Dinnerblog: Butter Chicken

Dinnerblog 2 is one of my favourite dishes: butter chicken.  As far as Indian food goes, it's pretty mild and quite easy to make, which is probably why it's so popular.  That said, if you like it hotter than what you'd get in an average Indian joint, you can easily fix that by adding more chillies.

Here's what you'll need to butter up some chicken:

• 3 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
• 1 yellow onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• a 2 inch piece of ginger
• a 15 oz can of whole tomatoes
• 1/3 cup plain full fat yogurt (if you use non fat yogurt an adorable Indian baby cries)
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1.5 tbsp tomato paste
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes (add more for teh extra hawtness)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• a handful of chopped cilantro (optional ... I forgot to get some as you'll see below)
• 2 tsp cooking oil (I use grapeseed, but canola, vegetable, or olive work fine.  If you want to be really authentic, find some mustard oil)

First off, I cube the chicken and sprinkle the salt and pepper on it.

I put that aside while I mince the onion, garlic, and ginger.

Prep work is done ... that was easy!  Time to saute some chicken.  I throw the oil in the pan on medium high heat, and wait for it to get nice and hot.

The chicken goes in.  (Side note: after seeing this pic, I noticed that a piece of chicken got stuck in the back burner!)

I flip it around until it's solid white on all sides.  This only takes about five minutes in a hot pan.  It's done as soon as it's white outside - if it gets too cooked it won't be tender at the end.

The chicken is set aside for now.  I give the pan a very light rinse with warm water, and put it back on medium heat with the butter.  The butter melts and grabs all those tasty chicken crumbs.

Once the butter has fully melted, I saute the onions, garlic, and ginger in it.

The onions start to soften and turn translucent after about two or three minutes.  That's when I add the spices.  Things start to smell really good right about now.

I keep everything moving so as not to burn it.  You want to toast the spices without scorching them.  After a couple minutes of that, the yogurt gets stirred in.  It melts and covers everything.

I immediately stir in the tomato paste ...

... then the tomatoes.  I crush them a bit with the spatula to let the juices out.  We want those juices to mingle.

That's our sauce.  I turn the heat down to medium low and let it simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally.  Once that's done, the chicken goes back in and joins the flavour party.

I simmer like this for ten more minutes.  The chicken gets nice and tender and the tomatoes get downright sloppy.  That's how I like them ... oh yeah.  Let's see how it looks after that.

Yeah, basically the same except the tomatoes are kind of sinking.  That's good.  Oh, and if I had been smart and remembered to buy cilantro, it would be going in right here.  Just use your imagination.

Here's the final product served on rice with a home-brewed India Pale Ale.  Let's hear it for the subcontinent!

Dinnerblog: Szechuan Chicken

Welcome to the first edition of Dinnerblog!  In this feature, I use the magic of digital photography to take you through the preparation of a nice meal from start to finish.

Our first recipe is Szechuan Chicken.  I'm sure anyone who's been to a Chinese restaurant will recognize this.  On the occasions when I've had it out, it's usually been very tasty but very greasy.  My recipe here attempts to minimize the greasiness while retaining the flavour you'd expect.

In case you feel like making your own (and you should), here's what you'll need:

• 3 large chicken breasts
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1/2 green bell pepper
• 2 large carrots
• 3 green onions
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
• 2 egg whites
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp sherry, cooking or otherwise
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp chilli flakes (or more if you like it hot)
• 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
• 3 tbsp + 1 tsp sesame oil

Here's the photographed cooking process.  Click on any image to make it bigger.

I start by slicing the chicken breasts into thin cross-sectional slices.  This is easiest to do when the chicken is partially frozen.  Make sure it completely thaws before you actually cook it, of course.

Next I prep the vegetables.  I peel and slice the carrots, slice the peppers, and the green onions.  I probably should have sliced the carrots into thin strips to be consistent with the peppers, but meh.

In a bowl I get started on the sauce.  The base is the sherry, the soy sauce, the Worcestershire, and 1 tbsp of the sesame oil.  Sesame oil has a very strong flavour and you don't really need a lot of it.

