Garlic Lime Chicken

The Box Monkey school of cooking can't claim credit for this. The original recipe comes from Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook, However, it's been years since I've actually read the print recipe, so who knows how far I've drifted from that version. Let's hope I don't get sued.

You'll need:

2 Chicken breasts, halved.
4 lime slices, used as garnish.
6 to 8 limes, juiced.
1/2 tsp. Paprika
1 tsp. Cayenne pepper
8 cloves of garlic, peeled, crushed and minced.
about 2 Tbls of Olive oil.

Peel, crush, and mince the garlic cloves. Halve the chicken breasts. Heat the oil in a skillet, then toss in the garlic and the chicken. Brown the chicken on both sides, about one minute a side. Be careful not to scorch the garlic.

Turn the heat down to a simmer. Pour in half the lime juice, and sprinkle half of the pepper and paprika on the chicken. Cover the skillet, and simer for about twenty minutes. Next, turn the chicken over, add the rest of the lime juice, sprinkle with the remaining pepper and paprika. Simmer for twenty more minutes.

Make very sure that you retain enough fluid to prevent scorching or burning. You can add a little water if needed. When this dish is pulled off perfectly, the lime juice will reduce itself to a tart, thick, syrupy brown sauce in the pan. This is in part due to the sugars in the sauce condensing and caramelizing. The resulting dish is zesty without being overly spicy or zappy, and tart with sweetness around the edges.

I like to serve this with plain couscous, made with a little olive oil, and some of the water in the couscous substituted out in favor of lime juice. Boxed couscous cooks up in about five minutes, and is dead easy: boil some water/lime juice, and pour in the olive oil. Add the couscous, turn off the heat, and cover. Wait five minutes, then fluff with a fork. I like to dust the couscous with a little paprika after plating it - the reddish brown dust and the green lime wedges add a little color to what is otherwise a pretty brown meal.

The wonder of this meal is how easy and reliable it is. It works pretty well with bottled lime juice and frozen chicken breasts, so it's easy to keep ingredients around ready for short notice meals. Yet it's tasty and interesting enough to serve to company: whether to a person of the appropriate sex, or their parents, or other company that needs impressing.

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It's also a nice example of the box monkey cooking philosophy. Add a little sage, some cumin, and turn up the spice with jalapeno or chipotle peppers and this becomes vaguely Tex-Mex. Remove the paprika, cayenne, and cut down on the garlic, trade the lime juice for orange juice, and throw in a cinnamon stick, and you'll get a vaguely West Asian orange chicken dish. Add some fresh ginger instead of the cinnamon stick, dust it with turmeric, and it will taste more like an East Asian orange chicken. One recipe will generate a half dozen different dishes with a little creativity.

Box Monkey beans

Ever since I was a young child, I've eaten cooked vegetables by pouring vinegar on them. Green beans, spinach, broccoli - I'm not fond of them plain, but pour vinegar on them and I'm good to go. It's earned me some strange looks over the years, but I persevere. That quirk is the origin of the following:

Mediterranean green beans in butter-vinegar sauce.

You'll need:

1 lb. of fresh green beans (string beans or snap beans, if you prefer)
1/2 lb. dates. Ideally, these should be Mediterranean style: whole, moist, and chewy, not dry and hard.
1/4 lb. slivered almonds

Cut the stringy ends off the beans. I like to use diagonal cuts. Especially long ones can be cut in half, so that the segments are about an inch long or so.

Cut the dates into long quarters, removing pits if necessary.

Steam the beans in a steamer for about 10 minutes. Add about a tablespoon of clear vinegar or rice vinegar to the water. If you don't have a purpose built steamer, you can fill a largish saucepan with water and the vinegar, and load the beans into a colander or bowl-shaped strainer that sits in the saucepan above the water level. Cover with a large pan lid.

Beans should be steamed until they reach a dark green color, but should still be fairly firm. When done, toss them in a bowl or serving dish with the dates and almonds.

...

