no more than 1 hour.  I've read about the science of brining several times by now, but all I can tell without looking shit up is that there's some sort of hocus-pocus that's provides additional protection against dry poultry or pork.  However, proteins should only be brined for an appropriate amount of time.

A modified two-level fire means that the coals are banked to one half of the grill.  The chicken's first browned on the hot side and ideally left to finish cooking on the cooler side.
The retarded amount of prep and the fact that I had pretty much completely cooked the sweet potatoes by the time I was ready to grill the chicken and also that I have a baby rather than full-size Weber means I was eventually tempted to cook shit on the "hot" side (the coals being pretty spent).  Even taking this short cut, it took much longer than stated in the recipe to get the breasts to register 160 degrees.

It was about 9:30 PM on Saturday night when I was finally ready to eat my first goddamn meal of the day.  I'm sure anything would've tasted terrific after running around all afternoon on empty, but this was really insanely good.  The chicken was so moist and flavorful.
I ate this and subsequent leftovers using only my hands.  So primal.

Caramel Pork with Hong Kong Noodles (EYH)

The Pork

• 1 1/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon five-spice powder
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup Shaoxing wine or dry sherry [I already owned dry sherry.]
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 to 1 1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch strips [Stupid me didn't know what that meant and cut them up in stir-fry size slices.]

Minced garlic.

Not exactly beaten to a fine paste in my new mortar and pestle, but everything is certainly obliterated.

Marinade.

Pork is marinated for at least 12 hours and up to 2 days.  In my case, probably about 24 hours.

I assume this would've been easier to rig up if I had cut strips of the shoulder an inch in width.

They're roasted in the oven on a rack over 1/2 inch of water.

Fried Garlic Garnish

• 5 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Garlic cloves are covered with cold water, brought to a boil and drained twice to cut some of their edge.

Couldn't understand how I could possibly use a candy thermometer to measure the temperature of 1/4 cup of oil so my garlic cloves aren't golden brown but mahagony.

Caramel Sauce

• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup soy sauce

Two cups of sugar.

Cooked down into caramel.

And thinned out with the soy sauce and a 1/2 cup of water.

Finish the Dish

• Salt
• 1 pound Hong Kong or wonton noodles
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 splash neutral oil, such as grapeseed or canola
• 4 scallions, thinly slice on the bias
• 2 tablespoons sil gochu ["You could certainly substitute thinly sliced fresh chilies or crushed dried chili as long as there's some heat to balance the salty sweetness of the sauce."]

I dunno if I really have a vessel where I can create an ice bath to shock blanch noodles.  Did a rather poor job transferring the noodles over.
I don't have a lot of experiences with ice baths yet.

Thrown together with the oil in the pan to heat the noodles back up.

 
Throw the pork in the caramel sauce and heat those up as well.

Toss the noodles, pork, and sauce and top with garlic and sil gochu.  Or in my case, gochugaru, Korean ground red chili.
How did I like this dish?  It was pretty satisfying I must admit, but involves a whole bunch of culinary gymnastics to pull together.  Perhaps for Thanksgiving.

Stir-Fried Pork, Eggplant, and Onion with Garlic and Black Pepper (CATKTV)

Sauce

• 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  
• 2 1/2 tablespoons low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Pork and Vegetables

• 1 (12-ounce) pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat and silver skin and cut into 1/4 inch strips [I used pork loin because the only tenderloin at Stop and Shop is pre-marinated.]
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 3 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1/4 cup) [Peeling and microplane-ing this amount of garlic took ridiculous amount of time.]
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 medium eggplant (1 pound), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1 large onion, halved and cut into 1/4-inch wedges
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
  

Between peeling and finely grating the garlic, hand-grinding the black pepper, and picking off cilantro leaves, the prep involved was INVOLVED.
The other prep was a breeze later in comparison, and stir-fries are the opposite of a 3-hour braise.


Cooking through the slivers of pork in about 2 minutes.


Browning the eggplant until it is no longer spongy. I saw some graffiti eggplant at Trader Joe's yesterday. I wish I had been playing with that.




In goes the onions.
Also keep in mind, that everything is being cooked in stages over high heat. Most things cooked in just a couple of minutes. The eggplant just took a few minutes longer.


Clearing out the center of the pan and cooking the aromatics (in this case, garlic and black pepper) in the center of the pan seems like it's a pretty classic technique for cuisines ranging from Southeast Asia to Italy.


A strong stir-fry. It didn't wow me, but it certainly tasted cleaner than oily thing I might hope to expect to order in a restaurant.
Plus there's about 3 more recipes worth of pork loin in my freezer now.

Rolled Kaled with Tofu and Fermented Black Beans (HCEV)

• about 8 large kale leaves, washed (or collards, mustard greens and chard. I've been using chard because they consistently have large leaves at the moment.)
• about a pound of tofu (preferably baked, pressed, or panfried [I've gone with baked which is as easy and 1-2 pounds of tofu baked at 350 degrees F for 1 hour]
• 2 tablespoons neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 cup sake or mirin (Honestly I don't think sake has a place here) or water
• 1/2 cup fermented black beans
• soy sauce and dark sesame oil to garnish

Pretty, pretty rainbow chard. I didn't even glance at my other options when I saw this at the Whole Foods in Central.

Chopped chard stems nestling with the "minced" garlic. Bittman claims that he only goes so far to finely chop the stuff. ATK believes garlic pressing is the way to go (which is what I do when I cook ATK). I read at least a couple of times that pressing bruises or muddies or whatevers the flavor of garlic. But then again I'm also told that prep of garlic and onion right before use (like when it goes in the pan and not 30 minutes before) is the only way to get the optimal flavor from these ingredients. What the hell you say? I've read too much cooking literature, but I still refrigerate tomatoes even though that destroys cell walls and loss of flavor.


Wikipedia:

Mise en place ( literally "putting in place") is a French phrase defined by the Culinary Institute of America as "everything in place", as in set up. It is used in professional kitchens to refer to organizing and arranging the ingredients (e.g., cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, par-cooked items, spices, freshly chopped vegetables, and other components) that a cook will require for the menu items that he or she expects to prepare during his/her shift.

Resting on a bed of Trader Joe's Tri-Color Quinoa.