Chicken Cacciatore

"Chicken cacciatore" is one of those phrases I've heard before and equated with fancy restaurants and seasoned sophisticates, but I never knew precisely what it was. It's a combination of syllables perfect for well-coiffed waiters to roll off the tongue as the chef's special of the day, but like wine jargon or anything coming out of my Inorganic Chemistry professor's mouth, would just soar over my head. Which is silly, because it turns out chicken cacciatore isn't fancy at all! Just hearty and delicious and a lot easier to pull off than it sounds.

According to Wikipedia, cacciatore means "a meal prepared 'hunter-style' with tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, herbs, often bell pepper, and sometimes wine." The recipe I consulted for my first attempt, from Food Network's Everyday Italian collection, didn't include mushrooms, but the abundance of vegetables and description of its simple preparation is spot on.

For lunch on Saturday I followed this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chicken-cacciatore-recipe/index.html. I made some tweaks, of course: I only used chicken breasts instead of thighs, I didn't salt the meat because my broth was not low-sodium, I omitted the capers and my garlic came from a jar of minced instead of proper whole cloves. The wine I chose was the choicest of varieties: a $3.99 Pinot Grigiot from Kroger.


Believe it or not, this was my first time ever buying alcohol. At first I tried to purchase it from the Kroger on College Mall Road, but they required two forms of ID. Who carries their passport with them to the grocery store? The manager had posted a sign at check-out that this was required by Indiana state law. It isn't. He/she obviously only read the first line of Indiana Code 7.1-5-7-5.1, which says an acceptable defense for the charge of selling alcohol to a minor is that the purchaser furnished two forms of identification. Fortunately the manager of the Walnut Street Kroger either read on to the second line, which states that a driver's license with photo ID is equally acceptable, or they have basic common sense.

Anyway, after that bit of drama I came home with my cheap wine, seared my chicken and sautéed my veggies and was all set to throw it into the pan, when I discovered that it was corked. I assumed that a $3.99 bottle would be designed to be opened by people who would buy a $3.99 bottle...the sort who would not generally have the level of sophistication and foresight to own a cork-screw. On the plus side, it was a "cork" worthy of a $3.99 bottle--that is, not real cork at all. Sweetie was able to dig the rubbery Styrofoam thing out using a screw-driver.


Classy, we is.

Other than the substitutions I mentioned, I followed the recipe to the letter. This is very unusual not just because I'm in the habit of halving recipes to avoid leftovers, but because recipes from Everyday Italian are usually loaded with things I don't like to put in my body. But this recipe is based on real rustic Italian cooking, which unlike the Americanized "Italian" of double-cheese pizza and cream-drenched pasta, is naturally healthy. And gorgeous.


I love, love, loved the vegetable sauce for the meat. I would even eat the onions and bell peppers on their own...and did when Sweetie rejected half of his. He liked the flavor in the chicken, but must be acclimated gradually to new vegetables. I reheated some breadsticks from Wednesday's Pizza Hut feast for the side, but I'm going to bake a heartier loaf to have with the leftovers. This recipe is definitely going on The List.

Fresh Croissants

I've shared that I'm exploring Mediterranean cuisine after those two solid weeks of Japanese food. Well, on Friday I stepped a few countries westward when I baked up some fresh French croissant.

I'd been craving croissants ever since that plane flight to Chicago, thanks to a certain scene in It's Complicated in which Meryl Streep takes her architect paramour to her bakery in the dead of night to whip up a special batch with melty chocolate inside.

This wasn't the first time I'd attempted croissants from scratch, though. I tried once in elementary school, during my phase of obsession with a certain Betty Crocker cookbook. Maybe the yeast was bad or I added too much water, but they didn't rise and ended up unappetizingly oily. In sum, they turned out as well as you would imagine a fifth-grader's solo attempt at puff pastry would.

This time I followed the recipe from Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat, the book that helped me get over some of my most unhealthy attitudes about my body and food. I have long since returned the book to the library, but a quick Google search revealed that one of my favorite bloggers, Lori of Fake Food Free, had a reprint of the recipe in her archives! My resolve to try them again was only strengthened by Lori's photos of the results.

