Creamy "Flamin' Hot" Chicken Thighs over Ziti

I went over to a friend's house today to catch the Giants vs Packers game. The game was on right around lunch time so I decided to make some food to bring over. I didn't have too much at home in terms of ingredients so I just pulled what I had. I had a small bag of the new Flamin' Hot Cheetos laying around so that went right into the recipe as well.

Creamy "Flamin' Hot" Chicken Thighs over Ziti
Boil ziti (or another type of pasta) to al dente. Drain, rinse, and put into a casserole dish. Cut a few slits on the meat side of the chicken thighs perpendicular to the bone and then rub salt and pepper onto both the skin side and the meat side. In a medium skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over low heat. When the butter is all melted and begins frothing, carefully lower the thighs into the hot butter and cook on each side for 3 minutes. Use tongs to transfer the chicken to the casserole dish. At this point, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Pour about half a cup of heavy cream into the skillet of butter. Stir to remove any chicken bits in the pan. Heat it under low heat while stirring until the mixture starts to bubble. Once it begins to bubble, pour it over the chicken and pasta. Now for the secret ingredient! Open the bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos halfway and then begin crushing the chips within. Mash it as best as you can and then pour it into the casserole dish. Pop everything into the oven for 20 minutes. Take it out, marvel, and enjoy!

New Year's Eve Dinner

Happy New Year!

There's no better way to ring in the new year then to end the old one with a bang. I spent New Year's Eve with my girlfriend and we made a romantic home cooked meal before heading off to meet with friends to watch the ball drop in Time Square.

Our dinner consisted of beautifully pan seared Prime Rib Steaks with a Creamy Red Wine Reduction Sauce, Sauteed New Red Potatoes, Parsley Lime Rice, and Sauteed Bell Peppers and Red Onions. Recipes below.

I seared the steaks for about 4-5 minutes per side. I didn't really worry about them being too dry because prime rib cuts have a high fat content. Just had to make sure to let it get to room temperature so everything cooks evenly and then added some salt and pepper right before cooking.

Creamy Red Wine Reduction Sauce

Melt a tablespoon of butter in the pan and add some chopped red onions. Sauteed until the onions begin to caramelize and then add 1/4 the bottle of red wine. Let it bubble and cook off the alcohol. Give it a few minutes to reduce and then stir in light cream. The more liquid you have the more cream you'll need to add to thicken the sauce. I used the "Project Happiness Syrah" from Oreana Winery that I bought at Trader Joe's.

Sauteed New Red Potatoes

Clean the potatoes and then boil them for about 20 minutes or until a fork can easily go through them. Fish them out of the water and cut them in half. Melt a tablespoon of butter in the pan and sprinkle in some rosemary leaves to let the oils mix with the butter. I used the dried rosemary. Add the potatoes and sauteed for about a minute. Make sure to coat the potatoes in the butter and rosemary.

Parsley Lime Rice

Ok I know it's usually supposed to be cilantro lime rice but I didn't have any cilantro on hand and the two herbs are quite similar anyway. Make 2 cups of rice in a rice cooker to make things easier. Pinch off all the parsley leaves and discard the stems. Roll up all the leaves into a tube shape and slice across to cut the parsley into smaller pieces. Mix well with the freshly cooked rice. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in the pan. Dump the rice into the pan and mix to coat well. Roll a lime between your palm and the counter. This somehow gives you more juice. Cut the limes in half and squeeze the juice all over the rice. I then used a sea salt grinder and added a bit all around. Mix it well one last time.

Sauteed Bell Peppers and Red Onions

Cut up the peppers and onions into bite sized pieces. Sauteed with a little bit of oil or butter until peppers turn translucent and onions begin to caramelize. This is optional but before plating this I added a dash of authentic sriracha sauce that my girlfriend's friend brought back from Thailand for me.

Ramen with Chicken & Potato

Today I brown bagged my lunch for work. In my opinion, brown bagging shouldn't be confined to either a cold cut sandwich or last night's leftovers. That'd be a boring lunch. And a boring lunch should be a crime.

I didn’t have a lot of raw food ingredients to work with at home so I had to make do.

I basically started out with this.

First thing I did was to fish out the little MSG packet and toss it in then trash. Then I boiled the noodles according to the package directions. Then drained and rinsed the noodles (as you always should anyway because there’s an untold amount of preservatives and other body harming substances binded to the noodles). Tossed it with a bit of EVOO and soy sauce then put it in my container.

