1. My Chromebook has a screen problem so I took it out to the Mouse Pad. I learned that it suffered impact -- for the life of me, I don't know when, but it might have been when I had it in my pack on the New York trip. The problem is repairable, but would almost equal the cost of buying a new Chromebook, so I just might do that. I've liked my Chromebook because it's light and travels well. If I buy a new one, I will probably also buy a protective case for it.
2. I wanted to braise a whole chicken yesterday, but I didn't take it out in time to thaw it. Today, the chicken had thawed. I really wanted to slow cook it in an Indian braise, but, unfortunately, I don't have the curry paste or the spices on hand that I imagined would work well. (I needed to transport myself to the Chopped pantry!) Few of the items I wanted today are available in Kellogg.
Instead, I salt and peppered the chicken and put some salt crystals and some ginger slivers in the cavity, browned it on all sides and built a braising pyramid of onion slices, lemon slices, chopped eggplant, chopped sweet peppers, cilantro, ginger, celery greens and a few stalks, and basil.
Simultaneously, I combined coconut milk, green curry paste, brown sugar, soy sauce, and fish sauce for the braising liquid. I put the whole chicken on top of the pyramid and poured the curry sauce over it. It wasn't quite enough liquid, so I augmented it with whole milk and some water.
I constructed this braise in our Dutch oven. I brought the liquid to a boil, put the lid on, and put it in the oven at 275 degrees. Every half an hour or so, I removed excess liquid and poured the tasty liquid over the top of the whole chicken. I made a batch of jasmine rice. The liquid for the rice was two-thirds braising liquid and one third water.
When the chicken was tender, I removed the meat from the bones, strained all the greens and vegetables out of the liquid. I had used liquid I removed from the Dutch oven as the base for frying eggplant slices and topped them with Parmesan cheese. I put the strained liquid from the Dutch oven in a bowl and put the plate of chicken, the rice, the eggplant slices, and the braising liquid on the table and the Deke and I plunged into all.
It tasted good.
If I were to cook this dinner again, I'd plan ahead a little better and fix some kind of a leafy or even a fruit salad to balance out the flavors of the curry that were shot through the meal in the chicken, the rice, and the way I prepared the eggplant.
I think a better balanced meal would have tasted better and added more textures to what I served.
3. After dinner, I watched another two hour episode of The American Experience: New York. Much of this episode took me back to when Margaret and I taught the course that combined American Working Class Literature and English Composition. This episode focused, in part, on the atrocious working conditions in New York City factories and sweatshops, especially in the garment industry. Reform efforts and the efforts of the relatively new unions failed in their efforts to improve these conditions, but, as this episode so harrowingly explored, it wasn't until nearly 150 women were either asphyxiated, burnt to death, crushed behind factory floor doors locked from the outside, or had their bodies shattered by jumping eight, nine, or ten stories to their deaths during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire on March 25, 1911 near Washington Square in Greenwich Village, that, in time, government driven labor reform got underway.
No comments:
Post a Comment