Kaonashi Ga Suki

I’m not the greatest cook in the world, but I’d like to think that I’m adequete enough in the kitchen to whip up a few things. I can do simple stuff like stir fry meats and veggies, boil pasta, roast a chicken, and pan fry stuff. I can bake a ham or a cake, and I can grill hamburgers.

However, I still have much to learn.

For example, I always worry about oversalting food, so I tend not to put enough salt in it. My food ends up tasting bland. In my defense, however, one can always add more salt to something, but if it comes out too salty, it’s often difficult to fix.

Another thing I don’t really do but should is that I don’t taste the food while I cook. I don’t know why, but I just don’t. I think I worry about burning my tongue or something.

Recently I’ve been cooking again, and every day has been somewhat of an adventure since I don’t know how my dish will turn out.

Most of my attempts so have have actually been ok, with a couple of minor errors. I prepared a grilled teriyaki salmon the other day and I have to admit that it was quite tasty and perfect. However, the rice was something left to be desired. I underestimated the amount of rice I needed and the rice came out kind of dry. Eh well.

The dinner two nights ago, however, was quite a challenge to eat. Easy to prepare, but extremely difficult to eat.

Have you guys ever seen this grill on TV? The one where the guy tells you to “Set it and forget it”? Well, I bought one from Target the other day in the hopes that it would allow me to prepare healthy dishes quickly. I planned on roasting chickens and such.

So my bf and I bought this thing. A few days later I went to the 99 Ranch Market. For those of you who don’t know, 99 Ranch is a Chinese supermarket. You can get all sorts of stuff that you’d never find at an American supermarket. Furthermore, they sell inexpensive seafood and meats. I got the terrific salmon steaks there. It’s a great place to shop. I went there to buy some seafood, but then I noticed that they were also selling whole chicken for a good price.

I noticed that the chicken was called, “stewing chicken,” so at first I was unsure. I asked the man behind the counter if the chicken was roastable and he said yes. Looking back, I wonder if he understood my question.

The next afternoon I started to prepare the chicken for roasting. Much to my surprise, I found that the chicken was very thin! It didn’t seem like the normal Zachy Farm’s chicken I see in American supermarkets. Nevertheless, I roasted it.

Admittedly the bird smelled good as it cooked. Our stomachs rumbled when we’d catch a whiff of the rosemary and thyme that I used on it.

A half hour later, it was done.

The bird looked perfect, all golden brown. I poked it to make sure it was fully cooked, and sure enough, it was. Since it was such a small and skinny chicken, I just chopped it in half for us.

Now comes the fun part: trying to eat it.

This chicken was no ordinary chicken. Much to our surprise, the meat was really tough! The drumsticks alone were practically inedible, and we had to struggle to separate it from the rest of the body.

I was perplexed. What kind of chicken is this? Was it a very old chicken? Was it even a chicken- a rooster perhaps?

We couldn’t figure it out.

We hacked and tore at the chicken like Neanderthals. There was no other way to eat it but to rip hunks of meat off with our teeth.

It was tasty, but an awful dining experience.

Is this what “stewing chicken” was like? A tough bird?

I learned a valuable lesson that night.

When shopping at the 99 Ranch Market, seafood= good, chicken = bad.

I attributed it to a learning experience.