On our first night back from Japan, I started the first step of the dough-making process. Here's a link to Lori's page, because it's silly for me to copy and paste the whole thing when I don't even have step-by-step photos to accompany them: http://www.fakefoodfree.com/2009/05/5-croissants.html. Two adjustments to note: I used plain light soy milk instead of dairy because of my lactose intolerance, and my butter was salted because I'm an incorrigible cheapskate. I only started photo documentation on Friday morning, when the dough had been folded and risen to completion:


I rolled the whole batch into a 16" circle and used a pizza cutter to divide it into 12 triangular pieces.


Eight of those pieces were wrapped up and placed in the freezer, because the two of us don't need twelve buttery croissants sitting around the kitchen! I rolled up the remaining four and left them to rise for 45 minutes. They puffed up beautifully.


After brushing them with milk (real milk this time, les gasp, because I didn't think that tiny bit would hurt me), I baked them at 375° for fifteen minutes.


Pretty!

Now, you wouldn't think buttery pastries made with all-purpose flour should be featured on a blog called "The Amateur Nutritionist," but here's where the preaching comes in. A single croissant will not add an inch to your waistline--one of these will give you only about 210 calories worth of energy. The real danger is the saturated fat, since each croissant contains one tablespoon of butter. Scarf down more than one or two and you've consumed more than half of your recommended daily intake. Key word alert: moderation! I ate my fresh-out-of-the-oven-pastry with half a banana and some strawberries smothered in goat's milk yogurt.


Produce and dairy make any meal seem well-balanced :D


Look at those flaky layers. The only thing I would change about this recipe is using a bit less butter; despite my efforts to keep everything dry my fingers were a tad oily as I ate this. I'd also like to experiment with different flours; though all-purpose guarantees a fluffy pastry, I think white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour could work too.

Things I've Never Tried Before III, and Giada's Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

I wrote yesterday about one of my first activities as soon as we arrived back in the States: grocery shopping! After one trip Wednesday night to recover the staples we always keep on hand, I went back out on Thursday to embark on new culinary adventures. First I drove to Sahara Mart, our local hoity-toity international hippie store. I was in search of two products in particular. First, fresh basil.


As soon as I walked into the produce department I spotted these on a cart. I thought they were for people who wanted to grow their own basil plants, and ignored them. But when there were no basil bunches with the rest of the herbs, I figured out that this is how it's done! I'm keeping the plant on my counter, watering it daily until I use up all the leaves.

Second, I was intent on trying goat's milk yogurt.


I hadn't imagined that this existed, and found out about it through Glamour's Vitamin G blog. Author Sarah wrote, "Many people find that goat's milk is easier to digest than cow's milk, so if you're in that boat, you may enjoy this stuff." And in the comments Marisa of I'm Allergic, who has several food sensitivities including lactose intolerance, agreed that she could stomach goat's milk yogurt just fine. I couldn't wait to try it myself. This yogurt has a bigger dose of saturated fat than usual, but the flavor is mellow, it's half as expensive as the same size container of Greek yogurt, and I've tried two servings so far with no detectable discomfort! Woohoo!

I was also in the market for sun-dried tomatoes. The collection of Italian recipes I had bookmarked, most by Giada of course, contained one particularly appetizing pasta dish that I wanted to eat for lunch that day: Penne with Sun-dried Tomato Pesto. The recipe called for the tomatoes packed in olive oil, but the jars I found were very expensive. Instead I went with the plain dried tomatoes by the pound.


All three of my spoils went into lunch that day. First I had a bowl of my new yogurt mixed with honey for dairy and protein.


Yumyumyum. But that would make a sorry lunch by itself, wouldn't it? It simply calmed my tummy while I made the pesto with the tomatoes and fresh basil in my Vitamix.


It smelled fantastic in the blender; I almost started eating it straight up instead of waiting for my pasta to finish cooking!


