A recipe with a story this time!

I'll bet you thought I wasn't gonna update this, huh?  Well, I haven't been cooking anything especially "great", but the chicken I made today was SO GOOD that I had to share it.

St. Augustine Chicken
Ingredients:

• 1 boneless, skinless chicken thigh cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 tsp to 1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp minced onion flakes
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1/4 c. Spanish olives, chopped
• olive oil
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 1/4 c. chicken broth

Instructions:

1. Combine paprika, garlic, onion flakes, cumin, and thyme in a small bowl. 
   
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine chicken, olives, and olive oil.  Add your spice mixture.  Mix it all up with a rubber spatula.  Make sure everything is good and coated with the spices.
   
3. Heat a small amount of oil over med-hi heat.  (You don't need a lot of oil because there's oil on the chicken, plus chicken thighs have a lot of fat on them.)  Add chicken and brown on all sides.
   
4. Once chicken is browned, scoot it over to one side and sprinkle flour into the pan.  I used about a tablespoon of flour.  Make sure to lightly scrape the bottom of the pan to stir up all the little bits of fat and seasoning. Add the chicken broth and stir the chicken back into the mixture, and let it thicken and cook until chicken is at least 165 degrees. 
   
5. If desired, soak up some of the excess oil with a paper towel.

Served tonight with brown rice and peas.  I'm going to get about two servings out of this, but it depends on how hungry you are.  Besides, leftovers are good, right?

Now, I hear you asking "Why is this called St. Augustine chicken?".  Well, earlier this year, I went to St. Augustine and got the most delicious chicken empanada from The Spanish Bakery.  I've been trying to recreate that flavor ever since.  This comes pretty close.  If you are ever in St. Augustine, hit up The Spanish Bakery for their delicious pastries.  I hope that once this virus has gotten under control, I'll be able to go back and get another empanada (or two....or three....) with datil pepper sauce to dip it in. 

If you want a smokier flavor, you can add chorizo to your chicken.  However, chorizo is really oily, so use caution.  Red bell pepper and carmelized onions are also really good with this, but I didn't have either on hand at the time.  You could probably make this into an empanada filling, too, but you might want to add a little extra flour to thicken it before you load it into the pastry so that it doesn't leak everywhere.  

A note on the chicken broth: I freeze chicken broth in a plastic-wrap-lined ice cube tray so that I have small amounts on hand when I need them.  Ice cube trays are a great way to portion out ingredients you only need a small amount of, like broths, lemon/lime juice, fresh herbs (freeze them in olive oil or water), and tomato paste.  I recommend lining them with plastic wrap so that the flavor of whatever you're freezing doesn't seep into the plastic of the ice cube tray, or in the case of the tomato paste, stain the tray.  

As always, if you tried this, let me know how it came out.

Three! Three posts, ah-ah-ah!

We'll just ignore the gap of a whole day between this post and the last one. 

Today's recipe: Pork in Tangy Mustard Sauce

This sauce is an explosion of tangy deliciousness that you can put on pork chops or pork loin.  It tastes really expensive and fancy, so if you're trying to impress someone, I think this is a good recipe to pull out for company. 

• 1 pork chop, thin center cut is my preference for pork chops because I can either have them as chops or cut them up for stirfry.  When I made this the other night, I actually used this pork I get from the local farmer's market that is labeled "shish-kabob pork", and it's basically pork loin cut into cubes. It's usually inexpensive and easy to portion out into one-person servings (about a handful of meat per packet).  
• Salt and pepper
• 3 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 - 1/2 T dijon mustard
• 1-2 t (or so) honey
• dried rosemary (careful with rosemary - it likes to show off and gets bitter if you add too much.  I didn't measure mine, but I'd say I used about half a teaspoon)
• rubbed sage (again, I didn't measure, but I'd say no more than 1/4 tsp or it overpowers the sauce)
• 1-2 small fresh mushrooms, sliced, or a can of sliced mushrooms.  
• about 1T of butter

1. In a small bowl, combine vinegar, mustard, honey, rosemary, and sage.  You may want to use a whisk to make sure that the honey combines in fully.  