I almost forgot to peel and mince some ginger!

The ginger, sugar, and pepper flakes get whisked into the sauce.

The sauce gets set aside for now.  Next step is the chicken batter, which I start in a second bowl.  It's the egg whites and the corn starch.

Here it is whisked together.  I make sure there are no lumps of corn starch left.

I toss the chicken in the batter until it's nicely coated.

Time to start cooking!  The wok contains a blend of the vegetable oil and 2 tbsp sesame oil.  You don't want to use all sesame oil here because it's expensive, and it has a low smoke point, which means it will get nasty under high heat, which is what I'm using here.  The burner is on high - we want a very hot wok.

I flick a bit of water into the oil to make sure the temperature is correct.  If it jumps around and sizzles immediately, it's hot enough.  That's when I add the chicken.

I fry the chicken until it is white on all sides.  This doesn't take long in the hot oil - less than five minutes on my crappy electric stove.

The chicken comes out and sits in paper towel to soak up the excess oil.  The oil itself is disposed of.

I put the wok back on the heat, add a teaspoon of sesame oil, and start stir frying the vegetables.  Hardest always goes first, and that's the carrots.

After a minute or so, I toss in the peppers.

After another minute, I make a well in the middle of the veggies and pour in the sauce.

Once the sauce starts bubbling I stir it in.  The chicken makes its triumphant return at this point.

The onions go in last.

A couple minutes later, it's done!

Szechuan chicken seen here served on medium grain white rice, paired with a nice British Columbia pinot blanc.  Yes I know that's a highball glass ... I lost/broke all my wine glasses.

Tantalizing close-up:

If you try this recipe, please tell me about it in the comments.  Enjoy!

Wikipedia Wednesday: Mata Hari

I'm certain you've all heard the name of the person who is the subject of this article.  You're probably all thinking of some kind of exotic, sexy spy, like a Middle Eastern version of Sidney Bristow.

Actually, that sounds pretty hot.  Yes indeed.

...

Anyway, though the actual person did somewhat resemble this in a very, very vague sort of way, most of what we think we know about Mata Hari (assuming we know anything at all) is a product of the countless movies, TV shows, and writing that has been made since her death.  Nowadays, the name Mata Hari refers more to the mythological figure we have in our minds than it does the actual lady who used that name, but she was a real person - a real interesting person at that.

Article

Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle MacLeod (7 August 1876, Leeuwarden – 15 October 1917, Vincennes), a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I.

Dutch.  Doesn't seem quite as spicy, does it?  Well, actually, anyone who's been to Amsterdam might disagree with me.

Margaretha had a privileged childhood until age 13 when her family suffered a triple whammy: dad went bankrupt, parents divorced, and mom died - all in the space of two years.  She moved in with her godparents and studied to become a kindergarten teacher, "but when the headmaster began to flirt with her conspicuously, she was removed from the institution by her offended godfather."  That's when she made the brilliant decision to answer an ad in the paper placed by a man looking for a wife.  Everyone knows that's how happy, mutually beneficial marriages start, right?

Margaretha married Dutch Colonial Army officer Rudolf John MacLeod (1 March 1856, Heukelum - 9 January 1928, Velp) in Amsterdam on 11 July 1895. He was the son of John Brienen MacLeod and Dina Louisa Frijherrine Sweerts de Landas. They moved to Java in the Dutch East Indies and had two children, Norman-John (30 January 1897, Amsterdam - 27 June 1899) and Jeanne-Louise (2 May 1898, Java - 10 August 1919).

The marriage was an overall disappointment. MacLeod was a violent alcoholic who would take out his frustrations on his wife, who was half his age, and whom he blamed for his lack of promotion. He also openly kept both a native wife and a concubine.

An upstanding fellow by any standard!

To distract herself from the misery of her marriage, Margaretha began studying the Indonesian culture.  She joined a local dance company and took the artistic name Mata Hari, which is Indonesian for "sun" (literally translates to "eye of the day").  Her unfortunate circumstances were laying the groundwork for what would become the best part of her life.

