I've been in the mood for experimenting in the kitchen lately. Here's the dinner I prepared and packed for Chad, chicken tandoori skewers with saffron rice pilaf. Packed dinner is not always this elaborate. I usually prepare them in the morning BEFORE Chad makes breakfast for us. Sometimes, all I do is assemble a sandwich using store-bought cold-cuts, but lately it's been briyani or poached and roasted soy chicken or split whole tandoori chicken or saffron rice pilaf or chicken tandoori skewers or chocolate lava cake. As it is with any experiment, there are successes and failures. The briyani was a disaster, the chocolate lava cake was a bit too much 'lava' and a bit too little 'cake' and when I made the saffron rice pilaf the FIRST time (SECOND attempt shown in photo above), it did not look 'saffrony' enough and it had so much cardamon, it smelled a bit like cheap perfume! Lots of cheap perfume!
The poached and roasted soy chicken was really good. It tasted like the roasted chicken you find at chicken rice stalls in Singapore. So the next thing I want to try is to make the rice and chilly sauce so we can have something akin to Singapore chicken rice right here in Seattle. The tandoori chicken was so good the first time I made it using split whole chiken, I decided to tweek the recipe and make the chiken skewers using boneless, skinless chicken thighs we already had in the fridge. I also tweeked the recipe for the saffron rice pilaf by reducing the cardamon and including golden raisins and cashews.
Chad loves the Sichuan chicken we had at a restaurant in Singapore and the Portuguese Curry Devil ('Debil') my mom made while we were in Malacca. These are among my favourites too. Looks like I'll be taking further advantage of this 'experimenting mood' of mine this week. I've had lots of fun doing these experiments. It would be even better if I could find someone willing to clean up AFTER me (*wink* Yes, I'm looking at you, Chad).
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