2. Pat dry pork chop or whatever pork you're using.  If you're using a thick cut of pork, pound it flat with a meat tenderizer so that it cooks quickly in the pan.  Salt and pepper both sides of the pork.

3. In a lightly oiled skillet, brown the pork on both sides over med-high heat.  Add butter and mushrooms and saute until the mushrooms have started to brown a little bit.  

4. Turn on your exhaust fan or open a window.  When you pour the sauce into the hot skillet, the vinegar's going to be pretty pungent and it might irritate your eyes and throat a little.  Let the sauce thicken, and cook everything together until the pork reaches at least 145 degrees.  It won't take long if you're using thin cuts of meat, so watch it.

This is a good one to serve with egg noodles, but I had mine with brown rice with a side of steamed broccoli.  

And there you have it. Let me know if you tried this one.  If you cooked this to impress your future spouse, be sure to invite me to the wedding!

Oh look, two posts in a row!

New day, new recipe.   How's everyone hanging in there?

As promised, I'm going to lead with the recipe so you don't have to scroll through a page of rambling.  This is a recipe that is pretty quick and easy, and the ingredients are fairly inexpensive.  You can always splurge on fancier mushrooms or wine for the sauce, but if you only have a can of sliced mushrooms and cheap plonk available, this sauce will still be pretty impressive.

Chicken with Mushrooms in Cider/Wine Sauce

• 1 - 2 chicken tenderloins, thawed completely 
• 2 fresh mushrooms, sliced, or a small can of sliced mushrooms 
• 2 T of flour
• About 1 tsp of garlic powder, or more if you like your chicken with more garlic flavor
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 bottle of whatever light alcohol you have on hand. This recipe is pretty forgiving.  I made mine tonight with a bottle of IPA-style hard cider, but you can use any wine you happen to have on hand.  You can also use apple juice if you don't have anything harder on hand. 
• 2 T of unsalted butter (or more if necessary)
• 1/2 cup of egg noodles

1. In a zip-top baggie, combine flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  Pat chicken tenderloins dry and add to baggie.  Now, put on "Hey Ya" and "Shake it like a Polaroid picture!".  (Fun fact, shaking Polaroids can actually cause the film to separate and cause bubbles in the picture, so it's recommended to just lay them flat.  But, by all means, shake that chicken bag.)  Get it good and coated.

2. Gentlemen, start your noodles! In a small sauce pan, cook your noodles according to package directions, but make sure you don't overcook them.  Meanwhile, melt butter over medium to med-high heat in a small skillet.  Once it's melted, add the coated chicken and brown on all sides.  Watch the butter, though. It likes to get a little TOO browned.

3. Pull that chicken out of the skillet and deglaze the pan with your alcohol of choice.  You don't have to use very much, just enough to make a light sauce.  Make sure to scrape the bottom to get all the lovely brown bits up.  Add your mushrooms and let it cook about a minute or two.  Add chicken back to pan and let it cook through.  Make sure that your chicken hits 165 on your thermometer, but make sure you don't burn your sauce, too.

4. By this point, your noodles are probably done.  Drain them, butter if necessary, and serve with your chicken and sauce.  Pairs nicely with a side salad and whatever was left over in the bottle.

Mine came out a little too brown, but it was still pretty tasty!

So, if you tried this at home, let me know how it came out, or if you made any changes.

I don't have anything to ramble about regarding this recipe.  This is a modification of a Chicken Marsala dish my mom makes at home.  Marsala wine isn't terribly expensive, so if you can get a bottle of it, try this sauce with Marsala wine.  It's lovely.

In which I post a recipe and a long absence is swept under the rug....

