1. Ghareeb Nawaz on Devon St. was amazing. Between us, Sean, Kali, and I shared some delicious chicken biryani, a lamb curry I forget the name of, chana masala with chicken, gyro parantha, and some authentic chai tea. I have to say this is easily some of the best Indian food I've had in Chicago. All the meat we ordered was cooked tender, and heavily spiced (my kind of approach to cooking). I have to say I never want to go back to a simple gyro in pita bread when I could have a spiced up version of it in parantha bread. It actually only took us a half-hour to get there (20 min on intercampus and five on the 155 west.) If you're in the Streeterville area this is an obligatory visit for anyone who loves spicy, authentic Indian food.
2. I recently made a "La Jiao Shiao Tsao" (Hot Pepper Stir Fry?) that turned out well. My mom cooks this for me when I go back home - and I thought it was about time to try cooking it for myself. The main ingredient is leeks and hot peppers (jalepenos work fine) - the combination is a fragrant, spicy flavor that I find irresistable. Pork strips and dried tofu strips are included in the stir fry. You can get this stuff plated in less than 20 minutes if you cut and wash quickly. I cut pork into little strips (a staple in Chinese stir-fry) and marinated it in white pepper, soy sauce, a bit of rice wine, and corn starch for a couple of hours. The corn starch keeps the meat tender during cooking. To cook, cut up one leek (you have to wash these well), three mild jalapenos (if you like milder spice remove all the seeds), and three cloves of garlic. Stir-fry these in a wok with a bit of vegetable oil for two minutes, then add the pork, dried tofu strips, a couple tablespoons of water, one tablespoon soy sauce, and white pepper to taste and cook for another three minutes. Keep the heat on high the entire time, and serve immediately with white rice. Tsingtao beer actually works amazingly with this dish - so if you've got it break out a couple of bottles. If you've got garlic chives and shrimp, these add even more complexity and flavor to the dish. Just clean the shrimp - cooking time shouldn't vary much.
Ok now here's what I wanted to show you guys:
This crazy idea started with the need to use up some avocados. I also wanted to do something artsy - which I kind of failed at...but anyways you could call the above dish chicken on a raft, floating down a river dwarfed by mountain. I know, its crazy but I was listening to Incubus - Aqueous Transmission and so I had to make a river.
The raft is made out of some asparagus cooked with a bit of garlic and sea salt. The chicken was marinated and baked in teriyaki sauce (equal parts of soy sauce, mirin, and sake) and a bit of sriracha for spice. The river was made of avocadoes pureed with some sea salt, milk, olive oil, and wasabi (basically I was trying to make avocado wasabi mayo without using raw egg).
The mountain is white rice topped with honeyed walnuts and goji berries (my healthier take on a Chinese desert called eight-treasure sticky rice). The walnuts I toasted for a bit to bring out the natural oils, coated with honey diluted with a bit of water and lemon juice, and baked. I put these walnuts on top of the chicken as well.
Everything was put on top of two sheets of salted sea weed - so the remaining bits could be wrapped up and eaten...kind of a glorified sushi.
All in all, I would judge the dish as a bit chaotic - the "mountain" tasted very good, but didn't really have any relation to the other components of the dish in terms of flavor - though wasabi-tinged avocado with the teriyaki chicken worked very well in my opinion. I also think I succeeded in preserving the natural flavors of my ingredients (ie I didn't add too many spices) which I appreciate about Japanese food. I have to try to keep my flavors a bit more focused. I had a lot of fun making this though.
