I have used brine to make my Thanksgiving turkey super succulent and yummy. Last week, I managed to make a decent baked cod in my grilling microwave with a matzo meal crust. What made it extra tasty? A brine – that’s right. My dad, a cook for 30 some odd years now, in his infinite wisdom brined pork chops and pan-fried them with basil making the most delicious pork chops I’ve ever had . . . EVER. One of my favorite summer dishes is Taiwanese pickled cucumbers, and that has a distinctive brine signature as well. Suffice it to say, generations before me know the secrets of the brine.
Saturday, I took my compost to the Greenmarket and wandered around a bit. It was a less oppressively humid day, so it seemed like all of Brooklyn was there. Blackberries, nectarines, peaches, and hideously beautiful heirloom tomatoes were ever so abundant. Blueberries began to make an appearance. I broke down and got lots of blackberries. I can’t wait for the blackberry mint granita I made to be ready! With the left over fresh mint simple syrup, I made some limonana – Hebrew for mint lemonade. I also picked up some lovely multi-colored cherry and grape tomatoes destined for pastas and salads, a multi-grain baguette, and just the most beautiful hunk of whole wheat sourdough – talk about tall, dark, and handsome!
With this massive loaf of crusty brown bread, the only proper way to dress it in the summer would be lovely cold salads, so this week, I have some ambitious plans. Pesto chicken salad, curried chicken salad with raisins, Waldorf chicken salad with grapes and walnuts, and maybe a flavorful Japanese egg salad – wouldn’t that be lovely? Well, the most important ingredient for all of these salads comes from our little friend, the chicken, so the most important question is, “How in the world should I cook my chicken?”
If I were more industrious, I would have bought an old laying hen at the Greenmarket and brined it within an inch of its life and baked it or maybe thrown it in the slow cooker. Alas, I am but a busy professional with one too many jobs, so bland, boring, tough all-American chicken breast it is. While they defrosted slowly in the refrigerator, I looked up how to make a brine specifically to make chicken breasts tasty. I didn’t want to use the same recipe for brine as I did for the turkey, so I went on a search. The basics are all the same – salt, sugar, water, crushed, not ground, spices. If my brief foray as a chemistry major in college taught me anything, it taught me that one can super saturate hot water with salt and sugar. I boiled water and started throwing stuff into the pot.
24 parts filtered water
2 parts sea salt
1 part raw sugar
peppercorns
bay leaf
cumin seeds
coriander seeds
vegetable broth powder or cube
lime juice
Once the water came to a boil, I started adding the salt and sugar. Once that all dissolved, I added in the spices and aromatics. As it came back up to a boil, I threw in a little of the vegetable broth base. When the spices and aromatics began to open up and filled the kitchen with a pleasant aroma, I turned off the heat. Some recipes tell you to pour the brine over ice to dilute and cool it down immediately. I’m a bit more patient, so I just waited for it to cool.
I am going to marinate the chicken and fish (separate dishes) overnight and will start working on my menu for the week tomorrow. I defrosted some pesto from earlier this summer to make the pesto mayo. The curried mayo I will play by ear, and well, a Waldorf salad is super simple. If I have left over chicken, I plan to make the best three cup chicken (aka Taiwanese basil chicken) out there. With the left over brine, I will marinate some cod and tempura it before turning it into Hakka style sweet and sour fish. Oh! How I love black vinegar!
Tonight, I have articles to write for the Fall 2011 issue of Asian Fusion. I did get a call that I get the opportunity to go to the final competition for the 2011 Miss NY Chinese Beauty Pageant title on August 21st. Exciting! I get to see the girls and staffers again, and write the closing article.
Stereotype Rebel 