Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Baked Vietnamese Chicken

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Here’s a quick delicious recipe for bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. I found this on Serious Eats while looking for some information on knives.

The recipe is basically only two steps: 1) mix up a marinade, and 2) cook the chicken. I love it when something that tastes so good is so easy to make.

What you’ll need.

  • 2 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup fish sauce
  • 1/4 cup palm or dark brown sugar
  • 1T minced peeled fresh ginger
  • 2t hot chili-garlic paste (sambal oelek)—I skipped this with no ill effect on the recipe
  • 1.5t tablespoons (20ml) fresh juice from 1 lime
  • 1t finely grated zest from 1 lime—I used some lime leaves from the freezer instead
  • 3 medium cloves garlic, minced or grated
  • 2T (tightly packed) fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, finely chopped
  • 2T neutral oil
  • Sliced limes and cilantro leaves (optional garnish)

What to do:

Mix everything but the chicken in a bowl, then add to a zipper-lock freezer bag. Add the chicken thighs, tightly seal the bag and gently toss to coat the chicken. Marinate for up to 4 hours, but not less than 30 minutes. You want to ensure flavor transfer from the marinade to the chicken.

When ready to cook, heat the oven to 425 degrees with one of the racks in the middle position. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum (for easier cleanup) and put a wire rack on top big enough to hold all of the chicken.

Remove the chicken thighs from the bag and let the excess marinade drip off. Put the chicken on the rack and put in the oven for 30-35 minutes. You’ll know when it’s done when the interior temperature (not against the bone) reads 160 degrees or so.

Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes before serving with lime slices or cilantro as garnish.

Goes well with seasoned rice or seasoned Asian noodles.

Just out of the oven.

 

 

Bacon-wrapped Dates and Chorizo

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Not far from our home is one of the best supermercados in town. They have precooked foods, ready-to-cook take-home foods, a dozen different salsas, and a cafeteria-style restaurant. The best part, though, is their meats. They have several different sliced and marinated meats, as well as several different kinds of Mexican chorizo (not to be confused with Spanish chorizo, which is vastly different). These chorizos are to die for. And one version is so spicy, that it seems you could almost die from eating it. It’s that hot.

Their delicious chorizo led me to making this appetizer. As an appetizer, the chorizo needed to be wrapped in something, so what better than bacon. Right? But, that’s a lot of saltiness and spice, which needs to be offset by something sweet. Dried figs or dates. In this case, dates were easier to get, so I went with those.

The result is a nice combination of sweet and salty. Plus, they’re really easy to make.

What you’ll need:

  • Mexican chorizo sausages
  • Bacon
  • Dates (Medjool are best for this)

Figure this amount for each appetizer you want to make:

  • 1.5-inch piece of chorizo sausage
  • 4-inch piece of bacon
  • 1 or ½ pitted date (use an entire one to offset very spicy or salty chorizo, or a half-date for milder chorizo)

What to do:

Gently cook your chorizo sausages in a fry pan until done. Remove from the pan and place on paper towels to blot up the oil. Refrigerate.

Wipe out the fry pan and return it to the stove. If you’re using thick bacon, cook it over low heat until about ½ to ¾ cooked (in your estimation). Blot on paper towels and allow to cool enough to handle.

While the bacon is cooling, slice the chorizo into lengths for wrapping. I used 1.5 inches, but you can go with more or less, depending on the length of the dates and width of the bacon slices.

With the bacon cooled, press a length of chorizo together with a date or half-date and wrap with the bacon. Skewer the bacon ends together and pierce the entire wrap (as in the photos).

Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and put a grate on it. Place the wraps on the grate and cook in a 375-degree oven until the bacon has cooked through. This took about 5 minutes in our oven with convection enabled.

Serve hot, fresh out of the oven.

Massaman Curry Ground Pork

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We had some ground pork thawed for dinner and I was considering what to make with it. Fried rice? No. Pork burgers? No. Asian pork meatballs. No. Then I thought of using it with some type of curry.

What I ended up making was ground pork slow-cooked in a bath of Massaman curry and coconut milk. I actually cooked it very much in the style of a rendang, by slowly simmering the pork in the coconut-curry mixture until the coconut milk is absorbed by the meat or gently cooked off, leaving a thick and flavorful curry coating on the meat.

It was very easy to make, though it does take a long time to cook, but with minimal active time, just checking on it every 30 minutes or so as it cooks. It’s better to use lean ground pork for this dish, but the instructions explain how to deal with making it with fatty pork.

Massaman curry ground pork is best served over rice or noodles of some kind.

What you’ll need:

  • 1 lb course-ground pork (the leaner, the better, in this case)
  • 2-4T of your favorite curry paste. I used a mild Massaman paste. Use your palate to determine how much paste to use.
  • 1 14-oz can of coconut cream or milk (cream is better)
  • Green onions and Thai chilies for optional garnish

What to do:

Add the coconut milk to a large fry pan over low-medium heat. Add the curry paste a tablespoon at a time and mix it in to dissolve into the coconut milk. Keep adding until it’s the right amount of flavor or heat for you.

Add the ground pork, breaking it up and distributing it evenly in the pan. Bring the coconut milk to a low simmer.

Allow it to slowly simmer for up to a couple of hours, checking on it every 30 minutes or so, until the coconut milk is mostly evaporated. Now check every 10 minutes until the coconut milk is gone and the meat begins to gently brown.

If there is oil in the pan from the meat or coconut milk, pour off as much as you can before pouring the entire contents of the pan into a large sieve or fine colander. Let it sit for a few minutes so the oil can drain out. When done, return it to the pan.

Serve over rice and sprinkle with sliced green onion and Thai chilies (with seeds for hot, seeded for less heat).