an icepick through the keyhole

Tonight's insomniac recipe...

This isn't exactly the dish that I had at the Marietta Diner - that one was a lot more garlicky (due to the Greek nature of the place). But essentially, Chicken Scarpariello is basically chicken browned and cooked in a lemony white-wine sauce.

( Recipe follows )

I can't help it - maybe it's built into the Chinese psyche, but no matter how successfully the food may have gone down with people, I still feel the need to apologize it was not as good as it was supposed to be.

Despite last night's effusive praise (which I appreciated - thank you, you're all very welcome) stuff I didn't do that I should have done include:

1. Cooking the rice with chicken bouillon cubes in the water to give it a more golden look and add flavor.

2. Using a frozen mixed vegetable medley (at the very least) instead of canned, which made the carrots mushy and the peas look kind of sickly.

3. Not forgetting to put the peanuts in the beef stir-fry (which I had actually bought but completely forgot about).

4. Stirring the gravy for the lion's head casserole a bit more so it didn't have tiny random lumps of cornstarch.

Okay, that's out of my system.

As promised, recipes. These three dishes could constitute full meals on their own, but together should feed a group of six quite well.

The beef stir-fry is just a variation on the basic chicken stir-fry that I did a few months ago - that can be found here. It's all in the sauce. I usually do the chicken version, but the beef - I used thinly sliced pepper steak - turned out to complement the sauce surprisingly well, and I think I'll use beef from now on with this one.

The chicken fried rice is a staple of my cooking, and the basic recipe can be found here. I've been using about a half-pound of chicken (2 breasts) these days, though, for the serving size in the recipe. I splash in some chinese wine during the cooking of the chicken, and a few dashes of poultry seasoning (I use Maggi Seasoning) to enhance the flavor.

I had a recipe for lion's head casserole here, but that's not the recipe I used last night. It still turns out okay, but it's not the way Mom makes it. Here's the recipe Mom gave me (adapted slightly):

( Recipe follows. )

A quick and easy stir-fry dish I tossed together for a pot-luck dinner tonight. You can freely substitute whatever kinds of vegetables or meat you want, or leave out whatever ingredients - just make sure the meat is cooked through. The real taste lies in the sauce. The mix of red and green provides nice color, though.

( Recipe follows. )

Remember, no true scientist ever says that an experiment is a failure. There is no such thing: even an experiment gone awry provides valuable data. In this case, I found out yesterday that I should not overheat the dried chillies or I might set off the smoke alarm, flood the air with burning, tear gas-like fumes and send any guests running out of the apartment for safety, downing huge amounts of water, not to mention carbonizing the end of the wooden spatula I use for stir-frying and leaving burnt remains on the bottom of the wok.

Curiously, though, it still turned out pretty good. Go figure.

So remember - some recipes may tell you too cook the chillies until they are black. BE CAREFUL AND DO NOT USE HIGH HEAT. If you do so, you may re-enact Chernobyl. When these babies burn, they burn.

( Recipe follows. )

Well, since we're sharing recipes... I've tried this twice now and it's turned out even better once I got the hang of not overcooking the tang hoon, which I'll point out at the appropriate juncture. The rice wine makes all the difference, really, giving it a sweet edge.

( Recipe follows )