I was suddenly reminded that I have this blog.  I haven't updated this thing in, what, two years?  Yeesh.  But, now that I'm stuck at home because of the whole "social distancing" thing, I guess I can bring readers up to speed.  Not that I don't practice social distancing regularly anyway, but not out of concern for germs.  I just don't like crowds.  It takes me about a year of banking social energy to go to a convention, and then after a weekend, I'm all people'd out.  I digress.

It was suggested to me that I start posting recipes for things you can make for one person.  I enjoy cooking, and am constantly frustrated by the fact that many of the things I want have to be made in amounts large enough to feed a small army (ex: my grandma's pirogi recipe).  So, through trial and error, I've developed a few things that can be thrown together relatively easily, inexpensively, and quickly.  So, without further ado, here's the first recipe.  In the future, maybe I'll lead off with it.  I dunno.  We'll see what sticks.

This is a really quick, easy recipe.  It reheats pretty well, too, so it's good for lunch at work.

Chili-lime Sweet Potato Rice Bowl

• 1 small sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• Olive or vegetable oil
• Tajin chili lime fruit seasoning (Or you can use lime zest and chili powder.  I get this stuff at Aldi, and apparently it's supposed to be sprinkled on fruit, but it's also a nice chili lime seasoning for stuff like chicken, sweet potatoes, etc...)
• 2 T of black beans, rinsed (Canned black beans can be rinsed, portioned out into about 2T size amounts, and then frozen.  To use them later, you can thaw them out under hot water, and then you can serve as is.  I get about four little, tall, skinny square Rubbermaid containers out of one can of black beans.)
• Shredded cheese (or you can chop up one of those deli slices, your choice)
• Other vegetables and toppings (such as tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, etc)
• About half a cup of cooked brown or white rice.  Either works fine.  I like the nutty flavor of brown rice, but use whatever you have on hand.

1. In a small/med size bowl, toss sweet potato, enough olive oil to coat potato, and a generous amount of seasoning until well coated.  Spread onto a foil-lined jelly-roll pan (you know, those cookie sheets with a rim around them).  I use a rubber spatula to make sure that everything gets evenly coated and distributed.  

2. Set toaster oven to 350, and bake potato for about 30 minutes.  

3. Once the potato is cooked, scrape them into a paper-towel lined bowl to soak up any excess oil.  

4. Assemble the bowl.  Start with rice, then add potato, black beans, any other veggies and toppings, and top with rice.  If the potatoes or rice is still warm, a quick stir will melt the cheese pretty well.  If you're reheating this at work, set the cheese and any cold toppings aside until after you've reheated the rice, potato, and beans.  

This is a really basic recipe that you can dress up with pretty much anything else you have on hand.  I used steamed broccoli in the one I made this afternoon, or you can add kale (if you really must) or spinach.  

You can also turn it into a pretty tasty quesadilla by swapping out the rice for a tortilla, and adding some corn and cilantro to the black beans.  However, if you're going to make it into a quesadilla, I recommend either mashing the filling to keep the beans from flying out of the side of the quesadilla when you flip it (I'm still finding black beans in weird places in the kitchen), or just browning it in the toaster oven to melt the cheese and crisp up the tortilla.  

If anyone reading this decides to try this out for themselves, please let me know how it came out.  Did you make any changes?  What did you try?  

Persona 5

I have been a fan of the Persona series ever since I got Persona 3 for my PSP many years ago.  I love the music, the stylish character designs, the storylines, and the use of mythological imagery for the plot and monsters.  I'm also a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor series, which the Persona series spun off from.  When Persona 5 was announced, I eagerly awaited updates on the game.

It was the second Persona game I'd ever completed.  The first was Persona 4: The Golden, but I didn't get the "true" ending to the game and have yet to go back and complete my New Game + run.

