MOJO CHICKEN DISPATCH
Suzy sue, you are too kind. I apologize for my long silence, but you see, a) I am suicidally depressed about how shittily boring I have become, and b) my computer is in the middle of a slow but spectacular breakdown, which is messing with my e-mail relations.
Nevertheless, I enjoy the hell outta your dispatches, and also the gull that arrived in the mail from Tuscany via New York.
So: About the Cuban dinner, for which you need facts. I am only to happy to offer you some humble information. Read on!
Of course you will make mojitos, as is only proper. I don’t need to tell you how to make those. But if it is hot in NYC, as it often is in Aug, consider the mojito slurpee that Mango Pudding Blues was all about last summer. Just rum, mint, lime juice and lots of sugar whizzed with ice in the blender.
Melon soup is from the New Joy Of Cooking, which you must have. It is divine, and again, perfect if it’s hot. Here:
1 big-ass cavendish melon. Killer tells me they are widely regarded as the best melon. Cantaloupes will do in a pinch.
1 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Whizz the melon in the food processor till smooth, stir in the juices and chill for two hours. Then grate a 1/4 cup of ginger and squeeze the juice of the pulpy mess into the soup. Stir. Garnish with mint sprigs and kiwis and so on. Serves four to six, depending on how big your melons are.
Next, the Mojo Chicken. Killer gets the credit for the development of this dish, although I found the recipe in an old Bon Appetit:
Dressing:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons veg oil
3/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon (packed) grated orange peel
I tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Whisk this shit together and season with salt and pepper. I always find this makes way too much dressing, but that’s just me.
Chicken:
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
6 large garlic cloves, minced
1 large serrano chili, stemmed and minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons orange juice
3 tablespoons lime juice
6 skinned boneless breasts a chicken
2 large firm ripe mangoes, cubed
2 large avocados, cubed
Mixed baby lettuces
3/4 cup salted roasted cashews
Stir cumin seeds in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant and slightly darker, about 2 minutes. Throw ’em in your mortar and add garlic, chili and salt. Grind with pestle. Then heat olive oil in the same skillet until very hot, 2 minutes or so, and then, dramatically, with friends around, pour the hot oil into the mortar and watch the shit sizzle. Also releases wonderful aromas, as you can imagine.
Okay, let that stand for 15 minutes, then whisk in the orange and lime juices. Pour that into a baking dish and cool, then put the chicken in there, turn to coat, cover, refrigerate and marinate for 1 to 3 hours. Yes.
Mangos. Avocados. 6 tablespoons dressing. Toss.
Chicken: Grill. Broil. Whatever. Cook through, like 5 minutes per side and then let stand for five minutes. Cut it crosswise into 1/3-of-an-inch-thick slices.
Toss lettuce with more dressing. Mound on plates. Slap down some chicken slices, spoon mangos and avocados around, sprinkle with cashews. Ole!
Drinks? I would stick with the mojitoes throughout. We served a white sangria, which I didn’t like as much as I had hoped I would. The first time I made this recipe I loved it, but this time not so much. If you want to improve upon this, here it is, and lemme know what you come up with:
2 bottles robust but non-oaky white. No chardonnay. I used a cute little hungarian muscat
Uh, 4 or 6 ounces of Alizé, that golden liqueur-like mix of passionfruit and cognac
Couple a tablespoons sugar. I left this out, much to my sorrow
Couple a sliced oranges
A sliced lemon
A cup or so of chopped pineapple
A large mango, cubed
Combine. Chill overnight. Serve with soda, supposedly. I dunno. It was better without. Or find me a new recipe that really works.
Or serve a semi-dry reisling and some brazillian beer and call it a day.
And that’s it. Dessert, you are on your own. We bought a chocolate pecan pie from our favorite lesbian bakery. You might fry up some ice cream or somethin’. God only knows what you’ll do. But let us know how it goes.
Lunge!
Monday, August 11, 2003
SEVENTEEN AND A HALF
1) ...the number of minutes that our brother claims is the optimum nap time according to extensive NASA research. Seventeen and a half minutes precisely restores the energy and focus needed for dicey orbital re-entry calculations or daring spacewalks to shake loose a jammed Canadarm or to navigate the tricky logistics of going to the zero-G john.
If seventeen and a half minutes is optimal for astronauts, it ought to be optimal for Mangonauts also. And so we at Mango Pudding Blues set the timer on our trusty Timex Ironman and proceeded to experiment.
2) The timer on a Timex Ironman includes a sophisticated countdown repeat option that will not only time something, but will immediately time it again. This is presumably for elite athletes who engage in some kind of dreadful interval training. Of course, we know nothing of such exercise, but we used to use this feature frequently to help us time the agitation of photo chemicals every 30 seconds when we developed our own film.
3) We also used it when we used to snooze in the mornings. Yes. We have an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse alarm clock that rings real bells to blast us out of bed in the morning. Lacking, as it does, a modern snooze feature, we improvised, as any astronaut would do. We set our Timex Countdown Repeat and we’d lie in bed every morning after turning Mickey off, sleeping an extra hour in 9 minute bursts, building up a reserve of self-loathing that would linger all morning.
4) But we at Mango Pudding Blues no longer snooze. No. We pop out of bed at the cock’s crow, 6:30 sharp, fully formed and full of vim and vigor. Sans self-loathing. We used to dream that we would one day overcome our awful snoozing habit, and now we have. It’s been years since we snoozed.
And how did we do it? Was it our legendary willpower? Was it our old wives’ technique of putting Mickey across the room? No. We think those things helped, but we suspect it was really age. We suspect that as one reaches one’s late thirties, the charms of sleeping in simply fade. Certainly the Killer, who (we may not have previously mentioned) is many years younger than we are) can still snooze for grand swaths of time without flinching.
4.5) Which reminds us of a comment we read years ago by an addiction doctor, who said there aren’t too many old heroin addicts, because after a few years of hardcore addiction (10? 12?), the average addict either gets bored and cleans up or goes all the way and dies of an overdose.
5) And, like an old reformed junkie, we no longer snooze in the mornings. However, we have found so far that NASA’s seventeen and a half minutes is too short for our afternoon siesta, and instead we grumpily push the countdown repeat button and nap for 35 minutes or 52.5 minutes or, once, for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