Butter vinegar sauce

Melt 1/2 cup unsalted butter [I've never tried this with margarine. I'm not sure it would work.]
Stir in 1/2 cup good quality red wine vinegar. If you're cooking other dishes with red wine, add a dash of that. Add 1/2 teaspoon of rosemary, 1/2 teaspoon of tarragon, and a pinch of paprika.

Simmer and keep stirring. The dish will give off a strong sour smell - this is the acid in the vinegar evaporating.* You'll want the vinegar to reduce by about a third or so.

Pour the sauce over the tossed beans. Alternately, serve the sauce in a separate bowl with a spoon for stirring. This sauce will tend to separate, so you'll want to stir it before spooning or pouring. It will also thicken as it cools, so it's best to move it directly from the stovetop to the table right before eating.

* Interesting fact: if you reduce vinegar by about 1/2, you'll get a thick, fruity sauce that's only mildly tart. Balsamic vinegar will render a sauce that's actually quite sweet. This is good for roasted meats and fowl.

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What is Box Monkey cooking?

The Box Monkey school of cooking is an attempt at a series of guidestones to food for the uninitiated. It's a collection of ideas, recipes, techniques and tips gleaned over the years by a person who can't consistently spell 'recipe', let alone follow one*. Box Monkey cooking is the hope to understand food - why it is what it is, and does what it does. We attempt to understand the cuisines of many cultures, noy just to slavishly imitate them, but to understand [I]why[/I] they do what they do.

The cookbooks I've examine come from three approaches: they try to teach basic recipes and techniques to neophytes, they provide complicated recipies to veterans, or they attempt to highlight one particular genre: ethnic foods, or low-fat, or baked goods, or somesuch.

Box Monkey cooking is different. Box Monkey cooking is playing with your food. It's about trying to figure out why the recipe calls for something, and what happens if you change it. Most cookbooks are about procedures and results: if you follow the procedure, you hope to get an expected result. Box Monkey cooking is about ringing variations on a theme, frying by the seat of your pants, and saying "if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research!"

Box Monkey cooking is about trying new things. Not just new-to-you things, but new-to-the-world things. It's about cooking and eating foods that make your friends and neighbors ask "what the hell did you do to that?" It's about achieving marvelous results with simple ingredients that make people say "wow! Why didn't I think of that?" Not in the least, Box Monkey cooking is about giving strange names to things, because you have no idea what to call it, and you're hell and gone from any formally titled recipe.

Cooking like a box monkey won't make anyone a wonderful cook. There are thousands of cookbooks out there for that. It's not for the accomplished cook who wants to learn new techniques or new cuisines. It's not for people with special diets, who want to make diet-compliant food that mimics real food, it's not for people who want to get better at traditional methods, and it's not for the faint of heart.

Box Monkey cooking is for my mother and my father. It's for someone who grew up putting green olives into scrambled eggs, vinegar on broccoli, and sour cream and brown sugar onto fresh strawberries because that's what his parents did and no one told him it was odd. It's for the kid who ate "Chicken conquers Russia", because that's what his dad said the name of the dish was. It's for the kid who did strange things to meatloaf, because making it the same way each time was boring and repetitive.

Box Monkey cooking is for someone just out on their own who needs to eat. Who wants to learn to cook, but doesn't have a lot in the way of kitchen gadgets or tools. Someone who wants to discover spices and sauces and ingredients - who asks "what are these good for?" but is impatient when told the answer. It's for that swinging bachelor or bachelorette that wants to cook something special for someone special, or for the parents, or for the coworkers, but doesn't have a lot of cooking experience under their belt. Such people, regardless of profession, are box monkeys in spirit.

And these cooking notes are for them.

* Really, I can't spell it. Firefox gives me a red wavy line every time I try to type it. I can follow recipes if I really have to, but usually once we get to the herbs and spices, the book and I usually part ways. Cayenne pepper, paprika, and garlic... why are they so overlooked?



