Food, Drink and Tomfoolery

So, I recently picked up this book.

I’m pretty obsessed. David Chang is pretty much a genius. This dovetails nicely with my recent explorations into Japanese and Vietnamese cuisine. Chang does some really interesting stuff, taking a lot of traditional concepts in cooking and turning them on their heads. His methods are complex and daunting, often requiring many hours of preparation days or weeks in advance. The results, however, are immensely impressive.

The first recipe I tried was this one for fried chicken, one of the least complex recipes in the
book. It resulted in some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. I plan to do some further experimentation in that direction, possibly adapting it to a more Cajun style.

So I’m thinking I want to take on a full-fledged Momofuku entree. Clearly, dude knows his chicken. So, I decided to try Chicken and Egg, his take on oyako-don. Traditional oyako-don consists of chicken and onions stewed in dashi, mirin and soy sauce. Lightly beaten eggs are added to the mix until just cooked then you dump the whole mess on a bowl of rice. It’s tasty, but most of the time kind of poorly executed. Chang deconstructs this.

Let’s start with the chicken. You’re gonna debone some chicken legs, drumsticks or thighs (in order of preference). Save those bones! You’re gonna need them later. Then, make a brine with one part sugar, one part sea salt to six parts water. Brine your chicken for one hour in the fridge. Take it out, pat it dry.

Decision time. To cold-smoke or not? I cold-smoked mine and it was amazing. It’s up to you, if you decide not to cold-smoke your chicken, at least add some smokey bacon to the confit.

Next you’re gonna confit that chicken. Melt duckfat or lard, I used a 50/50 mix of both and pour enough into the pot to cover the chicken completely. It helps to arrange the pieces such that they are pretty tight, that way you don’t have to use as much fat. Put it in an oven at 180F. Now here is where Mr. Chang and I have a small difference of opinion. The recipe calls for only 50 minutes of cooking time. That is not enough time to fully cook a confit. I wanted mine to be almost but not quite fully cooked, so I left mine in the oven for 3 hours, which was perfect. Remove from the oven, chill and let it rest in your fridge immersed in fat overnight.

The next day when you’re ready to eat, heat the pot of chicken confit just enough to take the chicken out of the pot and place them directly into a hot cast iron pan. You won’t need to add any extra oil, the fat they’re coated in should be sufficient. Crisp up those skins until they’re perfectly browned, then set aside to rest for about ten minutes before you slice them up.

Back up for a second. The other components of the dish are slow-poached eggs, pickled vegetables, thin-chopped scallions and some short-grain white rice. I’ll assume you know how to make rice. I use a Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic rice cooker because they are fucking amazing. I’ll dedicate another post to pickling, but the recipe calls for quick-pickled Kirby cucumbers- just toss with a tablespoon of sugar, tablespoon of salt, let it sit for half an hour or so. Bam. Instead, I used pickled shittakes and carrots. One more deviation, I made his recipe for tare and brushed the rice in the bowl with it before assembling everything. Remember those chicken bones you saved? Brown them in a saucepan in an oven at 450F for about 45 minutes. Don’t burn them. Add 1 part mirin, 1 part sake, 2 parts usukuchi, simmer for an hour and then strain out the solids.

Last but certainly not least, slow-poached eggs. Basically, just put whole eggs in a bath of water at 145F for about 50 minutes. I used hot water from my tap and an insulated container. Your stovetop might work. Definitely use a thermometer. Alternately, because this is a lot of work you could just poach the eggs like you normally would.

Finally, time to assemble it all! Pile some rice in the middle of the bowl. Make a little divot for the egg. Brush with the tare. Crack the egg into its spot, add another drop or two of tare. Top with sliced scallions. Arrange the cut pieces of chicken, pickled veggies. I added some fresh cilantro. Fuck yeah, cilantro.

Oh hell yes. This is a much larger pile of food than it looks like, it is just in an enormous bowl. Just mix the egg into the rice, and alternate bites of crispy, salty, unctuous chicken with the crispy tang of the pickled bits. Mmm. It’s like fucking alchemy, the base chicken skin tastes like it has been transmuted into crisp, smokey bacon. This, my friends, is what cooking is all about.