Why is it that Butter Chicken has exploded in popularity so much? I see it everywhere and it just so happened to coincide with my own discovery of butter chicken. It's weird.
For those of you unaware, Butter Chicken is a mixture of spices stewed with tomatoes and some kind of dairy product to make a creamy, spicy curry like product in which is served chunks of Tandoori chicken. It is traditionally served with naan (a popular Indian flatbread) and basmati rice.
New York Fries, for instance, now has a Butter Chicken poutine which sounds interesting, but I have an inkling that it might be disgusting. I'm not sure.
The availability of premade spice blends for the sauce is increasing as well, safeway now has no less than 5 different types of mixtures, and other supermarkets (including Co-op and Superstore) have even more.
If you haven't tried it already I would urge you to now, before McDonald puts it on a piece of crispy chicken and makes a Butter Chicken McMini. Though I'm not gonna lie, I'd eat that.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Friday, November 26, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Quack.
Lately I've been thinking about how I can spice up my Christmas dinner, I had a conversation (in great detail) with one of my coworkers about a very, very tasty Italian inspired meal.
Have you ever had duck? If not consider yourself lucky; duck is extremely easy to do badly. Duck can be greasy, tough, and generally overcooked by the average cook. Instead, a good duck should be medium-well, drained of most of the fat and deliciously tender. That's not easy, it involves scoring the skin just so, without cutting the meat, searing it at just the right temperature so that the duck doesn't burn before you've rendered most of the fat, and finally making sure that you cook it for just long enough.
Michael Smith has an excellent take on how to do duck, if you're interested.
Anyway, the thought was to cook duck for Christmas Dinner instead of turkey or any other fowl.
Duck isn't strictly Italian, but it'll do. Seasoning the duck with a little bit of salt and pepper and searing it off nicely will impart all the flavours you need, no additional spices or herbs required.
Once you've successfully rendered all of the fat out of a few duck breasts (rendering the fat really is the most important thing when cooking duck) the thought was that if you toasted some good rye and sourdough bread cubes in a small amount of the fat (SMALL AMOUNT, no one wants a mouthful of grease) and then added some mirepoix (finely diced onion, carrots, and celery) as well as some garlic, you would have a very tasty mixture. Throw in some Italian herbs, notably sage and a touch of oregano, and lastly a very small amount of diced stewed tomatoes, if you aren't using san marzano tomatoes I suggest you slap yourself, and you'd have a damn good panzenella salad.
Or at least that's what we were thinking. If I ever try it, I'll let you know.
Have you ever had duck? If not consider yourself lucky; duck is extremely easy to do badly. Duck can be greasy, tough, and generally overcooked by the average cook. Instead, a good duck should be medium-well, drained of most of the fat and deliciously tender. That's not easy, it involves scoring the skin just so, without cutting the meat, searing it at just the right temperature so that the duck doesn't burn before you've rendered most of the fat, and finally making sure that you cook it for just long enough.
Michael Smith has an excellent take on how to do duck, if you're interested.
Anyway, the thought was to cook duck for Christmas Dinner instead of turkey or any other fowl.
Duck isn't strictly Italian, but it'll do. Seasoning the duck with a little bit of salt and pepper and searing it off nicely will impart all the flavours you need, no additional spices or herbs required.
Once you've successfully rendered all of the fat out of a few duck breasts (rendering the fat really is the most important thing when cooking duck) the thought was that if you toasted some good rye and sourdough bread cubes in a small amount of the fat (SMALL AMOUNT, no one wants a mouthful of grease) and then added some mirepoix (finely diced onion, carrots, and celery) as well as some garlic, you would have a very tasty mixture. Throw in some Italian herbs, notably sage and a touch of oregano, and lastly a very small amount of diced stewed tomatoes, if you aren't using san marzano tomatoes I suggest you slap yourself, and you'd have a damn good panzenella salad.
Or at least that's what we were thinking. If I ever try it, I'll let you know.
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