This super easy chicken soup will make you feel warm all over.
A few of our friends here hail from Sarikei, a town about 5 hours’ drive from Kuching. They are quite proud of their town, especially of some of their well-known food products such as mee sua noodles, Sarikei pineapples, and kompia bread. What really piqued our interest, though, was mention of the special “Sarikei chicken”.
This isn’t your grandfather’s Chinese Chicken Salad recipe…
…probably because your grandfather never heard of Chinese chicken salad in his hey day. The Chinese chicken salad that we’re familiar with – shredded chicken, raw lettuce, crispy fried noodles, and a sweet, sesame-based dressing – wasn’t popular until the 1970’s.
The Chinese in Asia typically don’t eat raw-leaf lettuce salads. They prefer their greens cooked. Chinese chicken salad as we know it was probably invented in California as a “fusion” of Oriental flavors with Western ingredients.
Loving bell peppers is easy when stir-fried with chicken and black bean sauce.
When I was younger, there were certain vegetables that I didn’t care for—bittermelon, celery, watercress and bell peppers (specifically green bell peppers). These vegetables tasted bad to me except for watercress (that one I just didn’t like because it was so stringy—we mainly had it in soups and I could never chew it enough to swallow it).
When I met Nate, he had his own food dislikes but they didn’t match mine. I was incredulous that he didn’t like mayonnaise, bananas, and asparagus. Those were all things that I loved. So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me that the things he loved, I didn’t – especially bell peppers. And this particular dish of stir-fried chicken with bell peppers in black bean sauce is one of his favorites.
Continue reading Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers Stir-fry
Sweet marinated meat, skewered and char-grilled for that irresistible, flame-kissed, smoky flavor.
If you recall I have had many wonderful eating experiences stemming from that International Dorm in Hawaii (Niku-Jaga, Chicken Pho, Thai Son-in-Law Eggs, Indonesian-inspired Sauteed Shrimp). But for this particular recipe, my memories are not based in the dorm. Yes, the Indonesian friends who made them were from that dorm but we had taken the satay and hibachi (portable grill) and had gone to cook them at the park by the beach. Hawaii does that to you—it makes you want to go out to the beach as often as you can!
So imagine with me, if you can, the cool tradewind breezes, and in the background, the sound of Hawaiian music playing on somebody’s boombox, the blue ocean beckoning a slight distance away, the wide, expansive park next to the beach and us sitting under a shady tree with our hibachi going. Now that you have that setting in your mind, imagine any food not tasting just wonderful. But this was satay, it wasn’t just any food, it was GOOD food.
Continue reading Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay (Sate Ayam dan Babi)