Honey Soy Chicken

Dear Fellow Reader,

Guess what time it is??

Its Honey Soy Chicken time!! You never had it?
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Then you haven't lived.

This recipe isn't mine though, I have to give credit where it is due. This recipe comes from my Aunt Kathy, who is an excellent cook. Almost anytime I come to her house for dinner, she knows this is what I want. I dug out the recipe and played around with it and made some minor changes.

So here's what you need!

Chicken, Soy Sauce, Honey, Ketchup, Ginger and Garlic. You will also need a 9 x13 and a mixing bowl to whip up the sauce in.

I washed and dried the chicken and then fabricated it. Fabricating is just a fancy culinary term for cutting up the chicken into pieces. 

And here it is all cut up! I was contemplating on doing a demo, but i decided nah, that's what YouTube is for. You can either buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself or buy chicken pieces already cut up. Either one works fine.

If you've had a bad day and you need to take your aggressions out, theres no better way then to hak at a chicken with a chefs knife. It works for me, try it sometime.

On to making the sauce! See the garlic press? Have you bought one yet? Like I stressed in the previous post, you must. It will make your life so much easier. Scouts honor.

So go ahead and press the garlic in a mixing bowl. 8 cloves will do the trick.

Next go ahead and grate up some ginger. You're gonna need about 1/4 cup, so buy a larger piece.

Next comes the soy in honey soy chicken, soy sauce! 1 cup, dump it right in.

Next comes honey. But here's a little trick, whatever your gonna pour honey into, always grease it with oil or spray it with cooking spray. This way the honey slides right out. 

And its gonna be 1 cup, right into the bowl. 

Then add 1/4 cup of the stuff you dip your fries in!

Then whisk the living crap out it until the honey is pretty much dissolved in the soy sauce. 

Then pour it all over the chicken. Oh! i forgot to say this earlier, make sure the chicken is skin side down in the pan. You will see why later.

Then cover it and throw it in the fridge to marinade! I let it sit in there for a few hours. When it comes to marinades with soy sauce I prefer not to marinade over night because soy sauce is a tenderizer and breaks down the proteins in the meat and can sometimes make the chicken mushy and too soft. So a few hours is all you need! 

After the chicken got some time to marinade its time to get cooking!

So, the chicken is gonna bake at two different temperatures. But start off by preheating the oven to 350 degrees.

Pop the chicken in the oven for 30 minutes. Also keep the foil on, it will come off later. 

After the 30 minutes are up take the pan out of the oven, remove the tin foil and flip the chicken skin side up.

Raise the oven temp to 375 and put chicken back in oven for 15 minutes. 

After those 15 minutes are up, turn on the broiler and cook under the broiler for about 3-5 minutes, until the skin gets nicely browned. The sugar in the honey and ketchup will caramelize so that helps with the browning as well. 

And there you have it! Its super yummy and its really important to serve this along side something that can soak up all that delicious sauce, like rice or egg noodles. Enjoy fellow reader!

Land Ho!

Dear Fellow Reader,

Hello! I am writing from my new home for the next 4 months. Yes, i have finally arrived in my new apartment that I will be staying at while I am working at Google. To put it lightly,
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It's fucking awesome. You will have to excuse my language, I have class I promise, but this place is seriously a beaut.

But first, I would like you to know that I started my day off right. Yes my friends, I went to Starbucks. Its funny really, before I came to college I was a Starbucks hater. Really, I thought it was too strong. I was always more of a Dunkin kind of guy. But two friends got me hooked on it and I have adjusted myself to the taste and its not terrible. I still enjoy Dunkin occasionally, but I am now more a Starbucks kind of guy.

The drink i get almost all the time? Iced Toffee Nut Latte. No Whip. Size: Venti.

Just in case anyone cared. You probably don't, but I don't care that you don't care. so ha.

Here are some photos of the apartment!!

I know, like I said before, its amazing. It feels like a vacation home. It is definitely more then my roommate and I need and we are so stoked to live here.

Yes, of course I brought some movies along! These are just some, I didn't bring my whole collection.

The Mets game is on a little later and I decided to make some good ol' guacamole to munch on as we are watching the game.

Here's the run-down and how to:

What do you need to make guacamole?

Avocados, man. I love avocados. They are creamy and delicious and amazing and perfect and beautiful and everything that's good in life. For guacamole you need Haas Avocados. They are the ugly black ones that are grown in southern California. They make a much better guac then the bright lime green avocados. Don't use those. ever. like for real, ever in your whole entire life. Promise? Okay good.
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But seriously don't use them. Moving On!

You will need to cut them in half and remove the pits. Cutting them this way makes it easy to scoop out the flesh.

With a spoon, scoop out the flesh into a bowl big enough to mash everything together in.

