Quick Food Review - Ka-Me Honey Soy Ginger Noodle

I was in the ethnic aisle at Shaw's grocery store the other day and saw a bunch of boxed microwavable Asian cuisine dishes. I thought I'd grab a few and try them out for lunch at work. Hey, it beats Ramen Noodles. Though, there is actually a comforting styrofoamy reliability with Ramen Noodles that you leave venturing into the wild uncharted corners of prepackaged microwaveable lunch.

My first test subject is Ka-Me Honey Soy Ginger Noodles. On the good side, it has a nice neat package, a la takeout restaurant carton. It was very easy to prepare: empty the noodle and sauce/veg packet into the carton and heat.

On the down side, the cooked noodles are packed together in a brick in their little baggie. The sauce reeks when it's fresh out of it's own foil/plastic baggie. Almost like it's hermetically sealed to keep the elements safe from it, and not the other way around. It seemed like there'd be more vegetables and other edible knick-knacks in the sauce mix, but nothin doin. I also thought there'd be tofu. No such luck. I guess the only soy is in the sauce itself. So for the 220 lbs that is me, it really wasn't filling enough to call it lunch. Afternoon snack perhaps, but not lunch.

It did actually taste pretty good after all. The sauce turned out to smell and taste much nicer warmed up than it did cold out of its silver space suit packaging. And for precooked noodles, they actually weren't disgusting. Because it fell short on contents, I'm giving it a C.

Single Serving Popcorn

I empty my single serving bag of microwave popcorn into the crisp white cafeware cereal bowl awaiting on my kitchen counter. And I flash back to a linoleum counter from 30 years earlier. 30 years ago, when popcorn making was itself an event.

In the early days, I remember the excitement of the silver Jiffy Pop container first placed on the heated stove. The explosive percussion of superheated kernals smashing tin, followed by the Openheimer bloom of aluminum foil, buttery puffed kernel fallout contained safely therein.

I remember later when we first brought home the popcorn popper. An orange domed UFO worthy of the proudest Martian explorer. It inspired years of the most rigorous disciplined scientific research that a gang of pre-adolescent kids could muster. Our mission, to pop the elusive perfect batch. Enough corn oil to fill up to the inner ring, there was no talk of canola oil nee rapeseed. Add enough kernels for the oil/kernel mix to extend to the outer ring. Those were merely the basics.

The alchemy began where Oster's or Kitchenade's or Hamilton Beach's instruction booklet left off. Heat oil then add kernels or andd oil and kernels together? When to unplug it? Switches or automatic shutoff, you ask? Hah! When do you flip the dome? What dome cover to use? (A newly cleaned Kool-Ade lid always seemed the best fit, but after 3-4 uses became slack and pointless.) And what of those slots at the top of the dome? Lay down chunks of butter to melt and drip through during popping? Maybe pre-melt then pour through the top? Or melt and mix in after the dome is flipped? Salt before butter, or butter before salt? Margarine, you say? For popping maybe but topping? Never.

Countless questions, and layers of mystery beneath them. In the time it has taken me to write these few words, I've already emptied my bowl save a few pieces of kernel shrapnel. No layers of mystery. No unpopped kernels of truth below for wonderful tooth-shattering crunches later on. No crowd around the dome digging in for seconds, thirds, and fourths as the mummy, the werewolf, or the creature from the black lagoon terrorizes us through the tv glass for the umpteenth Saturday afternoon. Just me, in my apartment, settling in for the my latest Netflick to stream over the wire and into my solitary laptop screen.

Single serving popcorn for a single serving movie screening.

Those old popcorn poppers were probably spectacular fire hazards. And who knows whether that superheated orange plastic will pay us off with gastrointestinal cancer of one form or another within the next 30 years. Somedays, our popping results were pretty dodgy. Others, they were downright inedible. The smell might linger around the house for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the week. But there is one thing that sadly seems certain. The best popcorn days are now behind us.

Chicken Curry Inna Hurry

HA! No such thing, SUCKA!!! But, I give you my best effort at remembering my mom's curried chicken recipe straight from Trinidad & Tobago (by way of London, Lagos, Brooklyn, Nashville, Detroit...)! It has served me well in impressing dates, cheering friends, and smiting enemies (...with the 'itis!). Enjoy this rendition. If I had any readers, I'd worry that some of you would comment on how your mama has a better recipe and blah, blah, blah, but since I know that you're not out there, eat a habanero fool! Love, peace, and curried chicken grease!!!

