Kung Pao Chicken

Gōng bǎo jī dīng

You'd think that if ever I was faced with the impossible conundrum of having to eat just one thing for 2 weeks or on a desert island, or even my last meal, judging from my posts on this blog I'd have dessert. Not true. While most desserts will have the tendency to pall, there are many entrées that are capable of keeping the taste buds satisfied; one of my favorites (I'll get back to you if I decide it's ultimately my favorite) is Kung Pao. Kung Pao chicken was a dish introduced to me by the sitcom Seinfeld. Kung Pao spaghetti was my first taste of it-- at California Pizza Kitchen, no less. After that, if offered on the menu, I simply could not not order it. It's even one of the few dishes where I tolerate those obnoxious cucumbers. And thanks to the recent availability of Sichuan peppercorns at Rustan's supermarkets (though I'm sure you could procure them at Chinatown in Binondo quite easily), it can now be done at home, replicating the perfect fragrance and exquisite heat of any version you can find in a restaurant-- which, mind you, may not even shell out for the peppercorns. The recipe I use here is from Chryz with a few improvisations and adjusted instructions of my own. I recommend that you visit his site for an excellent pictorial as well as tons of other gorgeous recipes. (Recipe follows)

Now, the problem is that I couldn't find dried red peppers which classically grace the top of the dish. No problem. I just made my own. I didn't have enough time to bring them to dry pepper perfection, but just enough to complete the effect. I placed about 20 chili peppers on a baking sheet and placed them on the bottom rack of the oven for 6 hours at 150°F (65°C). The ones I didn't use I can finish in the sun.

Before and after.

• 3 respectably-sized chicken breasts, total of about 600-700g, no skin, bone, or cartilage (save them for another use)


• 1 red bell pepper


• 1 medium cucumber


• 1 medium red onion


• 5 stalks green onion


• 50g (1/2 cup) roasted peanuts, unsalted or not


• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil


• 1 tablespoon cornstarch


• 1 tablespoon Shao Hsing (Chinese cooking) wine, rice wine, or dry sherry


• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce

Dice the chicken into 1-inch pieces at most, but at least be uniform. Place the chicken cubes, oil, cornstarch, wine, and soy sauce in a bowl and give a quick toss before placing in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to marinate. Dice the pepper and cucumber into 1/2-inch squares or cubes, dice the onion, and chop the green onions into 1/2-inch pices.

• 3 tablespoons Hoisin sauce


• 4 tablespoons light soy sauce


• 3 tablespoons Shao Hsing (Chinese cooking) wine, rice wine, or dry sherry


• 2 tablespoons apple cider, rice wine, or red wine vinegar


• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce


• 2 tablespoons brown sugar, honey, or white sugar


• 2 tablespoons chicken stock, or a small pinch chicken stock powder plus 2 tablespoons water, or 2 tablespoons water


• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil


• 1-inch knob of ginger


• 3 garlic cloves


• 7 dried chili peppers


• 1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns


• 2 teaspoons Sesame oil

Mince the garlic and grate the ginger; set aside. In a wok or any suitably large frying pan, dry-roast the dried red peppers and the peppercorns until they release their aroma; set aside. In a blender or food processor, combine the hoisin sauce, soy sauce, wine, vinegar, oyster sauce, sugar, and chicken stock. Toss in the roasted peppercorns and 2 of the dried peppers and purée until no big chunks of the dried red pepper remain and the peppercorns are pulverized. If you don't have a blender or food processor or if you want to be more thorough, crush the peppers and peppercorns with a mortar and pestle, then just whisk together with the sauce in a small bowl or use the blender anyway.