It doesn't look like much, but take my word for it that this bowl was one of the best I've ever tasted. The pesto was chunky because I hadn't used the oil-soaked tomatoes, but I love the concentrated bursts of flavor. And the next day (yesterday) I found another equally fantastic use for it:



You're looking at my lunch of the sun-dried tomato pesto under a poached egg with swiss on rye. Yes, it was as good as it sounds. And it was made even better with a blueberry-cherry Green Monster for dessert :D

The Aftermath

Phew--I finally have a post for every day of our vacation in Japan. I bet you guys are as relieved as I am...seeing or reading about the world is exciting, but after a while you just want to settle into the comforts of daily life. Plus, the trip meant that I went two whole weeks without posting a single recipe, and most of the meals I shared with you were not Amateur Nutritionist friendly! But that's okay when you're walking 20,000 steps a day (about ten miles) on average. And yes, we counted those steps--Sweetie's Pokewalker, ahem, "pedometer" kept track for us :D

The plane ride back from Tokyo was not a happy one, but we survived. Lunch was served about an hour after takeoff, which thanks to low-hanging clouds was actually two hours after we boarded the plane. It wasn't as good as the meal during the first flight, since the choices were either pork belly or pork in tomato sauce and I hate both, so I just ate the side dishes (i.e. lots of rice). Shortly after eating we ran into some turbulence, and my stomach wasn't quite right after that. In addition to motion sickness, my blood sugar plummeted from lack of substance after a few hours. I distracted myself by watching girly movies that I would never at home: Two Weeks Notice (started out with promise, but ended terribly), It's Complicated (slightly uncomfortable, but Meryl pulled it off and the sets were divine), Intolerable Cruelty (transparent and inconsistent, but both leads make good eye candy)...there were some others too but my memory is foggy. Right before the descent to Chicago they fed us again--ham sandwiches and fruit--and I had a temporary reprieve before the sudden drops rattled me up again.

After AMIL and her husband drove us home to Bloomington, I did three things, and you can probably guess what they were.

(1) I ate. We made short work of a $20 Pizza Hut gift card from last Christmas. I'd forgotten how delicious a cheese-free pie made by a commercial establishment could be...especially when you've been shying away from food for the past fifteen hours.

(2) I slept. For about five hours. Because though I intended to sleep on the plane, the motion sickness interfered.

And (3) I went grocery shopping. AMIL was sweet enough to leave fruits and milk and a loaf of bread so I wouldn't have to bake first thing after coming back, but our refrigerator was in a sad, sad state. I stocked up on essentials, then went back the next day to get the specialized ingredients, because my number (4) activity was to promptly bookmark a ton of new recipes! Sweetie said he'd had his fill of rice and noodles for a while, and you know half of my usual dishes are East Asian. So I chose a new cuisine to pursue: Italian! But I'll save the details for tomorrow, because now the time is ripe to share some souveneirs we brought back from Japan.

First, we amassed two plushies for our collection: the penguin and the Eevee.


I also picked out this keychain from a local carving artist's shop in Nikko:


It's a Nikko Nekko! (badum-tssh)

We also brought back some less happy evidence of our trip:



It looks like an unanticipated cost will be a set of new shoes. These were the only ones I had suitable for walking/running, too.

Anther thing I did after coming back, actually right after pizza-eating and before sleeping, was to weigh myself and see if my shoes were sacrificed in vain. The scale read 130.6...I had gained five pounds! But note my previous sentence: I did this right after pizza. Obviously my brain needed the sleep that came afterwards. Because four hours after that shock, I was 128.4. The next morning I was 126. And as of this morning I am 123.6 pounds--I either lost 7 pounds in two days or we ate a lot of salt over there. Sweetie was bloated up with water weight too, because he's "lost" three pounds in the same amount of time.

Before we knew it was a fluke, though, we came up with theories as to how we could possibly have gained poundage while walking that much and eating that little. Unless each bowl of noodles we consumed was 2,000 kcal, the gain was mathematically impossible. So what could have happened? Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:



And yes, I'm flexing...I don't look that scary just walking around :o I expected my calves to bulk up, what with those ten miles a day, but the biceps were a surprise. Apparently carrying luggage and hanging on to the straps on fast-moving trains have a bonus toning effect!

