Day 6: a tiny step forward

I'd rate tonight's dinner as the most satisfying since we started on this adventure.  A couple of things went right, coming together in a confluence of positive outcomes.  

• Prep was easy and straightforward, and with fewer moving parts as well as no novelty in the process, there was less requirement for error allowance.  As a result, the execution felt much less like a chore and much more like warming up before exercise.  
• The flavour profiles of today's dishes were simple and interesting, but most importantly did not allow room for me to fall back on my standard crutch of "make it spicy".  The simplicity of it also allowed me to work on a couple of the points I had noted for day 4 and day 5, which was very gratifying.
• Simple set up = simple clean up.  I wrapped the whole affair in and hour and a half, which is much better than I have achieved previously.

Menu:

• Dinner: potato wedges, drunken chicken
• Time spent: ~45min prep, ~15 mins clean up
• Estimated cost of inventory used: $6.31

Key lessons of the day:

• The whole "organic" movement is quite uneconomical and I am starting to develop a bias against it - mark ups are any where from 40-300% (!!), and I'm not sure that the marginal benefits are worth the cost.  
• Wholefoods tends to lay out the organic stuff as the default option, compelling you to search for the non-organic options - here, on the other hand, the dollar savings are well worth the fractional increases in search cost 
• A cold water bath really did help improve the texture of the chicken, especially the skin.  
• The advice someone in a video on youtube (maybe Gordon Ramsey?) gave to use wine good enough to drink on its own when cooking rather than pouring in your cheapest shit unsurprisingly also extends to other alcohols, in my case here, whiskey.

Open questions

• Why did the chicken skin shrink and shrivel up?
• My hypothesis here is that it was the fat underneath it propping it in place, which begs the question, how do we prevent it from shriveling up and staying nice and firm on the chicken?

Meal breakdowns

Dinner: potato wedges, steamed chicken

The results: the chicken was a touch tougher than it had to be, and so the lesson here is probably that it didn't need to sit in the steamer for that long after the initial cooking phase.  Otherwise, flavours were good all round.  I recognized that the plating for the wedges were a little silly, but I was hungry and in a rush to get to it. 

General prep scheme - chicken:

• Cut the chicken thigh up
• In retrospect, unnecessary
• Added half an ounce (half a shot glass) of whiskey, quarter ounce of sesame oil, sea salt, pepper, ginger shreds, garlic slices, and tossed the whole thing around in a bowl
• Put into a cold steamer and steamed for 10 mins after the water started to boil, then turned off the power and kept it there for another 5 minutes
• Will try 8 mins and 3 minutes next time
• Took the chicken out and placed into a ziploc bag, then submerged in an ice bath
• After the chicken was placed on the plate, poured the juices from the bowl in the steamer over the chicken, which worked to bring it back up in temperature a little
• For the sauce on top, fried the white part of a spring onion and some garlic in avocado oil for about 5 mins, and poured the oil at the end over the green bits of spring onion and finely diced garlic and ginger 

Other notes:

• Whiskey flavour came out very well - this was the right amount, I think.  Next time, worth leaving chicken in the mixture to marinate for half an hour.

General prep scheme - potato wedges:

• Olive oil, rosemary, salt, pepper, light touch of paprika on wedges
• Oven at 210 degrees Celsius - baked for 25 minutes, sat in over for 5 more minutes.  

Other notes:

• Could have used a touch more crisp, maybe oven at 210 for 20 minutes and then at 240 for 5 more, no sitting time?

This felt pretty good, kind of like when you level up.  Onwards!

Cheers,

Hanchen