After leaving and getting back together with MacLeod, Margaretha finally made a clean break in 1902 and moved to Paris, where she became somewhat of a early 20th Century version of Lady Gaga:

Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. She became the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musée. She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood. She was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so. Some of these pictures were obtained by MacLeod and strengthened his case in keeping custody of their daughter.

Maybe it's more apt to say that Lady Gaga is an early 21st Century version of Mata Hari.  They both became mega-stars almost overnight, dress(ed) in extreme cutting edge/unusual fashion (for the time), and spawned legions of weaker imitations.  They also have one other thing in common ... er, two things, I suppose:

The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was seldom seen without a bra as she was self-conscious about being small-breasted.

I love that first line there.  Isn't it a bit redundant to say that the most popular part of a stripper's act is when she takes all her clothes off?

If she had only been known for being a pioneering exotic entertainer, this would still be a pretty interesting article, but we have only scratched the surface of this lady's story.  As her cachet and notoriety increased, so did the status of the men who pursued her ... in Europe ... in 1913 ... see where I'm going with this?

Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, though she was known more for her sensuality and eroticism rather than for striking classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries, including the German crown prince, who paid for her luxurious lifestyle.

Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Prior to World War I, she was generally viewed as an artist and a free-spirited bohemian, but as war approached, she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress.

What happened next is a bit difficult to piece together.  Since the Netherlands were neutral in the Great War, she was able to move freely across borders.  She traveled frequently between the Netherlands and France, and went through Spain and England to avoid the battlefields.

There is no concrete evidence available that Mata Hari was a spy, and some say there never was.  She reportedly confessed to British intelligence officers that she was working for the French (allied with Britain), but it's not certain whether this was a ruse to make her appear more intriguing and alluring, or if it was indeed true.  The scant evidence against her was itself a bit suspect:

In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.

After that, the inevitable happened.

On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

Thus, the career of one of history's greatest seductresses ended.  And yet, mystery continues to surround her to this day.  Was she really a spy, or did the French use her as a scapegoat?  Or did she wrong a high-ranking officer who doctored the intel?  So little is known about what really happened.  Heck, we don't even know where her body wound up.

Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, but in 2000, archivists discovered that the head had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954, when the museum had been relocated. Records dated from 1918 show that the museum also received the rest of the body, but none of the remains could later be accounted for.

I'm starting to think that the remains of famous, controversial figures are very elusive in general.  Maybe her head is seducing John F. Kennedy's brain somewhere.

The mystery and controversy surrounding the end of her life coupled with her unparalleled success as a high-concept exotic dancer have made her story perfect fuel for gossip, rumour, and fictionalization.  It seems like most people would rather make up interesting stories about her than actually solve the mystery of her death.  Maybe the world doesn't want to solve the mystery.  Maybe the mystery itself is Mata Hari's last, and greatest, seduction.

(Wow, that's a pretty deep closing thought for a blog, eh?  Damn.  If only I could get paid for this stuff.)

No Wikipedia Wednesday this week

I'm too freaked out by this to write anything.

Wikipedia Wednesday: Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors

Roger Ebert recently stepped into a big pile of shit when he made a blog post saying that video games can never be art.  Millions and millions of keystrokes have already been spent debating this extremely short-sighted viewpoint (which is all the more disappointing since I am a big fan of Ebert's writing), so I will not go too deep into it.  Instead, I will use this opportunity to segue into the subject of this week's WW, the first one thus far about a video game.  I think that even though Roger Ebert would not consider this hilariously bizarre game to be art, he would at least appreciate the intent behind it.

Article

Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is an unreleased video game that was planned for release initially on the Sega CD in April 1995 and to be followed by PC and 3DO versions later that year. The game starred the comedy-magician duo Penn & Teller. The publisher Absolute Entertainment went out of business before they could release the game, yet the game was featured and previewed in various gaming publications such as Electronic Gaming Monthly and reviewed by VideoGames magazine.

A Wikipedia article about an unreleased video game?  Have I run out of ideas already?  Short answer: yes.  Better answer: just read the rest of the article.  I don't think I've ever encountered a game like this one.

