Fall, Football and Food

The summer flew by with a storm of wedding activities and now that everything is over I have landed right at the start of my favorite season. I love Fall. I live for the football games, holidays, spices, cooler weather, sweaters and comfort foods that come with this time of year.

During the summer, it often seems unbearable to stand in front of the hot stove as you spend hours working on a dish. In the Fall, the warmth of the stove or oven seems like a cozy place to spend a Saturday. Last weekend, I completely indulged myself by watching the Ohio State game and cooking a fabulous chicken.

I decided to start working my way through the new cookbooks we received as wedding gifts. I picked up Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking and found the soy sauce chicken recipe. Using light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, Chinese rice wine, spring onions, orange peel and cinnamon, I made a stock that I used to cook a 3 lb free-range chicken.

The slow-cooking process (3 hours) made the chicken extremely tender and flavorful. Not too mention how fabulous our kitchen smelled as the stock simmered away. The stock was awesome on our jasmine rice and all together it was an excellent meal. I even attempted to chop the chicken in the Chinese-style demonstrated in the book. I definitely need more practice, but it wasn’t bad for a first try.

I definitely earned the good wife award for this dish so it comes highly recommended.

The Assembled Stock

My Attempt at Chopping the Chicken Chinese-Style