Beer Chicken, More Asian Noodles, and a Failed Experiment

Hey again everyone! Our camera's memory card recently went kaput and had to be formatted, so we lost some photos, but not to worry: we've still got lots more coming your way.

Today we're serving up a triple helping of kitchen experimentation, some of which worked out amazingly well, and some which didn't. Awhile back we tried making an Asian noodle soup after watching "The Mind of a Chef," which has several episodes covering the Ramen culture in Japan.

I've been continuing to try new ways to make this style of soup, which we'll look at shortly, but first we need bones for stock - and that means making chicken! We've done "beer butt" chicken before during a Honkey Tonk Homicide murder mystery dinner, but this time we decided to go a different route. Rather than just placing a can of beer inside the chicken, we injected a flavored raspberry wheat beer directly into the meat - creating some of the best chicken we've ever had!

Of course, we also went with our normal mode of cooking whole chicken, where a mixture of seasonings is worked under the skin by hand. To match the sweet flavored beer, we went with dijon and honey mustard, melted butter, and standard seasonings.

After the chicken was gone (which didn't take long, it was amazing!) we used the carcass and a handful of vegetables to create stock. Some of it went towards a chicken soup, but we also reserved a portion for my latest Asian bowl creation.

Last time we used steak, but this time around I used chicken tenderloins, marinated in a mixture of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, pepper, and sushi rice vinegar. The sauces and seasonings were mixed up and then poured into a ziploc bag with the chicken, which then sits in the fridge for a few hours to marinate.

Here's the vegetables I'm using for the Asian bowl this time around. Instead of ginger and bok choy, I decided to use radish, broccoli, green onion, white onion, and fresh horseradish root (more on this vegetable's presence in our kitchen later).

Here are the chicken tenderloins and vegetables cooking in the leftover marinade.

As with last time, I'm using Maifun rice noodles. Since the soup ended up a little bland before, I decided to cook the noodles directly in the broth instead of using water. The end result was tastier, but I've come to the conclusion that rice noodles don't seem to hold flavor as well as other varieties, even though I love the texture, so I'll be switching to a different kind in the future.

And here's the finished product: cooked rice noodles with broth topped by vegetables, chicken, a soft boiled egg, and diced green onions.

Now, you'll recall how I mentioned that some of our experiments didn't end up so well...

We make lots of interesting dishes, but we don't do nearly as much with mixing up drinks. Wanting to try something different, I thought about the sorts of vegetables that are used in vodka drinks like the Bloody Mary, and how things like horseradish and hot sauce are added for kick.

Running with that line of thinking, I decided to juice parsley, radishes, and horseradish root for a mixed vodka drink, and then threw in a pinch of celery salt to cut the heat.

On the first sip I actually enjoyed what was going on with the flavors, as it ended up sort of like an organic smoothie, but with booze. Unfortunately as the flavors mingled it became more sharp, earthy, and tart, and by the time I was halfway through the glass I actively hated what was in my mouth and wanted to get far, far way from it.

Oh well, live and learn! While this was frankly a disaster, I think this would actually work well as an infusion instead of a pulsed drink. For a slightly spicy vodka, I may try putting horseradish or radishes in a full bottle of vodka and leave it in the cupboard for a few weeks to infuse, like with the green apple, basil, lemon, and habanero vodkas we made several years ago.