The game is composed of several minigames and an adventure/platform game starring Penn & Teller. All the minigames were made for the sole purpose of enabling the owner of the game to fool their friends by many different means. The game is composed of a lot of "scam minigames" and virtual tricks. Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is unofficially the video game equivalent of Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends video, which had the same purpose, and used properties of the video medium itself for the tricks.

Basically, it's a game you can use to punk your friends.  There is a "real" game that is supposed to be the meat of the thing (the platform adventure) but the prank minigames are the real treat here.  By far the best and most famous of these minigames is Desert Bus.

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph. The feat requires 8 hours of continuous play to complete, since the game cannot be paused.

The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other traffic on the road. The road between Tucson and Las Vegas is without exception completely straight. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point.

Maybe it's because I'm a sick and cruel person, but I love the idea of Desert Bus.  I think you can safely argue that it's the most boring video game of all time.  The fact that it was made for the sole purpose of playing a prank on someone makes it even better.  "Hey, wanna try my new game?  It's called Desert Bus.  You're gonna love it.  I'm gonna go get a burger - I'll be back in 10 minutes."

It was actually Desert Bus that introduced me to this game.  I learned about it through a charity event called Desert Bus for Hope, which is described in the article:

On November 23, 2007, comedy group LoadingReadyRun started a marathon game session of Desert Bus called Desert Bus for Hope to raise money for the charity Child's Play. The four-man team took turns playing the game continuously, with more hours added as more donations were made. As of the end of the event on November 28, 2007, $22,805 had been raised, including donations from Penn and Teller themselves. The total play time for the effort reached four days and 12 hours. James Turner of LoadingReadyRun.com has played over 30 hours during the marathon session and holds the record for the longest session with breaks. LoadingReadyRun had earned 6 points until they crashed.

These insane people have now raised over $200,000 over the past three years.  In 2009 they raised $140,000 after a 5 day, 16 hour marathon, a feat which earned them a whopping 14 points in the game.  I love the fact that Penn and Teller even put in a donation.

Two of the other minigames (Mofo the Psychic Gorilla and What's Your Sign) rely on sneaky input from the owner of the game to make the player think that the game has psychic abilities.  Clever gags aside, these minigames are most notable for the use of secret menus in which Penn and Teller present short videos about the tricks involved.  In the What's Your Sign game's secret video, the duo even go as far as to bash astrology.  I can definitely get behind that.  There is also a minigame called Buzz Bombers that is set up such that the owner of the game always wins.  It even has a secret command to enter that lets the person in charge of the scam switch controllers in case the opponent gets suspicious and wants to trade.

The last of the minigames is almost as hilarious as Desert Bus, and relies on the mark's ignorance of technology to be effective.  It is called Sun Scorcher.

Sun Scorcher is a Space Invaders like game in which a player controls a spaceship that has to destroy alien invaders and the mothership. The prank in this game makes fun of video disclaimers as well as advertising buzzwords such as "Blast Processing" used during the 16-bit era. The game claims to have "thermographics" which are released by the mothership. A disclaimer (that you can't skip past) appears beforehand; and a dramatic voice states that these thermographics make the screen dangerous to touch, and even in their introduction Penn and Teller claim it is dangerous. The prank involves entering a code before playing, which causes the TV to cut to static after the third time the thermographics appear - suggesting the game has broken the TV. The owner is also meant to act as though their hand has been burned. Like the other pranks, there is a practice mode, and Penn & Teller give some hints on how to milk this trick for maximum effect.

God how I wish I could have pulled this prank on someone back in 1995 (the year of the game's non-release).

There is also the main game, in which Penn and Teller defeat enemies and solve puzzles to expose a pair of "real" magicians as frauds.  It is mostly notable for featuring guest appearances from Debbie Harry and Lou Reed.

I am deeply disappointed this game wasn't released (the publisher went out of business right after sending out review copies).  It might have spawned a whole genre of prank gaming.  Or maybe not.  Either way, I love the idea of using a video game to punk someone, and I would love it if there were other games out there like this.  If any of you know of any suggestions, please comment.