chicken

From the Recipe Exchange files: Korean Fried Chicken

August 10, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture of the Korean Fried Chicken we whipped up last week. It was so good — crispy, and sticky, and sitting under a warm Mexico City sun just begging to be eaten — that I only managed to snap one photo before digging in. And then licking my fingers. And then wondering: what the heck else can I put this sauce on? (It turns out, it also goes fabulously with grilled hot dogs.)

So yeah. Korean Fried Chicken. Crayton first told me about it last year, gushing when he got back from one of his New York City trips that he’d tried the best chicken ever. I vowed to search for it in Dallas, but promptly forgot about it, obsessing over quinoa and homemade bread and all the other things that fill my brain on a given day.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw a Korean Fried Chicken recipe on the excellent Viet World Cooking blog. The chicken — thick chunks of thigh meat, fried until crispy, and then mopped with a sweet-and-spicy, sesame seed-studded sauce — sounded heavenly. It was my turn to host our recipe exchange anyway. I hit the Korean markets intending to buy two ingredients: red chile paste and toasted sesame seeds. I ended up buying both and a wee bit more.

So, the girls arrived last Wednesday afternoon and everyone brought something. Julie brought a warm spinach salad with goat cheese and balsamic dressing. Tricia brought a truly sinful brownie pie with Reese’s crumbles on top. Alice brought pickled cucumber and daikon. Daniela brought a fabulous green veggie dip with yogurt and cilantro, which I need to get the recipe for. And there was Rosé. And melty camembert drizzled with honey and topped with almonds. And Korean snacks that tasted strangely like cereal.

I’d already marinated the chicken for a few hours in grated onion and garlic, and so we munched and talked, and eventually created the thick, gluey batter. A few others made the chili sauce, using the paste, ketchup, sugar and lemon juice. (The lemons, a rarity in Mexico City, had been discovered that morning at Mercado San Juan.)

When it came time to fry it all up, Alice manned the pot of hot oil. Daniela oversaw batter-dunking responsibilities. The rest of us watched and ate more Camembert.

By the time the chicken was done, Alice and Daniela were sweating, and we’d set up our folding table outside, to eat on the terraza.

When we sat down — a platter of warm chicken in the center, and a big bowl of salad, and each of us with a small glass of Rosé — Alice said: “I feel like we’re on a cooking show!”

And that was really the nicest thing she could have said, because I did too. You know that part at the end of the show where everyone sits down and eats, and laughs and talks? I always feel a teensy bit jealous during that part, because it’s one of life’s pleasures to cook something in your own kitchen and then eat it surrounded by friends. Yet here we were. Each of us contributing, and each of us bringing something valuable to the world in our own way. I felt blessed to know so many smart, cool women.

Thankfully, the chicken was pretty darn amazing, too: spicy, with just a hint of sweetness. And covered in a thick, crackly crust.

Recipe below, if you’re interested.
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Remember the smiling chicken lady?

August 7, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Here she is.

“You remembered me!” she said, when I went back on Tuesday to buy eight chicken thighs.

“Of course!” I said. “This time I’m making korean-style chicken.”

Her eyes widened. “Is that sweet or spicy?”

“Both.”

She smiled. “Ay, que rico….”

We chit-chatted some more, and she told me her name. It’s Lourdes, but most people call her Lulu.

The charm of the chicken lady

July 29, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Yesterday Alice and I went to Mercado Juarez, a huge indoor market at the Cuauhtemoc metro stop. We happened upon the chicken sellers first, and as we scanned over everyone, trying to figure out who sold the best birds, I immediately spotted the woman I wanted to buy from.

She stood at a small stall — perhaps the most humble of them all — with a hand-lettered sign tacked to an boxy, 1950s-era refrigerator. She looked about 65 or so, and her hair was graying at the temples.

What attracted me to her was her smile. It took up her whole face. It crinkled the corners of her eyes. And it was like she couldn’t not smile. She smiled as she whacked away at the chicken, smiled as she cut into it with scissors, smiled as she pounded it flat on a small tree stump. A crowd of women customers had gathered in front of her counter, and she talked to them as she worked. Smiling, of course.

I walked up behind the crowd and waited, inching my way closer as other customers left. Finally I was at the front, sharing the counter space with just one other customer, a middle-aged woman with her two sons. The woman ordered seven chicken thighs.

“Quito el piel?” the smiling chicken worker asked. Remove the skin?

The woman nodded.

The older lady pulled and tugged on the skin, ripping it off in a matter of seconds.

“Quito los huesos?” Remove the bones?

The woman nodded. “Sí por favor.”

The chicken lady took her scissors — massive things, bigger than her hands, nearly the size of her head — and expertly made an incision, and then pulled out the bone with her fingers. The bones collected on the side of the counter in a tidy pile. She then whipped open the scissor blades and, using the edge of one blade, delicately cut into them again, transforming the thighs into flat, lumpy little sheets.

She placed them between sheets of cellophane, and then placed that on a tree stump, pounding them flat with a mallet.

She talked to the middle-aged woman while she worked. She stole little glances at me, too, just to let me know I could listen.

“Do you know what I had the other day? Pork ribs. But they were pork ribs in the best sauce, it was a red wine sauce. Oh, and the potato puree that this woman made! There must have been six garlic cloves in it. And she put cream, too. Ooooh… it was delicious.” She smiled.

How could I not love this woman? She was basically me at 65, but working in a chicken stand.

By the time she was done with the middle-aged woman’s order, 15 minutes had passed, and one of the woman’s sons had started to get impatient. He reached for a chicken breast that sat on the counter, and tugged on its wrinkled skin. His mother swatted his hand. The boy made a sour face.

They left and finally, it was my turn.

“Good afternoon. How can I help you?” she asked.

