GET INTO MY BELLY
March 20, 2017
You might have noticed that it’s been a few months since I blogged. What happened, you ask?
Life. Life happened.
And...honestly...I started writing this post months ago. But it didn't feel...amazing. Or perfect. And made no signs of ever going to be.
It took me three months to wrestle through all of this but here's the thing, I can’t expect everything I post up here to be like a fine glass of whiskey and a plate of caramel covered hand-made pretzels that cause the reader to snigger in amusement or moan in pleasure over, feeling the Power of the Words resonating into the deeps of their soul.
I just wanted to share a flipping recipe. That’s all. That shouldn’t take me three months to do.
So I made an executive decision while sitting at the airport waiting to fly to Chapel Hill for my Grandmother’s 90th birthday, and I’ve decided to post this in all of it’s mundane glory.
I get it. You clicked on this link prepared to be entertained, thrilled, and moved. Maybe next time.
I love dinners that make your tastebuds AND your body happy. AND I love quick and easy dinners that are as succulent and flavorful as if you’d spent the last seven hours adjusting measurements, painstakingly chopping fresh herbs, adding layer after layer of fresh, vital ingredients into a French oven while you sweated profusely in your now stained and crusted-with-tears-of-frustration once-white apron.
(Damn the french oven, you beloved and high-maintenance maker of things glorious in titillating nectarous pleasure.)
Full disclosure: I found this recipe in a Cooking Light magazine ages ago. It has stood the test of time and the test of my pregnant palate, and my chicken-nugget-eating-only seven-year-old, and my Hawaiian-raised Filipino brother-in-law who knows about some ginger tastin’ chicken, y’all.
GINGER SOY CHICKEN THIGHS
Ingredients
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 (2-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1/2 cup ginger preserves
2 tablespoons lower-sodium soy sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
Preparation
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add chicken; cook 5 minutes on each side or until done. Remove from pan; keep warm. Add preserves, soy sauce, and garlic to pan; bring to a boil. Cook sauce 2 minutes or until reduced to 1/3 cup, stirring occasionally. Return chicken to pan; turn to coat with sauce.
Umkay. Can you people see how easy this recipe is? Can you see the possibilities?! I NEVER make it the same way twice. Which, you know, drives #Johnmdaleyforpresident crazy as hell, but keeps me happy. I do a different kind of preserve every time. I’ve tried apricot, orange, lemon, ginger, and combinations of whatever the heck is left in the back of my fridge. Sometimes I’ve used ginger paste and orange juice and soy sauce and just MIXED IT ON UP.
I turn them beauteous little thighs over and over until they’re all glisten-y and perma-glazed and looking like something you could put on a popsicle stick and lick on for a good while.
I like to accompany the chickens with rice, rice noodles, riced cauliflower, zucchini noodles, something like that.
A la riced cauliflower.
Bonus suggestion (look at me, being wildly generous): I love to make this Japanese cucumber salad to go with it.
SUNOMONO
INGREDIENTS
• 3 heaping tablespoons bonito flakes* (optional)
• 1/4 cup Sherry vinegar or rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2 English cucumbers or 4 regular cucumbers
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
And honestly, sometimes I just chop up a bunch of cukes, throw rice vinegar and sesame oil and salt all over it and call the damn thing done. It’s good. I mean, it’s GOOD.
And guess what I did last month? I made this recipe with Salmon and it was literally the BEST FISH I HAVE EVER EATEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I’m not kidding. I’ve been to seafood restaurants where the fish is so fresh it still remembers the joy of swimming in the ocean and costs as much as if you were starting a damn trust fund for it. I cooked my salmon to freaking perfection. John ate it, paused, and then said, “That fish is good.” Yeah babe, it sure as hell was.
This particular night I made the baby make corn. Start 'em young.
But that, gentle readers, was a rare moment of praise and culinary joy over my table.
I have a problem with dinner at my house. You guys know how much meals mean to me. It’s my love language. It’s where I create Belonging. It’s the time we get to laugh and relax and enjoy something marvelous together, exchanging knowing smiles of gourmandizing joy as we partake of good things in loving peace with all those around us.
Do you know what my kids do during dinnertime?
They freaking brawl like it’s Fightclub night and Brad Pitt is about to bust out their newly grown-in top front teeth.
They complain about the food. They complain about each other. They complain about current affairs. They complain about the color red. They fight over what their neighbor smells like. They fight about how much oxygen the other people at the table are using up. They fight about basic math principles. They fight about the exact moment that the sun went down. They fight about the person across the table from them looking at them for half a second while blinking.
Save me.
So...I'm working on having realistic expectations that we are going to end each evening with a cranky herd of small people who appreciate about 1% of anything I cook and who, in general, view one another as competition to the food source, our affections, the stockpile of legos upstairs, and apparently the air.
Breathe deep. (But not too deep, cause someone gonna take a swing atcha if you do.)
This too shall pass. We will keep parenting. And one day we will gather around the table and there will be place-settings and candles, (that I don’t have to worry about someone knocking over and setting my farmhouse table on fire with,) and we will sit and share the stories of our day and listen compassionately and encourage one another and there will be so many compliments to the meal and teary-eyed moments of deep appreciation and gratitude for my culinary labor of love that I won’t want to end the meal with incarceration or murder.
Let it be.
...who am I kidding? The biggest threat in our family to knocking over the candles is me.
BON APETIT!