In the same pan, heat the oil over high heat (smoking hot really) and add the chicken pieces until it has cooked through (the pink inside has just disappeared and try to avoid cooking it longer than that; but even if you do, it will still be delicious). Drain the chicken from the pan, leaving the hot oil behind, and set aside. You could also fry the peanuts until they achieve a darker brown hue (especially if you only have unroasted peanuts) but I didn't bother. In the same oil, sauté the cucumber, onion, green onion, and red bell pepper for about 4 minutes; just to remove their rawness while still retaining their crunchiness. If they start to release liquid, stop cooking and drain them right away. In the same oil, sauté the ginger and garlic for 30 seconds. Add the contents of the blender (the sauce) and bring to a boil. Keep it at a boil until it has reduced to a thick syrup-like consistency. Add in the cooked chicken, peanuts, the rest of the dried peppers, and cooked vegetables and toss to heat the chicken through and coat all the pieces with sauce. Transfer to your serving plate and drizzle with sesame oil. Serves 6 people.

It may seem like a lot of work but it only takes a short time (the drawback, I suppose, would be the long ingredient list). But believe me; it is worth it, and I wouldn't mind eating it everyday for 2 weeks.

Appointment TV

The great thing about being a bum/ wannabe chef at this time of the year is that all the great television shows have come out/ been renewed in the States. It's scaring me how much time I put into catching television shows, but I've categorized them according to the following:
1. Catch the latest episode, record, keep, buy the DVD - The Office, Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Heroes, Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, American Idol
(Here are all my television and concert DVDs, so these don't include my movie DVDs. As you can tell my taste is rather smutty. Oh well.)


2. Catch it whenever it's on, possibly download then archive or delete - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, Scrubs, Ugly Betty, Ed (I have yet to see the fourth season)
3. Catch it when I can - Family Guy, Everybody Loves Raymond, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
4. Catch it when I remember it's on or have nothing better to do - My Name Is Earl, Medium, Comedy Inc., Nanny 911, Jeopardy!

Saw it once but didn't get into it: Entourage, The Loop, American Dad, Kitchen Confidential, Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, CSI: New York
Used to watch regularly but lost interest: House, Lost, Queer Eye, Six Feet Under, The Amazing Race, The Apprentice

Shows I hate: Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, That 70's Show, Two and a Half Men, CSI: Miami, countless other really bad sitcoms (think: War at Home)

Currently, I'm trying out Pushing Daisies, Tell Me You Love Me, and Dirty Sexy Money to see if they're interesting enough. I've refrained from downloading Chuck and Back To You since I'm more or less sure that they will eventually be shown on local (cable) television.

Please do not try to calculate the number of hours that totals to.

Linguini Avgolémono me Agkinara kai Fasolia

(Egg-Lemon Linguine with Artichoke Hearts and Green Beans) Greek pasta. When you hear those two words, what comes to mind? I believe the usual answer would be: feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, fennel. That's all well and good, but there's a lot more to Greek cuisine than the usual stereotypically Greek ingredients. Take, for example, Avgolémono Sauce. It's one of those flavor combinations that not everyone will agree with (hello: intense lemon flavor in savory dishes), but I do love its tang, its maturity, its freshness. Plus, with this recipe you get loads of vegetables so you can reach your 5 servings a day. This recipe is from Bon Appetit (May 2006). I suppose my pasta would look a lot better if I had used shredded Parmesan cheese instead of grated, but that's all I could come up with at a moment's notice. (Recipe follows)


In a small bowl, whisk together 2 egg yolks and 3 tablespoons lemon juice; add 1/3 cup heavy cream and set aside.

Bring a gallon of water to a rolling boil (I use the electric kettle and just bring it up to temperature in the pan to save gas). Add a generous amount of salt (2 tablespoons or so) and drop in 250g(8 ounces) green beans or "Baguio" beans that have been trimmed and cut into 2-3 inch pieces. If using, drop in 6 ounces of frozen artichoke hearts. I only had canned artichokes, as what is the usual in this country, so there was no need to boil them, only drain them. Strain out the vegetables and place them on a 12-inch skillet. In the same boiling water, add 250g dry linguine noodles and cook 3 minutes short of al dente (the center of the noodle will still have a tiny speck of dry pasta when you bite through it). Reserve 1 cup of the hot pasta water and drain the pasta.