Next you need lime juice. You can always use lemons, but i find that limes go better with guacamole. I juiced 3 which was just enough. 1 lime doesn't produce that much juice. So go ahead and juice the limes and add the juice right in the bowl.

And then grab your trusty potato masher. These things are the best tool I find when mashing up avocados.  They leave great texture.

Then go ahead and mash em! Notice the end result here, They got mashed pretty well but still have chunks (ew, my least favorite word) of avocados. I like my guacamole with great texture. I'm not looking for a puree. Keep it course.

And here's the rest of the stuff your gonna need! Red Onion, Jalapeno, Garlic, Cilantro, and Hot Sauce

I chopped up only half the onion. Too much will over power the guacamole. I chopped it pretty fine too, you don't want to be munching down big pieces of onion.

 I also crushed in a clove of garlic. And let me say that where would we be if we did not have garlic presses?!?! They are an amazing invention that takes care of chopping up garlic cloves without getting your hands all sticky and then you get all annoyed and frustrated that your hands are sticky and have to go wash them and then they smell for days.

in fact, If I was President of the United States, I would make it my personal goal to make sure that every single kitchen in the world has a garlic press. That is all.

 WARNING!!! EXTREME CAUTION MUST BE TAKEN WHEN DEALING WITH JALAPEÑOS!

Jalapenos add great flavor and heat but you have to be so very careful when dealing with them. They contain capsaicin, a chemical compound that is found in chili peppers that produces a burning sensation in anything that comes in contact with it. So watch out!

Capsaicin lives within the seeds and ribs of the pepper and contains the majority of the heat. So your gonna wanna remove them unless the guacamole will be wayyyyy too spicy!!!

okay so now before you do ANYTHING, WASH. YOUR. HANDS.

Trust me wash them really well. Do the whole soap, warm water, a-b-c's song thingy. You do not wanna touch your eyes or face until your hands are washed really well.

Now its time to chop up some cilantro. I do a pretty coarse chop with this because i like the texture and the look.

When I went to the store out here I could not find my hot sauce of choice, Tabasco. So I just grabbed this stuff. It tasted fine though. I usually thrown in about 8-12 dashes. Depending on how I feel, today I felt pretty brave so I added 12 dashes.

Mix that all together and throw in a teaspoon of salt or two and there you go! All you need is a bag of chips and a game to watch. which is exactly what I am about to do! 

Enjoy Fellow Reader. 

Until next time, remember, only use Haas avocados. and garlic presses, long live garlic presses. 

Exploring San Francisco

Dear Fellow Reader,

Today was yet another day of exploring! As mentioned in the post yesterday, our hotel was in Fisherman's Wharf. That was only for one night. This morning we packed our bags and moved to our next hotel which is located in Union Square. Union Square is in downtown San Francisco and its absolutely beautiful. But more on that later. I need to stay on track because we had a very busy day.

Once we packed our bags and checked out of our hotel this morning we drove to Muir Woods.

Some brief history before we continue, Muir Woods is part of the National Park Service and is 554 acres. 240 of those acres are Old Growth Coast Redwood forests. Only few remain in the San Francisco Bay Area. The forest is cool and and moist all year. President Theodore Roosevelt declared Muir Woods a National Park in 1908 and in 2008 it was designated by the US National Register of Historic Places. Cool, huh? History lesson over, that's enough thinking for the day.

We also got there before it was officially open so we got in for free #winning

Here are some of the beautiful shots I got while I was walking around this morning:

Here I am pondering life and if I could actually fit in the tree (turns out I did #winning, again)

After our hike we stopped at the little cafe right inside the woods and shared some scones

Once we finished there we drove to the Golden Gate Bridge to get some good pictures.

I got some pretty gnarly ones, if I don't say so myself:

I told you they would be gnarly.

Once we finished there our hotel room was ready so we drove to the hotel and did some sight seeing in downtown Union Square:

After walking around we decided it was eating time again and got some grub. 

We went a place called The Daily Grill and it was super good. 

Heres my favorite food group again!

 I got a delicious wrap with grilled chicken, black beans, avocados, tortilla chips, lettuce and a spicy cajun aioli on the side (aioli is a fancy word for mayonnaise that's typically flavored with garlic and other spices)

We also got this delicious Mac and Cheese with three cheeses, mushrooms and bacon. It was the bomb.com. I felt inspired and I think I'm gonna try to recreate it myself one weekend. 

After lunch my nana and mom went to do a little more shopping but to tell you the truth I was pooped and not in the mood to shop so I walked back to the Hotel to chill for a little bit. 

Tomorrow is yet another busy day, lots of sight seeing in the morning and my good friend who is going to work at Google with me is arriving.  Lots of stuff planned, time to rest, au revoir fellow reader.