[Sca-cooks] Helloooo???

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 9, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Heleen Greenwald wrote:

>
> On Jan 9, 2007, at 6:32 PM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>>  it sounds like it might have been a drunken chicken soup recipe
>> with dried orange or tangerine peel...
>
> That's it!! THAT;S THE ONE:  Please Master, Please post it again.
> (getting down on arthritc knees and begging....so you know I am
> serious)  It would be a mitzvah! <Thank you in advance!!>

I'm kind of hoping someone else has it saved (I can't seem to find it  
either), because as I recall it was just a description I dashed off  
on the spur of the moment. Basically what I'm remembering involved  
simmering a cut-up chicken in approximately one quart of water per  
pound of chicken, for about four hours, with a few slices of ginger,  
a couple of whole scallions, dried orange or tangerine peel (maybe  
one one-inch-by-three-inch piece, or two of them)  and some booze,  
anything from rice wine or sherry to any of the Asian or Western  
grain spirits, maybe 1/2 to 1 cup, salt and white pepper to taste at  
the end, IIRC. Maybe also some reconstituted, dried black mushrooms  
in there, too (which are kind of like the serious big brothers of  
shiitakes).

Does that sound right?



>>
>> If you can do a happy dance you're obviously a lot better, which is a
>> good thing. That particular ailment is not something I'd wish on my
>> worst enemy. Well, okay, maybe the Vice Pre... (did I use my outside
>> voice again?)
>
> Just say 'The Dark Lord'...We;ll know......  ;-)

My nephew's wife did some checking into her own family tree, only to  
discover that TDL is apparently a distant cousin of hers (I assure  
you she's a perfectly sweet young lady, in spite of this). Her  
comment on this situation was that she was sure that she and Cousin  
Dick had more areas on which they would agree than those on which  
they would disagree... she just hadn't discovered what any of them  
were, yet.

>>>
>
>> I suspect you might need something to give it a more variegated
>> texture, like sweet peppers (or, in fact, even chilis, maybe, if you
>> can eat them), or, failing that, something like celery. But I have
>> some rather heretical views on chili...
>>
> Of those choices, I like sweet peppers the best....
> and I would love to know your views on chili.  Would it be totally
> heretical for me to work up a tofu chili?  I made a tofu based stew
> once, which was very good. I wanted a savory, but not meat....

I'm not one of the legion of tofu's enemies, apart from generally  
calling it bean curd, dowfu or 'owfu, as it's pronounced in my wife's  
Chinese dialect. I've used it in a variety of rather unorthodox ways,  
ranging from vegetarian Dirty Rice (in which ground, suitably  
seasoned, extra-firm bean curd is subbed for the more traditional  
ground pork and chicken livers), to a low-carb lasagne type dish, but  
my favorite is still cubed and stir-fried with fermented black bean  
sauce, ground pork, too much garlic and chili flakes. But I would not  
necessarily sneer at a suitably Buddhist, meatless chili ;-).

I do think that when you say "chili", unqualified, it's a bit of a  
dirty trick to hand someone a "bowl of red" with all kinds of non- 
essential stuff in it, but that's probably just as much revisionist  
history as the people sneering at various chowder types on the  
grounds of an ill-informed preference for authenticity...

Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04