Are you Jerkin' my Chicken?

I received a fresh batch of very beautiful habbies from Big Ed. I'm so excited to feature them in a baked jerk chicken.



Last night I soaked the chicken in this wet marinade made from tons of fragrant dried spices (my arms are sore from grinding), vinegar, orange & lime juice, soy sauce and olive oil. I added 7! of the dried habanero red peppers, the motivation for this dish (didn't take out the seeds, yikes!). We're thrill seekers. We have amazing jerk in the neighborhood, and I think to really get it spot on you need to smoke the meat on a grill. So I stand here humble and knowing my place.

But unless I want to set the fire escape in flames, I'd better stick to interior heat. But you can't get stuck in the details. I'm sure it will be delicious either way. I am going to try to get that grilled flavor, the crisp and slight burn on the chicken with a brief trip through the broiler. I'll serve it with some of that reserved marinade heated and reduced on top. Instead of collard greens and mac & cheese, the amazing familiar sides, I'll need to figure something more heart smart. You know, P's gettin' a little long in the tooth, so I gotta watch his ticker.

Recipe from: The Sugar Reef Carribean Cookbook," by Devra Dedeaux (sounds legit, although she only used 1 scotch bonnet in her recipe). I say, if you're going to go, go BIG right? So I thought seven peppers should provide the 'Yeowww!' that you need to feel automatically when you taste the jerk sauce. Then all the various other flavors will swarm your pallet before the heat comes back to b#@$h slap your tongue into the next room.

Next day:
Okay we just came out of recovery. We got jerked! This was some full bodied flavor and heat. Delicious, but we decided this was a creeper jerk. The heat rolled up on us like a Mexican home grown. Overall rating - best use of habbies so far.

Imagine no spaghetti, I wonder if you can

I have time to myself with P gone. I rearranged the living room and cleaned the apartment. I took the laundry in. I packed up the summer clothes and exchanged them in the closets for the winter stuff. I dusted, I mopped, I showered. Now I am going to OD on pasta.

I have to. Its what I know.

When I was little the only thing I knew how to make was Kraft spaghetti mix because they sold it as a boxed set, the spaghetti, sauce and cheese and gave you real specific instructions. My mom and dad were very hard at work trying to make a Mexican restaurant work in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana in the late 60's, early 70's. They were always gone, working and when they weren't working they were sleeping and barely that. This didn't prompt me to learn to cook by any means, I did however learn how to clean pretty well. I remember the first time I mopped the kitchen floor and was fascinated that it seemed to magically change ten shades lighter and it had a color to it! Cleaning ended up being soothing for me, making me feel like things were ok and so did spaghetti.

Thank goodness my mom left me enough money to buy my daily fix. I had the routine down. I waited until I was so hungry that I could muster the courage to leave the house. I was shy. I hiked it up the hill to Hep's Dairy. I had just enough to get that boxed spaghetti, a bag of Seyfert's barbeque potato chips and a coke. If there was change, I'd treat myself to some penny candy. I can still kinda smell the sauce cooking up, dropping in that seasoning packet and waiting the ten minutes for the pasta to cook. Its seemed very upscale at the time. I must've eaten that every day for years. And ever since, anytime I feel a little lonely or sick or nervous, I eat spaghetti. It's comforting but not in the way that mashed potatoes are comforting. This is more like self medicating comfort. Its less romantic and more pathetic but its what I know and it works for me.

P's back tomorrow night. So tonight I will wrap myself in a turkey sausage, baby portabello mushroom and fresh tomato sauce over linguine sprinkled with fresh basil. And lots of it! ...and a chocolate ice cream chaser.

Authentic Curry

That roasted curried cauliflower left us hankerin' for more curry. We used to get a mean beef curry with green beans from Three Bow Thai on Smith Street (R.I.P.) that I was trying to model my dish after. Of course I have all this chicken so I made mine with boneless breasts. I didn't have curry paste at first, which lead me to research the differences in powders and pastes and then Indian versus Thai curry. So that lead me to make a cook-off challenge; Battle of the Curries.

Last night we had the Thai based off a basic recipe. I really love the lemon grass, the fresh green beans and onions, the basil. I believe I may have done well, not amazing. I'm trying to pinpoint what was missing as far as authenticity. Maybe it needed more of something...fish sauce maybe. I didn't add ginger and now I see most recipes call for it. I did add some Big Ed's dried pepper flakes and some white pepper for heat. I need a wok that will give me the high temperature the dish needs to achieve too, so maybe that was it.

Speaking of Curries, The Runaways sort of changed my life back in Fort Wayne. I was drowning in a sea of uncoolness in my white orthopedic shoes working as a dispensing optician by day and searching for intelligent life by night. Saving my pennies to move to California. I would get relief by driving during my lunch break and blasting my power booster with some Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. I was thrilled Joan Jett had gone solo and even though I couldn't really understand that glitter-glam pop stuff she was doing, I still thought she was an amazing rhythm guitarist and overall cool chick. But when I first saw pictures of the Runaways I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Joan Jett was me and Cherie Currie was the sidekick I needed. She liked Bowie and wore those amazing boots! She had perfectly feathered bangs and wore corsets. She understood what it was all about. Or so I thought at that time. Time always tells the true story P's always sayin'.

I found a Cherie in the Fort, my high school buddy and fellow stoner, B. She looked the part but secretly liked Styx I later discovered. Her blond hair was a boy magnet and she always managed to find a party. She wore a great pair of high blond leather boots and indulged my rock dream rants. The truth came out eventually that she wanted to be married and have a family. Nothin' wrong with that. Bless her heart though she moved out west with me and we had a blast for a while.