Korean Sticky Chicken

Last night, I decided I was going to make Korean Sticky Chicken. The recipe had come to me via Yummly, and I had printed it out. While I was working on it, I found a recipe on-line that looked, as far as I could tell, like the one Yummly had parasitized, so I started working off it. Then my wife, Omaha, found the recipe that I had printed and brought it to me, and they were in no way the same recipe. For one major thing, the one on the phone called for a marinade; the Yummly one did not. The Yummly recipe called for chicken breasts, the one I was working with used chicken thighs. For some reason, I had thought the Yummly one was thighs, as thighs was what we had in the refrigerator. Besides, I had already started making the marinade.

The other detail is that my family is not very fond of spicy foods, and this recipe called for a lot of Gochujang, one of my favorite spices to work with bland meats like chicken.

The solution, naturally, was to just say screw it all and invent my own hybrid recipe. So:

Equipment:

This is a “no special gadgets” meal: no pressure cooker, no sous vide, no KitchenAid, no food processor. Just the basics: pots and pans, knives and cutting boards, measuring spoons and cups. You will need a grater for the ginger, and a garlic crusher is a convenience.

Marinade

2 tablespoons honey

1-3 tablespoons Gochujang (Korean chili paste with a distinct, smoky flavor)

3-1 tablespoons ketchup (yes, ketchup). Use with the Gochujang in whatever proportion your family will tolerate.

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 inch knob of fresh ginger, grated

2 gloves of garlic, minced or crushed

1 tablespoon olive oil

Meat:

4 chicken thighs, boneless

2 tablespoons mirin

olive oil for sautee’

Topping:

Toasted sesame seeds

One green onion, very thinly sliced

Mix everything in the marinade together. The Gochujang and ketchup should total 3 tablespoons. (Hint: a shotglass is exactly three tablespoons to the top; I tend to use several shotglasses when cooking. This isn’t an exact science, it’s okay to go over by small amounts.) Put the marinade and the chicken into a plastic bag, shake well to coat, and leave, flat, in your ’fridge for 20 minutes. Take out, shake, turn over, and let marinate for another 20 minutes.

Make the rice and your sides while all this marination is going on; the sides are meant to be room temperature when served.

Put a heavy pan on your stove, turn it up to medium-high, and when it’s hot enough put in a little olive oil, just enough to coat the bottom. With tongs, pull the chicken out of the bag and put into the pan. Save the marinade! Letting the chicken cook for 4 minutes, possibly 5 minutes. Turn the chicken over, cooking the other side.

The real test of done-ness for chicken is whether or not it feels spongy and soft when you press on it. If it’s firmed up, it’s cooked through. It takes practice, but it can be mastered.

Take the chicken out and put onto a plate. Add the mirin and scrape all the glaze off the bottom of the pan, letting it boil away until about half gone. Add the rest of the marinade from the bag, let bubble for 30 seconds, turn the heat down to low and add the chicken back in, spooning the sauce over it, and let it sit for another two minutes.

Remove the chicken and serve, sprinkling with the toasted sesame seeds and green onions.

Thai Basmati Rice

1 cup Basmati rice

1 1/4 cup water

1/2 cup whole coconut milk, well-shaken

Put the water in a pot on the stove and set to high. Rinse the rice well in a mesh colander. When the water starts to boil, add the rice. Let the water start to boil again, drop immediately to low, toss in the coconut milk, cover and let simmer gently for 16 minutes.

Take off the heat and let it sit in a cool place for a few minutes. Fluff with a fork and serve.

Blanched or Sautee’d Kale With Soy-Sesame Dressing

We had a lot of kale left over the winter. That stuff is damnably hard to kill, and I kinda like it, so I decided to cook with it. This recipe works with just about any green: spinach, watercress, whatever, just adjust to the delicacy of the leaves. Kale is a hardy leaf and puts up with sauteing pretty well. Here’s what I did:

1 bunch kale

1 scallion, sliced thin

2 teaspoons soy sauce^*

1 large clove garlic, minced fine

1/2 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

(Optional) Like it spicy? Add anywhere from 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of Gochujang. This is not a subsitution; you don’t have to take anything out.

^* For the chicken marinade above, you can get away with just any soy sauce, but for this, the soy sauce is such a strong note that I recommend buying and using tamari-grade soy sauce. It’s more expensive, but it’s also worth it.

Put on a large pot of water, salt it well, and put it on high heat to bring it to a boil. Trim the kale, removing the heavy spines. Rinse it thoroughly. Prepare a large bowl of ice water. Drop the kale into the boiling water for about 45 seconds, until it’s wilted, then scoop out the leaves and drop them into the ice water to stop the cooking.

Alternatively, heat a large pan to medium-high, add a healthy amount of olive oil, give that a minute to heat up, then add the kale, stir-frying it gently but continuously, about 3 to 5 minutes. Immediately remove with tongs and shock with the cold water.

Drain the kale and squeeze it gently over the sink to get out excess water. Cut or tear into clumps.

In a separate bowl, prepare the dressing, adding everything except the sesame seeds. Gently stir the dressing into the kale and then let it sit for ten minutes (hey, you’ve now got time to cook chicken!) to come to room temperature and to let all the flavors mix well.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Cucumber Salad With Honey-Sesame Dressing

1 English cucumber or 2 slicing cucumbers

1 teaspoon coarse salt, like Diamond kosher.

2 scallions, minced

1 small clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

1/2 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Depending on your family, you may or may not want to peel the outside of the cucumbers. Slice them into discs, no more than 1/4" thick. Toss them with the salt and put into a bowl for 15 minutes; the salt will pull the moisture out of the cucumbers, making them crispy.

Drain the liquid that has dripped out of the cucumbers. Make the dressing, again holding back the sesame seeds, in another bowl (confession: I was running out of bowls at this point and used a clean coffee cup), then stir into the bowl of cucumber slices, stirring gently. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve.

Some recipes use gochugaru, the red pepper flakes that give gochujang its heat, to make this a spicy salad. Personally, I think my family would have rebelled at the idea of a spicy salad, and I didn’t have any gochugaru on hand anyway.

One thing about the sesame seeds throughout these recipes? I like to toast them: put a pan on the stove on medium heat, dry. Add all the sesame seeds you’re going to use this evening into the pan, and just stir rapidly for two or three minutes, or until they start to turn brown. Quickly spread them out on a large, cool plate to prevent them from burning.

And that was our Saturday night dinner. The family pronounced the chicken “far too amazing,” the cucumbers “wonderful,” and the kale “tolerable.” I loved the kale, but I’m pretty much the only person in my house who really likes kale. We did it blanched; Omaha says she would have preferred it sautee’d. Even the kid, who we cannot convince to eat vegetables, made the cucumbers go away.