Country - Vietnam
Food - Ga Quay Mat Ong (Honey-Roasted Chicken)
Cookbook - The Food of Vietnam: Authentic Recipes from the Heart of Indochina by
Trieu Thi Choi and Marcel Isak; p. 106
Movies - Apocalypse Now (Director's Cut)
Today I saw Apocalypse Now. It's been a really long time sine I've seen that and the first time I've seen the director's cut. I forgot Harrison Ford was in it.
Speaking of Harrison Ford, did you see the news that several cast members will be returning in J.J. Abram's Star Wars Episode 7. I really hope Mr. Abrams can revive the series. The first trilogy was great and I see the original theatrical release versions at least once a year. I don't like all the extra stuff that has been added in over the years. I haven't seen the second trilogy since they first came out. Once was enough.
I like what Mr. Abrams did with the first few seasons of Lost, Revolution, Person of Interest, Almost Human, Fringe and the new Star Trek films which made it watchable again. Hopefully he can create a good Star Wars trilogy. He's also set to produce the Half-Life and Portal movies which are based on the computer games of the same names. Fingers crossed for those.
I didn't have time to watch a second movie. Oh well.
Today I tried another version of the vegetable dumplings; this time I pan fried them. They turned out much better than the boiled ones yesterday. I think too much water got inside them when they were boiled. Today I made sure to crimp the corners and add more pleats. They were crunchy on one side and not as translucent.
The second recipe was a Honey Roasted Chicken. It had a sweet dry-rub marinade that sat on the chicken for about an hour and then a sweet sauce for basting. The basting is the key in this recipe.
Instead of a small Cornish hen (enough for one) I used a large whole chicken. This gave me a larger canvas to work with and I was able to experiment. I used the traditional basting sauce for the entire chicken be then added a little extra honey and soy sauce mixture on half.
Both sides came out great. In the pictures, the darker half is due to the honey/soy sauce mixture. It added another level of crispiness to the skin and wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be.
It looks burnt but it's really not. It was really moist and juicy and had good flavor. I'm going to turn the leftovers into chicken salad.
Next I head for Korea. See you all tomorrow!
Michael
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