Working quickly, whisk in 1/2 cup of the hot pasta water into the egg-yolk mixture. Add the pasta to the skillet with vegetables and toss in the pan. Pour the egg-yolk mixture, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley (about a small bunch). Toss over medium heat until the sauce coats the noodles and thickens slightly, about 3-4 minutes. You can use the remaining 1/2 cup of hot pasta water if the sauce becomes too dry. Season with salt and black pepper. Top with some more grated Parmesan and serve immediately.

Dimply Plum Cake

(Gâteau aux Prunes) There are a lot of fresh temperate-climate fruits I haven't tasted. Nectarines, quinces, blueberries, raspberries, and peaches, to name a few (though I've had a lot of canned peaches in my life). And me being moderately clueless about which season does which fruit ripen, I have to snatch every opportunity to try them when someone imports them, which is what happened last weekend, when I saw peaches and plums on display. I could have gone with the US white peaches, but there's something so... ravishing about the deep purple of the plums. Before I started this blog, I'd already made a Plum Galette, so I had to try something new. Me being afraid of failure, I approached a reliable source: Dorie Greenspan. She recently posted her recipe for Dimply Plum Cake on Serious Eats and I just had to try it.



The recipe in the link above is pretty straightforward, but I incorporated a few steps that just made common baker sense. First, I sifted the dry ingredients together before mixing them. Second, I folded in the dry ingredients instead of using the mixer. Also, I only had 4 largish plums, so to make a perfect square number on top, I cut each into quarters, and these are not so much "dimply." It did, however, make a beautiful pattern on top that reminds me of Japanese prints. Not entirely Hokusai, but he keeps popping into my head, so I'm sticking with it.

Everybody's Changing (My 100th Blog Post)

Wow. It's been almost 6 months since I started writing this blog, and I was looking for something appropriate for this stage of my life. I've just finished a big chapter of it, and just as abruptly as its ending I find myself not knowing what any of my friends are really doing. I'm not the gossipy type and neither am I the kind of person who keeps an inventory on his friends. They're all adults, it's their business, it doesn't concern me, they don't need my opinion, I wish them well, blah blah blah.

I did, however, coincidentally see my friend Chris at Megamall and it probably won't be a crime to broadcast that he's getting married this November in Iloilo (sorry I can't make it, obviously...). At the same time I was talking to him, an old friend of mine I hadn't seen in years, Bobing, passed by (coincidence #2) and I hollered at him. He introduced me to his fiancé Joyce and I said congratulations. I then proceeded to shop for new shoes (how non-sequitur-ish of my life).

Click here to listen to my direct digital recording of me playing "Everybody's Changing" by Keane. I'm not singing as my voice, while it can hit all kinds of notes pretty accurately, is very thin and sounds like a little boy's on my horrible microphone.

You say you wander your own land (OH, THAT'S ME)
When I think about it I don't see how you can (Oh, you can't? Watch me)
You're aching, you're breaking and I can see the pain in your eyes
Says everybody's changing and I don't know why

So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

You're gone from here, soon you will disappear, fading into beautiful light (Okay... Try not to feel depressed...)
'Cause everybody's changing and I don't feel right

So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

Maybe the guys of Keane are right. My life seemed to move a whole lot faster when you're surrounded by all sorts of frantically moving friends in a hurry to figure out their lives. There was a point of reference. Now, though, it's a different feeling to have such inner tranquility, troubled only from time to time (like the time I'm writing this) by the feeling that everything you used to know is slipping away, for better or for worse. And why not? It's their right to. I'm not going to compare my life to others'. Nine times out of ten you'll find a reason to feel shitty about it, even if in reality, your life is pretty damn good with you running it.

Anyway, what's up for the future? A whole lot of learning. Since I've started this blog, I've made dozens of new desserts, and I've learned and worked with different types of pastry and cooking techniques. I don't think I'm satisfied yet..