OK, so here's the first recipe I' trying out of Pok Pok. It's whole roasted little chickens! Started last night with two whole Cornish game hens. It's been years since I've cooked Cornish game hens. I tried them waaaaay back when I was still learning how to cook shit. I remember them as being fussy little buggers, a whole ot of work, not a lot of meat, in the end, not worth the time or effort. I had no idea.
So, got the two birds. They're little Nerf footballs of protein and bone. First step, the brine. Mixed together a good ammount of salt (1/2 cup), with half that of sugar in a big old bowl of water. Stirred that until the salt was dissolved. Then, the aromatics. Had a whole bunch of cilantro stems left over from making chile, so, chopped them up. Took a stalk of lemongrass. Took a big old chunk of ginger, sliced it. Got 6 garlic cloves. A teaspoon of peppercorns. But it all in a bowl, and kinda smashed the shit out of it with a pestle for a while, until everything was "bruised". Mixed together the brine and the aromatics, dunked the Nerf footballs in it, and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
Normally, this would be the extant of prep I would do for a dish. Pul the chicken out, call it good, and roast the mothers. Nuh-unh. Next step, according to Andy, is to pull the game hens out of the brine, and "sit their asses down in a colander" to drain. Get rid of the brine. Then, get 3 1/2 ounces of garlic cloves, sliced in half. You know how much 3 1/2 ounces of garlic is? It's a fucking ton. I bought a digital scale just to try out recipes from this book. Prepped a half-head of garlic, thinking, yeah, this is enough. Nope. Prepped a whole head. Not enough still, by far. Did a whole extra head. Still short. Used up all the garlic in the house, and was still a bit shy of 3 and 1/2 ounces. Insanity.
Then, three stalks lemongrass. Again, you know how much lemongrass this is? it's a fucking ton! Peeled it, sliced it thin, put it, along with the assload of garlic, into the food processor. As well as, oh, you know, another bunch of cilantro stems. I was short on the cilantro stems, to be honest, really should have had two bunches of stems to be exactly in line with the recipe. A touch of salt, a touch of ground pepper. Buzzed that shit until it looked nice and choppy, not a paste, but getting there. Andy reccommends using a mortar and pestle for this shit. I say, "Nope!" I would have been pounding for a whole long fucking time to get this consistency.
I get this stuff, and it really is a stuffing for the chickens. Cram it all into their cavities. There's so much fucking stuffing in these birds. Now they really are footballs. Then what do you do? Allow to airdry in the fridge for four to twelve hours. Jesus fuck. That's where I am now.
I'm excited about this, but I'm also thinking, "OK, you little shits, you better be the best goddamn thing I've ever made, because the ammount of time and effort I've poured into you is not proportional".
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