No seriously, it is!! There's lots of shit I could complain about or rant about, but I just finished a final paper, I got a cheque giving me money back from a speeding ticket I paid, I managed to get a shift covered so I have more time to study and don't have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. So why get myself all upset over something I can't actually, at this point in time anyway, do anything about?
So instead, for your viewing and eating purposes, a recipe I just made up! I call it:
Kind of Thai Marinated Chicken Breasts
Ingredients
3 large or 4 small chicken breasts (about 0.5 kg)
3/4-1 cup of soy sauce (I didn't measure anything, but that's about what it looked like)
3 Tbsp. Coconut Oil (This shit is really expensive, so if you don't have it, maybe you could replace with sesame oil, peanut oil, or coconut cream, but having never tried it, I don't know what it would taste like)
1/2 Tsp. green curry paste
1 Tbsp grated ginger (I keep mine in the freezer so it keeps fresh and grates easier and then reconstitutes after sitting on the cutting board for a bit—no more gross ginger pulp.
1 Tbsp. lime juice
1/4 Tsp. red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic—minced
1 shallot—sliced so that it forms rings (because beyond being tasty, I think they look really cute)
Salt and Pepper to taste.
I probably should have prefaced by saying that I haven't actually tasted this yet. I made it up out of my head and am hoping that it turns out delightful. Will post update as to whether this is edible or not.
My reasoning behind it: I thought I had schezuan sauce in the fridge, but as it would turn out it was growing its own civilization on the rim of the jar. So that was a no go. My original plan was just to chop up the garlic and shallot and use the sauce to get those to brown on top of the chicken in the oven. But with no sauce, I had to improvise.
I'm allergic to soy, so I was reluctant to use it, but we had nothing else, so I will just deal with painful burning urination. After finding that in the fridge, I also noticed the green curry paste that had been there forever. I decided to mix the two, but thought they might not complement each other 100%, so thought coconut oil would blend the two nicely: coconut rice is good with soy sauce, and the green curry paste has to be mixed with something! I had to nuke the mixture to get the oil and paste to mix with the water based sauce. I think next time I will get coconut milk and use that instead of soy sauce. If this proves edible I may keep a tablespoon of soy just for taste.
After that, I added the shallots, ginger and garlic. Liking spice, I decided why not add a little red chili pepper flakes? Concerned this might be a wee bit too spicy, and that all my flavours were on the heavier side, I decided to add some lime juice to liven it up a bit. Plus I like citrus in most things. I added the ginger, which I don't think is that typical of Thai dishes because above all else, I like that it's anti-bacterial and anti-microbial, meaning that it alone will kill some of the nasty lurking around in meat. I think cooking meat without spices like curry, ginger or cumin (which have natural anti-biotic properties, and also begin to cure or cook the meat on their own) is just ind of nasty. You either have to cook the shit out of meat until it's no longer tasty, or worry about dying from some damn thing. So why not use what nature gave us? Beyond that, it is so pungent that it actually starts to cook the meat itself, and since I'm strapped for time, that is nice. It is also a tenderizer (because it starts to break down the protein fibres) and opens up the meat to all the other flavours you put into the mix. If I can put a spice like that into a meat dish, I will.
I have left all of this so sit, covered, on top of the pre-warming oven (the chicken breasts were still kind of frozen when I started to marinate them) to speed up the marination process and to keep the coconut oil in liquid state.
My plan is to keep them in a tin foil packet in the oven, and open that up for the last 10 or so minutes of them coking just to get everything to get nice and brown.
I hope this isn't another "well, at least I tried!" made up on the spot recipe. We'll see.
Update:
It was fan-fucking-tastic!!!! A touch on the salty side, but if you used low sodium soy sauce I'm sure that would help. Also, might consider adding a bit of brown sugar next time just to balance it a little more.
It wasn't really "thai" tasting per say, just, as Amanda put it, "vaguely asian" and "nutty but subtle".
I ended up forming a tin foil bowl for them on a cookie sheet and baked them that way. Glad I did as there was a TONNE of liquid left over, so you might be able to use more meat than I did. The sauce was delightful on the rice though, so I think I would stick to those measurements.
All in all, a winner. I served it with a sesame orange dressed salad and rice.
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