chicken wars

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So yeah we’ve been eating a lot of chicken lately. It might have something to do with the fact that Michael became a vegan and then a pandemic hit. Somehow that meant we couldn’t eat meat…but chicken was okay. And then we just went crazy on chicken.

We made Jerk chicken, Thai chicken, Filipino Chicken Adobo, Vietnamese chicken (fried, grilled and baked on a bed of salt), Japanese fried chicken, chicken tacos, chicken pozole, chicken shawarma chicken schnitzel, chicken curry (from Swati) and chicken tandoori (from Dave) and butter chicken. This one was really good: Turmeric Coconut Curry (but of course we made it with ground chicken instead of pork.) We even made Brooklyn chicken, or rather brick chicken from Marlow & Sons which was amazing. (And courtesy of The New Brooklyn Cookbook.) As well as Jonathan Waxman’s famous roast chicken.

At some point in all this madness, Michael had the idea to formalize these meals into a competitive draw: chicken wars, ala March Madness, in which we would have winners and losers and seatings and whatever else goes with whatever March Madness is. (I’m still learning the terms.)

We haven’t yet gotten around to an actual tournament but we’re still making so much damn chicken that it’s definitely a war—on poultry, but also between dishes. We haven’t yet declared a winner winner chicken dinner, but the dish I made last night came pretty close—it was a riff on lots of recipes that I’ve been reading and cooking. We happened to have a bunch of cilantro stems left over from the pozole, and I’m currently obsessed with fish sauce, so I turned those two into a marinade for chicken thighs that we grilled and served with a sauce I made up. It was so good I had to write it down.

Vaguely Thai Chicken

Marinade:
1 bunch cilantro stems, chopped
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp lime juice
2 garlic cloves roughly chopped
1 Serrano pepper roughly chopped
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil

Combine all ingredients in blender or food processor. It will take a few minutes to break down the stems but blend until you get a green sauce. Marinade 4-6 chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on)in sauce for at least 2 hours. Grill on high until chicken is cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Dipping Sauce
2 tbsp chili-garlic sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp lime juice
1 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp Kewpie mayo (or regular mayo)

Combine all ingredients in small bowl and serve with grilled chicken.