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Box Monkey Beef Stew

2 lbs. Beef roast or beef stew meat
1/2 cup flour
6 Tablespoons olive oil (butter or bacon fat may be substituted)
1 bottle red wine
8 cloves garlic
1 yellow onion
3 potatoes
3 carrots
3 celery stems
3/4 cup barley
4 bay leaves
rosemary
sage
thyme
marjoram
ground black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch paprika

1. Cut meat into approx. 1 inch chunks. Do *not* cut the fat off the meat!
2. Pour flour into a bowl. Put in meat chunks. Toss to coat meat chunks in flour.
3. Pour 4 Tablespoons olive oil into a heavy skillet, burner on high
4. Add flour-coated meat to saucepan. Brown on all sides, approx. 2 minutes.
5. Extract meat, oil, and pan residue to a large stockpot.
6. Cover meat in the stockpot with red wine. Turn burner on low to low-medium. The stew should steadily, quietly simmer.
7. Add Bay leaves
8. Crush garlic cloves with the side of a chef's knife - remove woody roots and paper. Mince the garlic.
9. Slice onion into chunks, 3/4 inch.
10. Pour remaining 2 Tablespoons oil into skillit, heat on high.
11. Add garlic and onions to skillet. Sautee until wilted, approx. 1 minute.
12. Add garlic and onions to stew. Deglaze skillet with red wine into stew.
13. Cook approx 30 minutes.
14. Cut potatoes into 1 inch chunks. Retain the skins! They have good minerals we'll want.
15. Add potatoes to stew.
16. Add herbs and spices to stew. Adjust quantities to taste. Cayenne and paprika should be half quantity or less of the green herbs.
17. Cook about 30 minutes longer.
18. Peel and chop carrots into rounds, about 1/4 inch thick. Add to stew.
19. Cook 30 minutes.
20. Add barley to stew. Stir thoroughly.
21. Cook 30 minutes.
22. Cut celery into 1/4 inch crescents. Add to stew.
23. Cook for 15 minutes.
24. Ladle into bowls and serve hot. I like to serve it with hot artisan bread and butter.

Be sure to monitor the fluid levels throughout the process. Make sure that the meat and vegetables are covered and floating until the barley is added. After barley is added, stew should begin to thicken; if it becomes too thick, add additional water. Optionally, add wine or beef stock instead.

Cooking times are variable.
...

Lo these many years ago, I was employed as a box monkey for a major parcel transportation corporation. During the Christmas rush, I managed to pick up a position assisting one of the delivery drivers. My workday was fairly grueling - 5 hours in the warehouse unloading semi-trailers, and then another seven outside in winter weather running packages around. I'd go hope, collapse, sleep for a long while, and then get up and do it again.

One night, the company asked one of its worker health consultants to come in and look into our ergonomic working methods. Fairly forward thinking for corporate America, the company thought they would spend less money on hiring safety and health consultants than they would on worker's compensation claims. Thankfully, I passed, but the health worker remarked on my paleness and generally fatigued appearance. She recommended I see an occupational health physician on the company's dime.

I duly did. I was in pretty decent health, if fatigued and somewhat stressed. I was good to go back to work. Except for one thing: "When did you eat last?"
"Ummm... Tuesday. What day is it today?"
"Friday."
"Oh."

He recommended I eat more to sustain my strength. That weekend, I made my first batch of box monkey stew.
...

Be aware, this recipe makes a large amount of stew - it's supposed to. Share it with your neighbors, and keep any leftovers. What I do is ladle it into ziplock sandwich bags, and then freeze them; each makes a decent single serving meal, easy to transport and heat in a microwave.

We cook the stew slowly - it needs to be stirred occasionally, but its possible to mostly ignore it and chop vegetables, cook dessert, or clean the kitchen during the cooking process. The slow, steady heat for hours breaks the collagen in the meat down, allowing the meat to become fork tender. The same heat tends to melt the fat, allowing it to permeate the gravy; this is in contradiction to low-fat cooking and 'fat is bad for you' diets. We do this because we actually want to keep the calories in the gravy to provide energy. At the same time, fats are primary contributor to feeling full; we tend to eat less of foods with a decent fat content, because we feel fuller sooner.

