Best spur-of-the-moment chicken part/section recipes
So many recipes and only three meals a day...
Jen here again. Time for another "clap along and sing with Gilly and Jen" thread--that's right, your participation is vital to this particular thread.
Today's theme: What's your best spur-of-the-moment, last-minute treatment for chicken parts? By parts I mean a whole chicken cut up or a package of one or more parts, ie drumsticks and thighs, just thighs, etc.
Here's my example: I had a smallish bottle of sweet champagne that had been languishing in my fridge since forever ago, and I needed the room in the fridge. I was preparing food for one the now-famous Lefty Blogger Secret BBQ and Strategy Sessions (hail Kos!) and had bought a package of chicken thighs for the occasion. I was going to do a spice rub, but then the power issues in Queens began and I wanted to get out of the kitchen as soon as I could. My solution?
Chickenhawk Thighs Burning in Hell
Ingredients:
--1 package chicken thighs (about 8-10ish) --harare sauce or paste --cheap sweet champagne or dry ginger ale
Equipstuff: Ziploc Plastic Bag
Wash off and pat the chicken dry. In the bag mix at least 3 heaping tablespoons of harare with enough champagne or ginger ale to make a very loose paste--think more of a thick marinade versus a thin paste. This should only lightly coat the back of a spoon.
Dump in your chicken thighs and smoosh around, then seal the Ziploc bag. Let the chicken sit in the fridge for at least a few hours, preferrably overnight. Whenever you go to the fridge to get something out, squidge the bag around so that all the chicken marinates evenly.
Grill when ready.
You see, that wasn't that hard, was it? As a somewhat lazy cook, I love quick and delicious advance -prep fixes like this. Share yours here.
Personally, I tend to fry chicken with lots of spices when I'm stuck for things to fix. Things like Chipotle chili powder, garlic powder, fresh ground black pepper can make chicken thighs pop.
What happens when you make soft drinks in a country that has a contaminated water supply? You get contaminated soft drinks. From BBC News:
Drinks giant Coca Cola has enlisted the help of British government scientists to prove its assertion that its soft drinks sold in India are safe to drink.
Six Indian states have announced partial or complete bans on the soft drinks after claims that the drinks contain harmful pesticides.
At a press conference in Delhi, the scientists said tests carried out by them show the drinks meet EU standards.
But an India-based campaign group has questioned the tests' credibility.
Read the rest here. This is another "sleeper" story that got buried amid the general chaos with the airlines. Stories like this are the evil little siblings of the issues surrounding the use of infant formula in Third World nations. Comment.
Better start baking these into a cake or two, Barb. Jen here. It seems that our fearless Leader is already attempting to avoid a one-way ticket to the Netherlands with a cute piece of legislation:
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal....
Read the rest here. Conspiracy theorists, note that this story hit the same day that the shit hit the fan regarding the UK Airline Terror Plot/Evil Plot to Make People Buy Overpriced Books in Departure Lounge Bookstores Debacle, and was therefore completly buried.
You know, Pinochet tried something like this--a kind of sick reverse Mobius-zero-G-porn-flick-pretzelfuck of the "I was only giving, erm, I mean, following orders" and it didn't fly.
Now, I strongly doubt that Dubya will ever be keeping Miloscevic's seat warm, but the idea of a permenantly US-bound ex-prez is at least some small consolation. When he drives over the Mexican border for weed and a blow job he'll always have to look over his shoulder lest a wily bounty hunter do an Eichmann on him.
Discuss.
Also, note: If you're wondering where Gilly is, and why he headed up the day with a "fire and forget" thread, he's recovering at home after having some very minor work done related to his ongoing medical care. He's fine, but his arm is as sore as hell and he's probably grooving in a Vicodan daze right about now. Me, I've been stupid busy at work and obviously can't post a full post from the office, so please bear with the meager effort that I'm making here after a full day in. Gilly will be back with more posts and more snark as soon as he's able.
Jimmy the Bartender sez: "Kiss my haggis, terrorists!"
Yes, I'm back in one piece from Scotland, having survived the full impact of Security Theater. Yes, I took the picture above, and yes, the pose was unprompted.
Before I launch into my airport stories, let me add the following point:
Attention Newark airport rent-a-cops and Continental Airlines: Please bite this.
Right! Now that we've gotten that out of the way...I could type for pages and pages about what I saw and what I went through--which was substantially less horrid than many of my fellow travelers, given that I actually already had packed a spare bag (ie so I had room to check through the crap I woulda taken on carry-on) and many many plastic bags (always good to keep stuff like filthy laundry, potentially meltly cosmetics, etc. in). I also was traveling alone, with no kids, while Caucasian, English-speaking, middle-aged, and female. I saw many others who fit none of the above categories who had a much rougher go at it.
However, I don't want to get into too much detail here just now. It's 6:30ish on Sunday night and I haven't left the house since I got in late Friday--crashed hard after getting home very, very late, did nothing on Saturday whatsoever, and spent most of today unpacking, doing laundry, shopping for the week, cooking what I had bought as I came home to an empty fridge, etc. If you must know: Cooking highlights included chicken thighs with crispy Turkish 7-spice crust and black rice with barley cooked in the Rice Spaceship. Had that for lunch, but I have an urge for shitty pizza. But I digress.
So, let me hear YOUR airport stories. Special shout out to our own Lower Manhattanite, whom at last note was attempting to take his Black Muslim self and several cases of complicated electrical shazbit to California (LM--please let us all know how it went!!) Given the amount of general fecal matter that yours truly was subjected too, I can only imagine what anyone who vaguely fitted any kind of "profile" went through. So please let me know, and if I have the stregnth before bed, I will try to post more on my own experience.
Summary of my trip: Checked three times, frisking, etc, had all of my non-scrip meds confiscated, including sinus stuff, but they still managed to miss three chewable Rolaids in one pocket, a lollipop in the other (both of which I had even forgotten were there), an opaque bottle of aspirin (which was right next to the Rolaids and Sudafed that they nicked so no idea why that got missed) and a small flashlight on my keychain, which really shocked me. If the chewy Rolaids had really been plastic explosive, I wouldn't even need anything naughty in the aspirin bottle--I coulda just stuck it on the john and broken the bulb on the mini-Maglite to ignite. They did not, however, let us take books or reading material on the plane that hadn't been purchased (with receipt) from the "secure area." Sitting on the top of the Confiscated Shit tub: A copy of Amos Oz's "How to Cure a Fanatic," a book that I was going to bring up here at some point. Oh, the irony.
My prediction: Eventually someone is just gonna shove a tube of nitro up their ass and get it done that way. In 5 years, we'll all have to go thru a full-body screening and wear special airline-issued "bunny suits" on the plane, no exceptions.
More later perhaps, but right now, I need to get some sunlight in or I will never be able to go back to my desk tomorrow.