Persona 5 uses the themes of outlaws, imprisonment, and corruption in places of authority.  The protagonist is accused of assault and battery of a man who apparently has a lot of power over small-town police, and is shipped off to live with a friend-of-a-friend in Tokyo to live out his 1 year probation sentence.  At his new school, the protagonist is subjected to social rejection as other students have already learned of his criminal record (though not the unjust part), and both the students and teachers are hesitant to get to know him.  To make matters worse, the student body and faculty seems to be under the thumb of an absurdly overly-important athletics department - in particular a rather sleazy volleyball coach who treats his female athletes like eye-candy and male athletes like cannon fodder.  After accidentally stumbling across a strange castle run by a speedo-clad version of the volleyball coach, the protagonist discovers that he has the ability to step between the real world and the "Metaverse" and to take on a Persona, specifically that of Arsene Lupin the famous phantom thief of French literature.  The protagonist decides to use his newfound powers to fight against corrupt adults around him by stealing their Metaverse "treasure" to change their behavior.  He's joined by several other teens with similar motives, but the Metaverse is full of more dangers than just the odd boss-battle - there's some real political conspiracy going on here and if the protagonist and his friends aren't careful, they're likely to end up in some serious hot water.

I loved the stylishness of the game - from character design to menu design to music, this game is just dripping with style.  The controls were also pretty easy to get the hang of.  I also liked how timely and relatable the storyline was - it's not just teens tired of corruption in positions of authority.  It's nice to be able to "fight the power" and see immediate change in the hearts and minds of the corrupted, even if it's just in a fictional world.  Unfortunately, solving problems in the real world isn't as fun or easy as stealing a "treasure" and fighting a boss-battle with a kickass soundtrack in the background. 

I only have a few complaints about the game.  They all occur at about the same point in the story - the Big Bang Burger storyline.  Not only is the inter-group conflict poorly written, but the dungeon related to that part of the storyline has one of the most frustrating puzzles and battles out of the entire game.  Plus, you are given your final party member at this point, but in order to max out the social link with that character, you have to be really, really good at managing your time in-game or have maxed out other relationships earlier in the game to the detriment of non-party (but still valuable) relationships.  Basically, they could have established a social link with Haru a lot earlier in the game and had it change to a party-relationship later in the game (like they did with Akechi).  I mean, Haru was introduced before the class trip to Hawaii, and that would have been a great time to squeeze in a social-link establishment scene. 

A lot of people complained about Mementos, the underground dungeon that basically serves as a level-grinding dungeon.  I actually didn't mind the Mementos dungeon, and I liked how it was worked into the overall game.  It gave me a chance to get Personas I missed in the boss-level dungeons (which become inaccessible once the boss is defeated, unlike the dungeons in Persona 4). Plus, I liked being able to correct small social wrongs as well as tackle the big ones like corrupt politicians and businessmen. 

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this game.  And, perhaps this game will get a similar treatment that Persona 4 got with The Golden, only instead of introducing another character storyline, they smooth out the existing flaws with the latter part of the game.

Blackout - Mira Grant

Because I'm something of a completionist, I am reviewing the third of the Newflesh series. I thought it was just a trilogy, but apparently it's four books now, plus a collection of novellas.  Anyway, this review will contain spoilers for the last two books because, well, when you're reviewing the third book in the series, it's hard not to spoil stuff.  So, if you haven't read Feed or Deadline, don't read this post.  Or do.  What am I, your mother?

So, first spoiler - They cloned George.  I'm actually rather upset about this.  It would be like somehow George R.R. Martin brought Ned Stark back from the dead and sent him out to go talk sense into Stannis or something.  It just...look, if you kill someone, leave them dead and figure out how to get along with them.  Or, y'know, don't kill off someone that's important to the continuation of the story.

So, yeah.  George is alive.  Ish.  Her brother is still acting like a crazy, violent jerk, and he's currently being studied by one of the local Mad Scientists to figure out how/why he became immune to the zombie virus.  Second spoiler - his exposure to George has magically made him immune to the zombie virus because...reasons?  I'm assuming it's because of his sexual relationship with his adopted sister, as I doubt that people that are just regularly in the same room with someone who has dormant zombie virus in their body will trigger the same immunity.