“Do you have any more chicken thighs?”

“Of course!” She walked to her ancient refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bag. The thighs plopped on the counter. One, two, three, four.

I told her I wanted the same flat-style thighs the woman before me had ordered. So she got to work, removing skin, deboning, slicing. She gave me recipe advice: saute them in a nonstick pan — less fat that way — with some garlic salt and lime juice. And then I could serve it with a salad. I nodded and smiled.

“And if you ever want to serve tostadas,” she added, “there’s a certain brand that are baked, and they have zero fat. They’re wonderful!” She smiled again.

Before I left, I asked her how long she’d been working there.

“Uuuuf,” she said, thinking. “The market’s been here for more than 50 years. My mom started bringing me here with her when I was five.”

She gave me my flattened chicken thighs in a plastic bag, and sent me off with a “Come back soon!”

Usually I buy my chicken on Sundays at the tianguis, at a stand run by a bunch of dour-faced men. No more. This chicken lady has stolen my heart.

Roasted chicken tacos in the Zona Rosa

July 27, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

On Saturday, Crayton and I were about to catch a pesero to City Market — the Mexico City gourmet market of all gourmet markets, or so they say — when we realized we were both hungry. Not super hungry. Just a little bit.

Thanking the lord that we lived in a country where one can satisfy that kind of hunger perfectly (and cheaply), I suggested we hit Gili Pollos, a roasted-chicken joint on the corner of Sevilla and Chapultepec. The name is a play on a Castilian Spanish word that, loosely translated, means “dumb ass.”

I’m a fan of clever word play. And I’ve been curious about Mexican roasted chicken lately. Unlike in the U.S., where most people buy roasted birds at the supermarket, in Mexico there’s an entire industry of rosticerias, or specialized chicken-roasting joints. Many are open-air, and the birds roast slowly on rows of spits, their skins turning a crispy, dark-golden brown.

Gili Pollas has a certain nostalgic charm, too. The workers wear paper hats, and there are black-and-white checkered floors inside. We grabbed a table underneath the awning above, which overlooked the bustling Avenida Chapultepec. The chicken tacos were 13 pesos each — kind of pricey for one taco, I thought.

“Do you want onion?” a young guy in a paper hat asked us.

“Oh yeah,” I said.

And then he set this in front of us:

It was enough meat for two tacos, easily. And it had onion, and cabbage. Both drenched in chicken drippings. Next to the plate was a bowl of pickled jalapeños for garnish, and red salsa.

The meat had bones, so I picked off a few chunks and placed them in a tortilla. (No idea if this is the proper way Mexicans eat them or not, but who cares.) Threw in some jalapeños and salsa, and gobbled it up in few minutes. The chicken was succulent, and the skin — it was crispy and perfect, and worth the trip alone.

With happy and full stomachs, and only $2 lighter in our pocketbooks, we crossed Chapultepec and caught the pesero to Del Valle.

I highly recommend the place, if you’re ever in the neighborhood. There’s also an outpost in the Centro, at Isabel la Católica and 5 de Mayo.

Gili Pollos
Corner of Avenida Chapultepec and Salamanca, in Colonia Juarez (Zona Rosa)

A trip to Mercado San Juan, and, as I am now calling it, Chicken Row

April 21, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’ve been dying to go to Mercado San Juan since I flipped open one of my favorite guidebooks, DF De Culto, and saw a diagram of the market’s best stands. A diagram! The writers didn’t diagram any other markets. Or gush about anyone else’s meat, cheeses, imported oils, vinegars, olives, fish….

Actually Mercado San Juan is one of the oldest in Mexico, tracing its roots to prehispanic times. Mexican movie stars have visited the place, although I’m not entirely sure why. (Maybe they liked to nosh on manchego between takes?) And local chefs shop there, too.

My friend Alice and I decided to go last Friday morning. We first grabbed an atole (a sweet, thick rice n’ masa drink) and pan dulce outside the Salto de Agua metro station, because hunger is a bad idea when you’re in a giant warehouse full of food.

Then, on the walk to the mercado, we passed a small city of raw chickens. Butcher shops lined both sides of the street, chicken parts smothering the countertops: Thighs, legs, roasters; deep crimson gizzards; headless chickens, covered in yellow goosepimply skin. Workers snipped chicken parts as fast as they could, so all you could hear was this weird metallic scissoring sound.

That alone was worth the Metro ride, and we hadn’t even made it to the mercado yet. Of course, once we arrived there, I forgot all about the chicken, because the first guy we saw tried to sell us fried grasshoppers and escamoles (ant eggs). Then we walked in further and saw sharks on ice, and ducks, and skinned baby goats. That’s probably about when I fell in love.

Well, that, and when I saw the curly lettuce and leeks stacked practically to the ceiling in the produce section.

Over the next hour or so, I stuffed my bag with asparagus, spring onions, fresh peas, red leaf lettuce, spinach, blackberries, mamey, mangos, proscuitto, freshly grated parmesano-reggiano, smoked provolone, homemade tofu (“Lo hace un chino aqui,” the lady told me), dried mushrooms and cute mini pita breads. (Yes, I’m buying for only two people. I go kinda crazy sometimes.) The proscuitto and parm I bought at La Jersey; the smoked provolone and pita, at La Holandesa. I willfully ignored the French butter and fresh bread. Mmmm. Next time.

What I made with my items:

1. Blackberry-lime coolers (perfect for sipping on the patio)
2. Arroz con leche (the Rick Bayless version) with mango
3. Pasta with peas, asparagus, proscuitto and parmesan
4. Mamey muffins
5. Sliced provolone with salted pita chips

I’d like to go back once a week, but it does require some advance menu-planning. Guess I better hit the cookbooks.