I accidentally bought 3 more little chickens from the feed store – on two separate occasions, just to ensure you of my complete lack of self-control – to add to our existing 4, bringing the grand total of our multiclucktural brood to 7. I'm pretty excited because we spend a solid chunk of our expendable income on eggs. We each eat at least two a day – I have thus far perfected hard- and soft-boiled, and can definitely poach my way around an egg or two as well. As of this weekend, I learned how to cook them sunny-side up! How beautiful is this??
The combination of the crispy egg whites and perfect creamy yolk was a revelation. You can cook eggs a zillion different ways, but they all tend to be soft in one fashion or another. Crispy was absolute perfection.
Anyways – while my 7 chickens got to know each other and their new outdoor pen, I weeded our three huge plots, planted a few dozen vegetables, and almost cut my thumb off with my Wusthof knife. Luckily this time I didn't entirely cut through my nail, like I did LAST time I pulled off such a stunt. Today, I had an aspiration to check off another recipe from The Food Lab. I was thinking chicken with a pan sauce, and then Portland did that thing where it's schizophrenic. After a week of unseasonably chilly weather, today was absolutely hot as balls. My house was an oven when I got home, and I ended up sitting in my garage amongst the smell of gasoline and coolant because it was the coolest room in the house, flipping through my cookbook.
The thought of cooking over a hot stove, for once, had absolutely no appeal. I wanted something light and refreshing, so I deviated from my cookbook journey and decided to make Thai beef salad. With lemongrass, mint, and cilantro with a citrusy lime dressing and grilled steak, it really is the perfect salad for a hot day.
I've been obsessed with this dish for several years, as a Thai restaurant two blocks from my office serves up a divine rendition. I made it once a few months ago, and liked it even better than the one I regularly spent $12 on. Perhaps the heat had made me batty, but I decided to kind of wing it from memory rather than follow a recipe.
I started by marinating a slab of beef in lime juice, yuzu, fish sauce, scallions, and aminos. You know what's awesome when you have a deep, fresh cut on your finger from your fancy-pants German knife? Tossing beef in all of those things and forgetting to keep your sliced-open finger out of the mix. AGONY.
The dressing was made with minced garlic, a diced tiny little red pepper which is apparently a “fresca” pepper(?), two juiced limes, about a tablespoon of fish sauce, and a couple tablespoons of minced lemongrass – which is arguably one of the most refreshing flavors EVER. Tossed in a bit of sugar and a smidge of the Korean red pepper flakes I use in my kimchi – which is a recipe for another day – it smelled too spicy and not quite refreshing enough, so I grated about half a cucumber into it. Like magic, it added just enough crisp moisture to bring down the spice. Dressing done – on to the meat.
I took it out of the fridge and became distracted by the fact that I have 7 adorable chickens running around my backyard. After thoroughly torturing them with my presence and insistence upon holding them as means to show my deep ocean of affection and to “socialize them”, they were horrified and I was covered in chicken shit. Perhaps parenthood isn't for me, but after a thorough cleaning I was back in the kitchen where I apparently belong, with meat that is no longer of the living variety.
At this point, I am vaguely pretending to know what I'm doing, and failing. I tossed about 2 pounds of London broil into the cast iron pan before I realized that I have no idea why, and that people follow recipes for a good reason. The outside of the meat is browning beautifully, but the cut is so thick that I'm already foreseeing a raw center. I turned down the heat and started cooking the meat on all sides while I crank up the heat in the oven to 450 to engage Plan B.
Oh! That's cool. The outside of my meat is perfectly browned and it's clocking in at an internal temperature of less that 90 degrees, which means it's probably still technically alive according to Texas state law. Why do I ever do things without a plan? That was the ENTIRE focus of this blog – to follow recipes. I have already failed, on entry #3.
The steak went into the oven (I turned it down to 350, then back up to 400 because I'm spastic when I don't know what to do), and I did the cooking version of a Hail Mary which means I poured a fat-ass glass of wine and started forcing myself to feel hopeful by constantly sniffing my quite delicious-smelling dressing which may or may not be adorned by $12 worth of beef.
Finally, the steak appeared to be edible. After resting and slicing, I tossed it with minced lemongrass, shallot, and toasted rice. I quickly tossed some greens with minced cilantro and mint, a bit of the dressing that had been my sanity through the “I can't randomly just cook beef however” debacle, and topped with the rest of the dressing. I mean, look at that beef. Perfection.
While I don't entirely recommend building without blueprints, sometimes it's exciting – in the same way that having to pee with no restroom in sight is exciting (I'm talking from a female standpoint here folks – that ain't easy). Desperation may inspire, but sometimes you just pee your pants and live with the shame of not being able to figure your shit out.
Fortunately, today, I figured my shit out. I went off-recipe and pulled it together, and it was DELICIOUS. Every bit of the refreshing meal I was hoping for. Please, go off-recipe every now and then. You might pee your pants a couple times, but you also might cook a delicious meal that you enjoy in the sanctuary of your finally-cooled-down yard, with a glass of wine, watching your chickens be chickens. It was a good evening.
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