Red-braised chicken

As I plonk four big pieces of chicken legs, I catch myself re-evaluating my life. I just happen to be thinking how I just like to aim too high and overwhelm myself with too big of a task to handle. The four lifeless pieces of chicken appeared to be nodding their headless bodies in agreement. Somehow I have managed to get quarters of chicken with the legs rather than "chicken legs, cut into 3cm pieces across the bone" just as Neil instructed. The choice seemed so obvious when standing at the butcher. It was either buying drumsticks or getting the quarters or buying two whole chickens and cutting around the legs 3cm across the bone. Now what would I have done with the rest of the chicken when I wasn't going to come across another chicken dish in the cook book for another 20 pages?
Again, contrary to Neil's comment about the dish becoming one of the favourite, it didn't make it as one of mine. I am starting to wonder whether the measurement for liquid is correct in the cook book. It seems i often have to use half of the bottle of soy sauce. Hence, what was meant to be used as sauce became stock. I even tried putting corn starch to thicken the sauce.
Perhaps, if you enjoy the taste of star anise this dish may appeal to you. My suggestion is to use less water at the beginning and add as needed. It is also a great dish if you want to impress your guests. Having the spices and peeled tangerine floating in the sauce can make the dish look very exotic.
I am going to return to contemplating how to simplify my life now.

White Cut Chicken

According to the recipe the choice of chicken is 'free-range' or 'organic' chicken. Now for a person who often suffers from 'too much to choose from paralysis', choosing between many different types of frozen chicken could have been a daunting task. However, when I stepped into my favourite Asian butcher the choice was quite obvious. Firstly, 'organic' chicken was double the price and I wasn't about to sacrifice a preciously home grown chicken on my cooking experiment. And, there was no way in the world the 'free-range' chicken was going to walk home with me, with its head still attached to its body. Hence, I was glad to take the next chicken in line, 'corn-fed' chicken.The price was right and it did not have its head. The only thing that bothered me was its colour. It was disturbingly yellow. It does make you believe that the poor chicken did live its life only having tasted corn.
'White cut chicken' is officially my first disappointment. First mistake I made was not cooking the chicken long enough in high simmer. The instruction was to keep it in high simmer for 15minutes but I did not take into account that my chicken hadn't quite defrosted. Undercooking the chicken meant that when I had done the steeping (can anyone tell me what 'steeping' means in cooking terms?) and cooling in iced water, the chicken was still red at the core. As I had hungry mouths waiting to be fed, I had to repeat the process without allowing it to steep and cool properly.
The other mistake was replacing peanut oil with some cheap vegetable oil. The dressing tasted like oil used to grease door hinges.Taking on board my sister-in-law's suggestion I cooked the rice in chicken stock. Even the rice did not turn out as I expected. It was too dry and lacking flavour. I think back to watching 'Master chef' last night. Cooking is an emotional affair. It serves me right for laughing at the contestants who were in tears because their pavlovas had collapsed.

Sashimi Salad

Going to Asian grocer shops is an adventure on its own. I finally overcame my shyness and fear of people and asked a shop worker who was stacking shelves if they mustard powder. The young man looked at me blankly as though I spoke a foreign language which I must have, to his ears. I wasn't sure whether he was taking me to the mustard powder or running away from me. Regardless of his move, I followed him like a lost puppy. At the end of the journey through the narrow isles he finally stopped at an older man who appeared to be wiser and richer. As they spoke in Chinese I eagerly waited for the further direction. However, it shortly ended abruptly with the older man giving me another kind of look and walking away. Before the young shop assistant had a chance to finish the older man, just shook his head and said 'no'.
I wasn't quite sure what his 'no' really meant, but I soon figured what he meant by saying 'no' was 'No, I don't want to help you.' not 'No, we are really sorry but we don't have that particular product'. I was left to negotiate through the isles in search for mustard in powder. As walking through the isles I thought very hard using my left brain to consider ways to use instead of the powder. Somehow I did find the mastard powder in the Japanese isle. The sheer joy needed to be shared. Hence, I found the shop assistant and showed him that 'Yes, the shop does have mustard powder and yes, the old man was wrong'. I must say it was a real sense of achievement.
Cutting up sashimi pieces was a lot easier than I expected. I plucked the bones with a pair of tweezers which was surprisingly satisfying. It was kind of like plucking eye brow hair. In fact here is a tip for you, you can use the eyebrow pluckers to remove the bones from the fillet.
Now in hindsight I don't think I did the right thing by the red chillies. The instruction was to roast them and then grind them to a powder. "Roasting" according to the dictionary means cook by prolong exposure to heat in an oven or over a fire. Instead, I used chilli flakes and fried in oil.
What I did not understand is the amount of soy sauce and rice vinegar used in the dressing. It was enough to drown the salmon, in fact probably the whole salmon. So, if you are not a huge fan of raw fish and need some help to forget that they are raw, this is a great dish to try.

Marinated Salmon Salad

Before I mention anything, I have to say that I don't watch TV much. Hence, seeing Neil Perry on Poh's kitchen can be interpreted a fortuitous blessing and perhaps some kind of confirmation that I am destined to do this challenge. What was even more funny was that my husband's parents' neighbour, who is a cook at a Chinese Restaurant in Sydney was captured in the show.
With added sense of destiny I went onto prepare the next dish in the book, Marinated Salmon Salad.
Tips for the dish
I bought the tail portion of the salmon fillet, because I was promised by the butcher (what is the name of the person who sells seafood?) that there won't be any bones in the piece. I forgot to buy a salmon roe which was disappointing on my part or another way of looking at it will be adding a surprise element to my cooking endeavours.
I have discovered that toasting peanuts is a fine art. One minute I was happy roasting away feeling like a competent chef and the next minute I was looking at utterly burnt peanuts (hence, the blurry edge to my artistic photo shot).
Needlessly to say that the salad was divine with the right mix of textures (although the peanut was more on gritty side rather than crunchy). It would have been a fiesta with the fish roe to complete the orchestra of smooth, crunch and pop.