For the past few days I've been waking up at 6 or 7am, then falling back asleep in the afternoon and waking up to hunger pangs for dinner. That's one plus to being let go from my job before we left; it's not imperative that I resume a normal schedule until mid-June when my graduate classes start up ;)

Narita

Our last full day in Japan, Tuesday the 25th, with the exception of a few hours in the evening, was incredibly boring. We hauled our luggage to Kyoto station in the morning (using the subway this time--that's 500 yen very well spent) and rode the Hikari shinkansen back to Tokyo, where we changed to a local line to Narita and checked in to a hotel close to the airport. The highlight of the ride was the 1000 yen pickled veggie bento I picked up from one of the kiosks on the platform--I'm pretty sure I ate some new foods but have no idea what plants they came from. I did identify an umeboshi (pickled plum) in the dessert tray, which I licked just to try and puckered up so violently that it signaled the end of the meal.

We reached the hotel around 5pm; that means we were travelling for eight solid hours! Sweetie had only had granola bars and milk for lunch and that bento was a far-away memory for me by then, so we tried to board the complimentary shuttle to the local shopping center, Aeon, for food. Then the other guests, including some very large Europeans, hurried to board in front of us and completely clogged the vehicle. We were the only ones left standing in front of the lobby, with empty stomachs and an hour until the next shuttle. An attendant witnessed our distress and hailed a cab for us--we rode in spacious style all the way to dinner, and the hotel footed the bill!

At Aeon, we temporarily forgot how hungry we were as we browsed the selection at a dozen different restaurants. We were sorely tempted by a model of pizza topped with lettuce and strip steak, but we weren't sure if we could pull off asking for no cheese on my half. The choices were overwhelming, but a map out front helpfully listed all of the restaurants and which cuisines they offered (in English!) for us. Though the pseudo-Italian and Chinese and sweet shops all looked scrumptious, Sweetie said we should eat Japanese, since it was our last night there. The only such restaurant listed was Shikokujichu--an establishment tucked in the back of the food area.

Remember that name: Shikokujichu. If you're ever in Narita waiting for a plane the next day or taking it easy before taking a train to the city, get on a bus, get out at this mall, and eat at this restaurant. Here's a link to their page on the Aeon website--http://narita-aeonmall.com/shopguide/shop.jsp?shopno=28&foo=0--Google translator does a thorough job if you want to read the content, but I'm mainly linking so you can see photos of the storefront. Cameras weren't allowed in the mall, according to the signs posted every few feet, and we were dead tired of playing tourists anyway. Unfortunately, this means you guys miss out on seeing the most beautiful bowl of donburi I've ever had.

This place was easily the best meal of our entire trip. The thought of that made us sad while we were eating it; maybe we had missed out on some great eats in the early days of convenience store dependence. I ordered the bowl with salmon, crab legs, roast chicken and a prawn. It came in a traditional wooden bowl with a paddle to scoop into a personal bowl, as well as miso on the side and pickled veggies, wasabe, and vinegar to top. Not that it needed additions; the flavor was phenomenal! The crab legs were sweet (though there were only four of them), the chicken infused with BBQ, and the fish restored my flagging faith in salmon. The rice was high quality all by itself, but the generous sprinkling of shoyu helped. Oh, and by the way, the menu for Shikokujichu lists calorie counts for every dish. The number under my selection was, I kid you not, 666 kcal. It was indeed devilishly good :D

On the other side of the table, Sweetie was oblivious to the world revolving around him as he chewed one savory piece of beef after another. He also ate my prawn, because I sadly have not achieved my bucket list item to conquer my fear of shrimp (when they're fried it's one thing, but this one had eyes and legs).

The cost for all this deliciousness? 2200 yen. For the both of us. We never spent a yen over 3000 total for a meal while we were in that country--I think its reputation for sky-high costs is undeserved. The only reason we spent double what we would normally on food for those two weeks was because we were eating out daily, and in Bloomington we do that once a month at most. Maybe tourists try to eat like they would at home while they're there, visiting Italian restaurants and buying comforting western imports at the store. But if you stick to the regional cuisine, it's completely reasonable.