Next I took a good sized chicken breast and salted it slightly and fried it up in a skillet with a little EVOO. After it cooled off I cut it into chucks and smothered it with Old Bay seasoning and then tossed it all around to ensure an even coating. Set that aside. Don’t clean the skillet!

I boiled a small potato and after it cooled I peeled it, cut it into chucks and then threw it in the skillet with all the chickeny oil. Heated it slightly and tossed the chucks around and scraped off anything on the bottom.

Added the chicken and potato on top of the noodles to get this.

Minca

Minca
536 East 5th Street

New York, NY, 10009
(212) 505-8001

My girlfriend and I had a long awaited night out to dinner recently at Minca. The line for this little “ramen factory,” as they call themselves, was out the door. Not surprising either seeing as how Minca is one of the top ramen shops in the Big Apple.

While waiting outside, we took a look at the menu so we could save that extra bit of time before being able to eat. About twenty minutes after we arrived, we were finally seated. The clearly overworked waitress seated us and then ran off again to service another table. Moments later she returned with utensils and water for us and took out order.

For appetizers, we tried the Tofu and the Homemade Shrimp Gyoza. The Tofu came served with what looked like dried fish flakes and scallions. There was also ginger infused soy sauce for dipping. Seeing as how both my girlfriend and I are not too keen on the taste of ginger, this dish was only nominally appealing to us; but it was still the better of the two.

The Shrimp Gyoza was just bad. The gyoza consisted of ground pork with a grilled shrimp loosely wrapped around a gyoza wrapper. Three things to note about these gyoza. First off, as mentioned before, there was quite a lot of minced ginger mixed into the ground pork which was quite unappealing for us. Secondly, the shrimp was left whole and completely inside the gyoza wrapper; which is fine, except that they left on the shell from the last segment and the tail. I got a very unpleasant surprise when biting into it. And last but not least, if you look at the picture, you’ll see that the gyoza was quite badly burned. There was even a giant crust of burned stuff that was attached to all the pieces.

For our ramen, my girlfriend ordered the #2 – Minca Sio which was a mix of Pork and Chicken broth base flavored with salt and roasted garlic. I opted for the #4 – Shoyu which was a pork broth with soy sauce flavoring. Both orders got thin noodles. I have to admit, I really didn’t like the ramen too much either. The broth for the Minca Sio was overpoweringly garlicky. It just didn’t taste right. As for the Shoyu, it was kind of boring. Absolutely nothing to write home about there.

This was quite a disappointing meal for both of us. We had such high expectations for Minca, especially since it’s so highly rated and so well known.

Hahm Ji Bach

Hahm Ji Bach

41-08 149 Pl

Flushing, NY 11355

(718) 460-9289

Last night I had dinner with my girlfriend at Hahm Ji Bach in Flushing. I made a comment that not once have I ever been let down with Korean cuisine before. The experience last night was no different.

We were immediately greeted by the entire staff of waitresses and seated. A sweet old Korean waitress approached us and said something in Korean. After observing our blank stares she asked if we were Chinese. She then proceeded to speak to us in perfect Mandarin (which by the way I still didn’t understand a lick of). Luckily my beautiful, talented girlfriend was able to translate like a pro.

We placed our order and then out came the banchan (sides). LOTS and lots of banchan. There were at least 14 different little dishes of banchan. This is the most I’ve ever seen before. It was amazing! My favorites were the marinaded strips of bean curd and the seaweed.

They don’t set up the grill for you if you order only one item off the Korean BBQ menu; instead they grill it for you in the kitchen. This happened to us as we only ordered a Galbi Gui. I think it might have been better that they made it for us; it came out nicely sauced, and plenty of scallions mixed in. Somehow I doubt it would have come out looking so good if I had grilled it myself.

We also ordered items for ourselves. My girlfriend had the Galbi Dolsot which is actually a galbi bibimbap in a piping hot stone pot. I ordered myself the Soondooboo. While the Galbi Dolsot was good, I felt that (and my girlfriend disagrees 100%) the Soondooboo was much more delicious and satisfying. How can you go wrong with a slightly spicy broth, plenty of tofu, clams and shrimp whose flavors all melded together and a bowl of rice on the side?

Delicious!