The same slow cooking allows the starches in the potatoes and carrots to break down into sugars. Those sugars give us nice quick energy. As the sugar burns out, the carbohydrates in the barley, carrots and potatoes give us nice medium-term energy; and the starches and fats allow us access to long term energy. Meanwhile, the protein either becomes burned as energy, or helps to sustain and repair muscle, connective tissue, and other tissues in a hard-working body.

This recipe is unapologetically *not* low-fat, low-calorie, or low-carbohydrate. One decent serving is intended to provide a lot of food value. There's no salt added in the original recipie, although it's a common option - the stew ought to have reasonable sodium levels.

It is, however, designed to allow someone to eat a fairly quick, filling meal and keep it all day. Good for someone who has to work hard or long hours with sketchy mealtimes.

Like Christmas box monkeys. IBT local 631, represent.

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Symphonic Cooking

"Most people eat to live, the French live to eat."

Food is a biological necessity, yes, but it serves so many other purposes. Food can be an art form that appeals to all of the senses, a social experience that brings people together, and a hobby that warms the whole house on cold and windy days.

Because food is a necessity, there seems no reason to scrimp on it. Food is one luxury that one must buy anyway, so why not spend a little more to make the experience more enjoyable. Fresh, quality ingredients make a meal so much more appealing.

Which is not to say that all food should be rich, sumptuous, or haute. Simple foods are enjoyable in their own right, and over cooking on what should be a simple occasion is as gauche as over dressing.

Properly prepared, food should be music. As music, in may range from rustic folk melodies to complex, ornate symphonies. It does follow certain rules of composition that - if obeyed - can turn the ordinary into the extrodinary. Dishes may stand alone, as single songs, or accompany other dishes as movements in a symphony.

Like good music, dishes seek a balance within themselves and with each other. Brassy acid sour flavors must be balanced with bitter woodwinds. Sweet strings must not be allowed to dominate, nor should salty percussion overwhelm.

One may build from the bottom. Carbohydrates are the basses: potatoes, bread, rice or noodles. These form the solid foundation that supports the higher voices. Though powerful, these are simple and staunch. Too much, and the dish will be heavy, slow, and ponderous, but too little and it may collapse in screeching. In beef stew, these are the potatoes and the bread accompanying.

The basses then work with the baritones and tenors: meat and sauce respectively. Meat adds the beginnings of counterpoint, and will be the bridge that holds the lighter melodies up from the bass. Beef or lamb bring a dark cello tone, while pork or fowl play a brighter and more soothing tone. The sauce may range from a darker gravy or red wine tenor that matches time with the meat, to the brighter white wine, cream, vinegar, or clear sauces that bring sparkle to the lower tones and counterpoint to the higher. Here are the chords played; either matching dark tenors to dark baritones and light to light for major chords, or dark to light or light to dark to achieve tension in minor keys. The beef stew plays upon three insturments here - the dark notes of the beef itself and the red wine and beef stock that accompany it.

Fruits and vegetables are then the alto voices. The acidic sour brasses of the fruits intertwine with the woodwind quality of the vegetables. Their flavors run their measures on top of the tenors of the sauce like horns and clarinets over cellos. With more fruit added, the dish can be regal and stern - too much and it becomes tinny and flat. With more vegetables, the dish becomes dark and woody - too much brings reedy and swampy overtones. Beef stew balances these with carrots (serving here as almost fruit-like in their sweetness) playing off of celery.

Finally, the herbs become the trebles. The dry herbs: sage, rosemary, bay, and thyme play fugues to the melodies of parsely, oregano, basil and dill. Too much of these, and the trebles will overdominate. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and tumeric can sweeten, but are best as trills, as an oversweetened dish becomes cloying.

Finally, the spices become percussion. In some dished, like salsa, these can be given free reign. In others, they must be restrained. Peppers and paprike, delicately applied, lend grace notes to the whole.

That, is symphonic cooking.