And, yeah, the sexual relationship is confirmed.  I know that they're adopted and not blood-related at all, but it's still kinda squicky to me.

Really, this book should have been chopped up into two shorter books.  The first "half" covers Shaun's team attempting to break into the CDC to get evidence to support their findings about the zombie virus and the CDC's complicity in the spread of the most recent devastating mutation.  In the mean time, Clone-George is trying to figure out how to get out of the CDC's clutches after she discovers that she's going to be used for Nefarious Purposes.

The second "half" of the story is the newly reunited siblings and their friends trying to break the story about the CDC's involvement in the zombie virus's spread and continued evolution, as well as the truth about the possibility of a cure (spoiler: there isn't one, but humans are evolving to adapt to the virus's presence in their DNA).

I'm not going to give away too much more of the ending.  Honestly, it's not going to be a happy one since, y'know, zombie plague.

This book, like the last one, has a lot of repetition and over description of mundane things.  However, when there's something really awesome that could be described, such as the zombie bear attack, the author chooses to gloss over things and scurry on to the next mundane thing.  I mean, how can you introduce a goddamn zombie bear and not have an epic battle?!  I felt cheated by that scene.  Sure, it's minor in the grand scheme of things, but if you're going to introduce something like that for tension, then do it right!  However, the author does choose to describe fights between humans with more tension and detail - I guess they are trying to suggest that humans are a far greater threat and enemy than nature could ever be... but still... zombie bear.

Overall, I felt like I was just slogging through this book to get it over with.  I won't be picking up additional works by this author.  Feed was great, and I really think that expanding the story with these characters as the central focus was a mistake.  I think it would have been better to have each book in the series take place with different characters in different regions, and maybe have a final book where the government and CDC's Nefarious Plans are revealed and dealt with.  But, that's just me.

The Silenced

I stumbled across this movie on Netflix one day.  It sounded like a ghost story - and I am a sucker for Asian horror ghost stories - so I eagerly queued it up to play.

During the 1930s, South Korea was under Japanese control.  During this time, the Korean people were forced to adopt Japanese culture and language.  This is actually pretty important for the plot, and not just some random piece of trivia I'm spouting here.

The story focuses on a young girl who has been sent to an isolated private girls' school outside what is known at the time as Keijyo, but we now call Seoul.  The girl goes by the Japanese name Shizuko, and she is suffering from what appears to be tuberculosis.  However, under the headmistress's specialized treatment, her symptoms quickly disappear - in fact, she seems to be even healthier than she'd ever been before - but it becomes clear that all is not as it seems at this sanitorium/private school. Students are acting strangely and disappearing, and then there's the peculiar way that Shizuko's body is getting stronger...

I don't want to give too much of the story away.  It's not really a ghost movie as I first thought, but there are definitely some supernatural elements going on here.  It's really more of a mystery-thriller with a strong critique of the Japanese occupation of South Korea.

I enjoyed this movie, despite it not being what I thought it was.  It takes a little while to really get moving, but the breadcrumbs of mystery strewn throughout the film keep your curiosity piqued while it builds up steam. I didn't really think that the ending fit with the rest of the film, but then again, I don't know how they could have possibly resolved everything.  The only real complaint I have is that the supporting characters never get a chance to develop beyond "girl bully clique that's prone to violent emotional outbursts", and they're largely interchangeable as far as personality goes.  It's hard to get worked up about the disappearance and possible death of a character that's never done anything particularly notable in the short time she's on screen.

Overall, this movie was about average in terms of horror.  It's not a supernatural thriller like it was trying to appear to be, and I'm a little disappointed on that count, but it wasn't a bad mystery-thriller.  I wouldn't mind watching it again, though.