Curried Chicken (serving 3-4)

Ingredients

• 1 whole cut up chicken (bone in) – if leaving skin on, try to use less oil: better with skin off
• 2-3 tbsp yellow curry powder (Avoid the “generics” – Durkee, Spice Island, etc.. You want de real ting, neh mahn! Go to your local “ethnic shop” – Indian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, SouthEast Asian, or whatever passes in your area these days – and get what they’re selling. No, if you live in Weymouth and the shopkeep's from Holbrook, that doesn't count!)
• 0.5-1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2-3 celery stalks chopped or celery seeds
• 4-6 Idaho potatoes – skinned and cut into 8ths
• 1 red pepper chopped
• 1 yellow pepper chopped
• Chopped white mushroom (optional)
• 1 tsp. of habanero or scotch bonnet pepper sauce or 1 whole habanero or scotch bonnet pepper (optional)
• 1 whole medium onion chopped
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (crushed) or 2-3 tsp. minced garlic
• 1-2 spring onions
• Optional Seasonings: Thyme, marjoram, parsley, garlic powder, onion powder, chives, salt, paprika, red pepper, bay leaf (?-maybe 1)

Instructions

1. Prepare ingredients listed above (cut, chop, skin, dice, grind, etc…)
2. Pre-season chicken with: Worcestershire Sauce, 1 tbsp curry powder, 1 tsp ground cumin, onion powder and/or garlic powder, light celery salt, and optional seasonings.
   Place in container seal and shake around a few times.
   Preseason up to day before, leaving seasoning chicken in fridge.
3. In large pot, heat oil (olive or canola or whichever) just covering bottom of pot.
   Ready when piece of onion or celery dropped in sizzles immediately.
4. Add garlic and celery to the pot and heat in until you begin to smell them strongly.
5. Depending on size of chicken and amount of oil in pan, add 2-3 tbsp. of curry powder and 1 tbsp or less of cumin to heated oil and stir in thoroughly with oil (until mostly dissolved, oil deep yellow, and you smell the spices).
6. Add the onion, red pepper, yellow pepper, mushrooms, and optional seasonings and mix thoroughly.
7. Add chicken parts to heated oil.
8. Stir frequently.
9. Watch for chicken pieces to turn mostly white on outside.
10. Meanwhile: Boil kettle full of water.
11. Add cut potatoes to pot.
12. Add up to 2 cups of boiling water.
13. Stir ingredients together and watch sauce thickness. Want it to be gravy or thick soup-like, not thin. If too thin, add potato, or mix cold water and corn starch, potato starch, or wheat flower to thicken.
14. Add whole habanero or scotch bonnet to curry.
    Fish out when just beginning to soften. Keep a sharp eye out! DO NOT allow the pepper to burst, otherwise it will ruin dish.
    If using pepper sauce, add by the drops, stir in and taste frequently to make sure not adding too much.
15. Taste frequently, adding pepper, salt or other seasonings to adjust taste to your liking.
16. Cook partially covered for 10 minutes.
17. Check chicken and add time if not yet cooked through.

Goes well with:

• Fried plantain (like frying French fries. – until golden brown each side)
• Curried Chick peas – roughly same steps above:
  Reduce the ingredients in accordance with size of can of chick peas.
  Skip pre-seasoning and habanero/pepper sauce steps.
  Drain can of chick peas before adding to oil!
• Plain white rice
• Okra and rice
  Boil rice with 1-2 chopped okra per 2 cups rice, and pieces of ham (ham w/bone preferred if available) and pepper to taste
• Roti – you’ll have to buy this from a shop. There may be some Trini’s in your town if you're lucky. Maybe not. We're everywhere...just like us Nigerians. (Wait a second. Did I just refer to myself in the second person, plural? Separately? Twice? What would that be, the fourth person triplicate???)
• Curried string beans (see chick peas).

Bon apetit!

Little Duck, Huge Flavor

Little Duck, Huge Flavor

Review of: Little Duck Thai Restaurant

By: Alozie Nwosu

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy's Book.

If you're sick of Applebees and Boston Market for dinner, try out Thai Little Duck over on Granite Ave. Small and inobtrusive almost to the point of being invisible, this tiny humble establishment hides a formidable menu of tasty healthy delights to any and every palate.

If this would be your first adventure into the land of Thai cooking, then their Pad Thai is a great introductory dish (unless you have a peanut or seafood allergy). If your feeling particularly adventurous, give their spicy Tom Yum Noodles a try. Available as a soup as well as "dry" (without broth). Both styles are out of site. The running favorite for all to whom I've recomended Thai Little Duck is the Basil Fried Rice.

Many veggie dishes to choose from that are more than satisfying to a voracious carnivore like myself. Large portions for short money. The value can't be beat. You can get it take out or have it delivered if you live nearby. Go on in though. Even though it's small, the friendly faces serving and cooking are as satisfying as the delicious meals they provide.

On days that I get out of work late and don't feel like cooking, I bypass Wendy's, keep heading down Newport all the way down to "The Duck". Eat in, take home, or delivered: anyway you choose to get it, do yourself a favor and grab a Little Duck.