After dinner we strolled the mall for an hour. The women's fashion outlets were pure eye candy--so many frills! The prices were quite high, and I'm sure none of the fashions would have looked good on my body shape, but I had a grand time looking. I was sorely tempted by some beautiful silk yukata, but I would look mildly out of place wearing one in Indiana =/ Sweetie was enraptured by the Capcom Plaza: an enormous arcade with every type of game imaginable. The ones we'd seen previously were impressive, but dominated by claw machines. This place had classic games, strategy games, sports games, even room-sized Super Mario Galaxy-themed two-player games. It was a sad, sad moment when Sweetie found one of his dreams, an immersive mech game in an enclosed pod, and it required 500 yen to play. We had planned our ATM withdrawals so accurately that we only had 300 yen left.

To finish the night we ducked into the Jusco supermarket in the back for some milk so Sweetie could soothe his pod-deprived soul with cookies before bed. I had imagined that all Japanese supermarkets were like the small one I frequented in Kyoto, but this was a real grocery store! Though it was the size of the Krogers at home, it felt cavernous to us. They stocked all of the products that I'd had to hop from one store to the next to secure during our stay. I wanted to buy chocolates and rice crackers and a cantaloupe ice pop, but I knew it would be unwise to carry all of that on the plane...I would have eaten it all and made myself airsick. I ended up spending those 12 airborne hours sick to my stomach anyway, but that's another story.

We spent a very comfortable night at the International Garden Hotel Narita. The bathtub was big enough to fit my entire body without contortions and the television had access to a couple of English channels. Not that we spent much time watching it; we needed to be up and about at 6am the next day to get to breakfast before taking a shuttle to the airport. The buffet was very impressive. In Tokyo we ate toast and salad, in Kyoto we ate cereal and donuts, but here we could dish up pancakes and mixed fruit and home fries. While we were eating Sweetie quipped, "Why are all the signs around here in Japanese? Aren't we back in the States?"

I must note, however, that the buffet had an entire section that we didn't have the courage to touch. I have never seen so many pickled vegetables! I'm not sure, but I think the spread was to cater to Koreans on layover.

By 7:30 we were on a bus heading to the airport. By 8:10 I had already exhausted myself running up and down flights of stairs to access the subway and get cash back on our Pasmo cards (which, by the way, you shouldn't get unless you're just going to stay in Tokyo. Stick with Suica if you're going to Kyoto; that's when we needed them and they weren't accepted). And by 11 we were on a plane headed for home sweet home.

Kaiyukan

Yesterday I complained bitterly about the terrible weather on our trip to Hikone Castle. We definitely weren't going to make the mistake of choosing an outdoor activity the next day, so instead of going out on Sunday evening we browsed city and travel guides for the Kansai region. 99% of the options were more shrines and temples, which we had our fill of the week before. But in a stroke of luck I stumbled on blurb in the recesses of the internet about side trips from Kyoto, which at the very bottom of the list mentioned the Kaiyukan aquarium.

I knew it would be a hit with Sweetie, who was lying lethargically on the hotel bed, depressed at the lack of prospects and dreaming wistfully of Steak 'n Shake and his PS3. I nonchalantly said, "How about the aquarium with the largest acrylic tank in the world?" At that he bolted up and said, "Where is it? Can we get there? Is it open tomorrow? Is it open tomorrow?" He was anxious that the place would be closed on a Monday like many museums, but it turned out that Kaiyukan has very few closing days in the year and was actually opened earlier than usual for the summer during our stay. The next day we battled rain and rush hour crowds to get to the station for the ride to Osaka. For some unknown reason the scheduled special rapid service we were counting on didn't show up, so we spent fifteen extra minutes on a local train. No biggie--arriving a little later gave the school groups some time to clear out.

Though we were walking under another deluge from the Osakako station towards the aquarium, it was very, very difficult to get lost. The entire section of the city seems devoted to the aquarium--there were banners on every post along the street and the flower planters were painted with fish and penguins. The building itself wasn't terribly discrete, either.



