More Than Just Cooking

Beam me up Scotty because the traffic on the NJ Turnpike can make a girl batty!  Oy, I need an iced coffee like yesterday.

Just wanted to wish all the dads out there a Happy Father’s Day!  I trekked down to my parents’ home in the ‘burbs of Washington, DC to spend some time with pops this weekend.  As in the case with every visit home, it was a busy weekend filled with good eats.  More to come later.

So what does a well-seasoned NY-DC/MD/VA commuter eat on the road?

Utz’s Sour Cream and Onion chips and white cheddar Cheez-its.  (Not orange!)

What?  You wanted me to say carrot & celery sticks with a side of organic hummus?  Hey – I did say that I try my best to be healthy.  It’s okay to eat “naughty” foods once in a blue moon.  Like when in a car on the NJ Turnpike while cursing the congestion.  (Why!  Why!  Why!)

Happy Father’s Day!

I love green tea and green tea flavored food!  I like how it adds a fresh, bright, mild grassy/herbal flavor to the mix.  It’s a bit odd that I like it so much because growing up I did not drink green tea at all.  My family’s choice of tea was oolong, chrysanthemum or ginseng.  Green tea was something I learned to appreciate as I started eating other Asian cuisines.

(Please note the green tea that you drink varies in flavor profiles.  I’m just talking about those awesome green tea flavored foods like noodles, ice cream – ICE CREAM! – and cookies.)

If I see something labeled matcha flavor, I am looking for the food to give me a more intense green tea flavor with a slight hint of bitterness.  So you could understand why I was excited when I saw these:

Matcha, matcha, man. I want to be a matcha man. Yea, yea...

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(Yea, you read that right.  Kosher Coke.  Don’t worry, my ancestors already spun in their grave once when I missed “Ching Ming” this year.  They’re not going to be too pleased when they find out I am calling this “Lo sui gai toong Coca Cola-ah“.  Oh well.)

So this isn’t a recipe, just more of a story.  Sometimes I don’t plan anything for dinner, I just make do with whatever happens to be lurking in my fridge.  Necessity is the mother of all invention, right?  Um, not really.  “Joyce needs to clean out her fridge” was the mother behind this dish.  Sometimes, I try my best to clear out the fridge and have it organized get rid of stuff that’s been there for a while.  Y’all know what I’m talking about!

I had a whole chicken in my freezer from Whole Foods.  This chicken was from when I purchased several during a $0.99/lb sale on natural, air chilled birds.  (My Ma didn’t raise no fool.  I’m all about the sale.)  Normally, I would roast them in the oven but it’s summertime and I didn’t want to use the oven in this heat and humidity.  I live in a pre-war building with no central A/C and it gets HOT in my kitchen during the summertime without the oven on.  You can just imagine what sort of inferno is created in my kitchen when the oven’s turned up during the summer months.  That’s why I decided to poach the chicken in a Chinese master sauce (“lo sui“).

Well, that’s not the real reason.

Truth is that I wanted to find a way to use up the 1 liter bottle of Kosher for Passover Coke (KFP Coke) sitting in my fridge.  I don’t drink much soda so that’s why I had 3/4 of the bottle left in my fridge.  I hate wasting food so I wanted to come up with a way to use the leftover flat soda.  Then I remembered the lovely Nigella Lawson has a great recipe that used Coke.  This got me to thinking that maybe, just maybe, Coke would work with the master sauce I had on hand.  So I decided to poach the chicken with the master sauce and Coke mixed together as the poaching liquid.

BOOM!  All of the sudden thunder rumbled, the heavens went dark and the spirits of my ancestors swooped in on a lighting bolt and cursed me for being a stupid American-born Chinese “jook-sing“.

I kid.  (But I paused for just a moment because I did miss “Ching Ming” so you never know.)

I should explain why this Chinese woman has KFP Coke in her fridge.  I don’t like to drink or eat anything that has high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the list of ingredients because I think it’s not good for my health.  That’s why I only drink Coke when it is specifically made for Passover.  KFP Coke is made with sugar and not HFCS so those observing Passover can drink it.  I’m not a complete health nut but I try to do what I can for my health.  Try as in running six miles a day so that I can justify my habit of eating butter-sugar sandwiches once in a while.  (Don’t laugh.  Butter-sugar sandwiches are YUM!)  By the way, KFP Coke also tastes better, too!

Alright, so that’s the back story for now.  Stay tuned for pictures!

Thanks to one of my friends, I realized I accidentally enabled the “registration required” function on the comments.  It’s been removed and I apologize for the goof!

Also, you’ll find out that I write certain words or phrases in phonetic Cantonese at times on this blog.  The words will be italicized and in quotes.  Just a heads up so I don’t confuse the heck out of you.

I will try my best to make it Cantonese but I can’t guarantee it.  I’m 100% Toisanese and I grew up mixing my Toisan and Cantonese.  Unfortunately, its the result of growing up in the ‘burbs.  Feel free to ask questions if I don’t make any sense!

(Yes.  Toisan.  Not Taishan.  Yes, I know Taishan is Mandarin for that area of China in Mandarin but I will always refer to it as Toisan.  All my “ham yee bac fan” lovers unite!  That’s salted fish with white rice, a typical Toisan dish. )

OK, I have to admit that when I sat down to write my first post, I got a bit of writer’s block.  Where to start?  How do I start?  What am I going to say?  What am I doing?  I guess I’ll start by telling you a bit about myself.

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