Three chicken

Chicken

Western chicken is like a blank canvas to which you can draw and meld all the big flavors you want. Due to the genetic selection and the stale diet feed in the chicken farm, you cannot expect chickens nowadays to taste as delicious as it once did. Therefore, exotic techniques need to be applied to make it appeal to demanding palates. Chicken, the most used ingredient in cooking therefore, the hardest to excel at because everyone knows how to cook chicken. I recently came upon three huge chunk of chicken breast for $4.50, an opportunity too stupid to miss once locked on by my Asian cashdar. Henceforth, I present to you my 3000 calories a day 3 chicken meal.

Breakfast: BBQ pulled chicken

The story

Sizzling chicken dipped in succulent BBQ sauce with pan fried lemon to change the flavor in mid course. The altered flavor profile of a pan fried lemon is the perfect catalyst that can mix and morph the BBQ sauce. So in reality, this is actually two meals in one. To eat this, biscuits and milks are added so that diners can wipe their taste bugs cleans each time they take a bite out of the BBQ chicken. Strongly suggested if you want to switch the flavor profile by adding lemon juices. Also to the heavy handed approach I used in making the BBQ sauce, I took care to only put a small portion of the chicken for breakfast. What’s shown in the picture is enough to last you for 5 hours, I know because it did that to me.

The chicken is first pan fried, then oven baked to harden the surface and put into a slow cooker with the sauce. The BBQ sauce is a combination mixture of chili, ketchup, molasses and black pepper vinaigrette reduced over 8 hours of slow cooking along with the chicken in order to avoid the usual dryness associated with cooked chicken breast.

Lunch: Pan fried chicken with citrus-coconut sauce

The story

The lunch dish takes after the idea of having a good Spanish siesta where I will be out and having a good beer with a couple of co-workers. The chicken is pan fried for a long time and then oven broiled with the BBQ sauce to melt and crystalize the sugar in the sauce, making the surface crispy in the process. Fries and beer are served along with a special mixture of citrus-coconut sauce that I made specifically for this type of cooking.

Despite its small foot print on the plate, the coconut sauce is actually the star of the show. It is made by reducing a mixture of coconut milk, thai chili, indian curry and lemon zest in a pan until creamy. Giving it a strong and refreshing flavor. A contrast and much needed relief from the heaviness of fries and chicken.

Dinner: Beer sous-vide chicken

The story

Go ahead, take a bite out of the chicken. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the supple tenderness that is overwhelming all your senses in your mouth. A special trait of any sous-vide dish is the even tenderness in the meat cooked by this technique.  Soft juicy beer spiced chicken with a dijon sauce derived from the same beer marinade it was cooked with. If you click on the image for a bigger version, you can actually see that there’s a slight pinkish glow in the chicken, showing the crossover point between raw and cooked.Nothing can be more serene than being hit by the surprise that is in this chicken. The whole time I was chewing, I was craving for some red wine mushroom gravy sauce. Sadly, I had none on hand to try what the combination will do. And before I knew it, I’ve already finished the plate.

The homemade crispy hash brown is the perfect contrast to the chicken, along with a small cup of steam rice and tea to bring back the memory of certain Chines dish: Boiled chicken in alcohol. That is why the garnishes for this dish has an Asian feel to it. By the way, this is how hash brown is supposed to be. Not those greasy patties that you see in school cafeterias.