We deposited our wet umbrellas in a locker for 200 yen (which I would usually refuse to pay, but we were there to enjoy ourselves and that was much more easily accomplished with free hands) then bought tickets for 2,000 yen each. Being a tourist-friendly institution, Kaiyukan takes VISA credit cards, which was very fortunate because I think we only had a few hundred left in cash. Before proceeding to the exhibits we waited for a rambunctious herd of preschoolers to swarm on through, their shouts dwindling as they were carried up the escalator to the eighth floor. Then we could enjoy our walk through the Aqua Gate: a tunnel surrounded by fish (and a staff member in scuba gear).




The tunnel led to the escalator to the eighth floor, which was the start of the Japanese Forest and Aleutian Island exhibitions. The highlight of this section were the playful sea otters.


Those little weasels (and yes, they are in the weasel family) are fast. They were playing so happily, diving off rocks and tackling each other and darting through the water like they had jets affixed to their tails, that they were very difficult to capture on film.

Down one floor was the Monterey Bay exhibition, with seals and sea lions making their rounds blissfully unaware of the audience.



In the South American sections we admired the reptiles.



The expression on the iguana's face is priceless. Obviously it's a nice place in there; Mr. Tortoise needs to lighten up.

For reasons I don't quite understand, aquariums always insist on devoting a section to penguins.




Penguins aren't creatures you would associate with fish tanks, you know? Sure, they live next to the ocean, but so do seagulls, and I've never seen them up for display at an aquarium. But at least penguins make more sense than capybaras.


Have you noticed a distinct lack of something integral to an aquarium? Like fish? There were plenty of fish on the top two floors, but it didn't really get interesting until we reached the Pacific Ocean tank on the 6th. This tank was the aforementioned largest in the world, and believe you me, it needed to be.







The fish were HUGE. Sweetie put my head in these shots for perspective--the first one wasn't technically in the Pacific tank with the rest, but it was longer than I am tall, and the last two are of the prized whale shark, which is wider than I am tall, never mind the length! This tank also housed your garden-variety shark:


Some creatures which appeared to be symbiotic:


And some that were downright weird:




As we passed the cafe near the exit we saw that the hugeness of the specimens wasn't limited to fish. Here's me for your sample size again:



Around 1pm we finished the main exhibits and exited through the hall of jellyfish.



We were both starving and anxious to get some food in our bellies, but we made a quick stop at the museum store to claim a plushie we couldn't resist:


A frivolous and impulsive purchase? Yes indeed--but it was only 520 yen and we were severely under budget. So there.

We ducked under the eaves to the shopping center next door for lunch, where we found a nice sushi restaurant on the second floor (wouldn't you be hungry for sushi after seeing all those fish?) The place was simply named "Ganko" and had a very classy feel.


The decor was much more elaborate than we had grown used to, and I think on a nicer day we would have had an amazing view of Osaka Bay.



I ordered a lunch set with some variety to it so I could check several foods off my list.


The set included fatty tuna sushi,


tempura,


and a serving of cold soba noodles for dipping and slurping.


Can you believe all this was for only 880 yen? Sweetie's meal only cost 900-something and included hot soba with aburaage and rice with fish eggs.


I sampled a bit of his eggs, and they were very salty. He said they were great mixed into the rice, though he couldn't finish all of them because they had given him way more food than a human should consume in one meal. Mine was more reasonably portioned; I ate everything except for one of the pieces of shrimp tempura. The meal contained several foods I had never officially eaten before: sushi with raw fish in it (I'd only eaten vegetable and cooked tuna rolls), cold soba (which tasted remarkably little like the buckwheat monstrosities I'd attempted at home), and fried cantaloupe. The fried cantaloupe tasted nothing like its original melon form, but it was sweet and yummy anyway ;)

Maybe the place was so cheap because the quality wasn't good and we just couldn't tell, but I'd still recommend it to tourists in the area who, like us, wanted to try something new with minimal monetary risk.

After lunch we wandered around the mall. Sweetie salivated over action figures he would have loved to own as a kid, and I almost purchased a glasses case from a silk prints shop that was oh-so-pretty but too big for my glasses. They would have rattled around and gotten scratched up, so I had to walk away :( We returned to Kyoto just in time to watch some more sumo and gobble down the last of our convenience store purchases before packing up for the next day, when we would spend many hours on a train back to the Eastern coast.