Saturday, December 29, 2012

Cilantro Chicken

Did you ever buy cilantro for guacamole or corn salad and then have 3/4 of the bunch left over? Well, never again shall that cilantro go to waste! This is my go to recipe for excess cilantro. While it does require a food processor or a blender, it's very simple and a great way to get some green into your diet. According to Livestrong.com, 9 sprigs of cilantro can apparently give you a significant part of your daily Vitamin A, for healthy eyes, and Vit K, for proper blood clotting.  Here's what you need:

2 pounds of chicken
1 small bunch cilantro
1 medium yellow onion
2 jalapeno peppers (+/- for more or less spicy)
5 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp group coriander
Salt to taste


1. Peel the onion and cut into quarters. Dice one quarter and put aside. Coarsely chop remainder and place into blender. 
2. Wash cilantro carefully and remove about 2-3 inches of the stem from the bottom.  Peel garlic. Remove stems from the jalapenos peppers. Coarsely chop all three and place into blender.


Ingredients for the gravy


3. Blend onion, cilantro, garlic and jalapenos together until smooth. Add a little bit of water if necessary.  You should get about 1-2 cups of mixture.


Blended gravy ingredients


3. Remove the skin from chicken and remove excess fat. I like to use bone in chicken thighs. These take a little longer to cook, but the flavor from the bones really give it a little extra flavor.


4 Chicken thighs average out to about 2 pounds

4. Warm the oil in a small pot on medium heat. You want to use a container that can let you at least partially submerge the chicken. Add the diced onion quarter and stir fry until translucent. About 2 min. Add the spices and a small amount of salt to the onion and stir fry for 20 seconds. Add the chicken and stir fry until chicken is browned on all sides, about 5-7 min.




Browned Chicken
5. Add in the cilantro mixture. Stir, cover and cook on medium heat until the chicken is cooked through, about 15-20 min. When you uncover the pot after this time, there may be a lot of water that was release from the cilantro and/or the chicken. Boil uncovered, until the gravy reaches a consistency you like. Add salt to taste.

6. Remove from heat. Garnish with fresh onion and serve over hot basmati rice.


Bon Appetit!

Notes: The relative amounts of the ingredients are all subjective. It's rarely the case that this recipe turns out tasting the same two times in a row. If you want a stronger cilantro flavor, just add more, a little ghee always lends a hint of luxury and I also like to add mushrooms sometimes, about 5 mins after the chicken for texture.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Yelp, Essential or Evil?

Ok, I have a confession to make. I used to think reading reviews were useless. I mean, I am my own person. What do I care what other people thought about this restaurant? Or a dress? Or a watch? I can go look at it or experience it myself and form my own opinions. Also, I was of the mindset that people who wrote reviews were of two extremes. They either loved something, or they hated it. Unless you were paid to write a review, why else would you take the time and effort to say something was just ok? So again, reviews = unreliable.

But then I graduated college. All of the sudden, I was thrust out into the world, fending for myself and paying my own bills (except cell phone. can't give up that family plan). I even had my own health insurance for Pete's sake! All of the sudden, money was less quick to leave the palm. Did I really want to just walk in to some random restaurant, plop down $40 bucks for a mediocre meal? No. I wanted assurance that the meal would be good. Enter Yelp. (and Groupon and Living Social, but more about those gems later). Now, I could do a little reconnaissance before walking through the door of any restaurant that would run me upwards of $20 bucks. 

I have to admit, I rarely use Yelp to decide whether or not I will go to a restaurant. That mostly comes from walking by a place and smelling the food and seeing how happy the people eating there look. I use Yelp mostly to figure out what to order once I'm there and so far, Yelp has rarely led me astray. If 4 out 10 people rave about the Three Pepper Chicken at Sichuan Spring, you better bet I'm going to try it. 

Some people have complained that Yelp can hurt businesses. I think that's true...if you are a bad business. I doubt people base their expectations of a place based on reading a few bad reviews. But a majority of mediocre to bad reviews? I think I would think twice. Good places will probably hover around a 3.5. The majority of them good, but brought down by those who are impossible to please or get off on bringing others down. But it's pretty easy to spot the extremists or the overly picky. Really good places, its obvious from the general tone. There are more superlatives, poetic language and exclamation points galore!

And, if you think about it, Yelp is a great equalizer. When you want a recommendation for a restaurant, you ask your friends, coworkers, families. What about the loners of the world? or the awkward? Or the ones with a severe social anxiety? Don't they deserve the benefit of the opinions of the masses? I'm being a little facetious here, but I really do think its nice that there's a community of people who can point me in the right direction without even knowing it.

As far as polarizing opinions go, I think Yelp has found an ingenious way to address that. The "Elite Club". All of the sudden there's a incentive to write reviews, many reviews, any reviews. Doesn't matter if you didn't love it or hate it. All that matters is that you reviewed it.




Saturday, December 22, 2012

First of a first!

I decided to start a blog mostly as way to keep track of my recipes, cooking adventures and all things food related. Also, I decided that, since I graduated college, my writing skills have considerably deteriorated. Not many papers on the sexual symbolism of Ethan Frome's pickle dish in med school, I tell ya. I thought writing about things I found interesting, like food and medicine, would be a good way to get me to write again. This blog will probably end up being 75% food and 25% medicine (mostly where it relates to food). It's mostly meant to be my putting my personal thoughts and opinions down on paper and in no way is supposed to be any sort of professional medical advice. At the end of the day, I'm just girl, standing in front of the blogosphere, asking you to love me...but I'll settle for not being run out of town for false claims.