Cooking Floyd: Trencherman Thai

When I was cooking at the Valiant Trencherman one of my favorite dishes on the menu was Thai chicken.  Spicy hot with a little sweet, I never tired of it and twenty years later I still make it at home.

In fact, I'm so enamored of the flavor of the marinating paste that I'm tempted to try drying and powdering it just to see what happens!

Spice Rack Challenge May: Coriander

Pullum Frontonianum/Apicus Chicken/Chicken a la Fronto

While searching for a recipe heavy on the coriander for this month's challenge, I came across Apicus chicken.  This brought back a whole lot of memories.  Michael and I once belonged to an historical society that did early medieval to late renaissance re-enactment.  A period feast was almost always a feature of their events and there were many accomplished cooks with a great interest in researching and redacting period recipes for their menus.  Apicus Chicken is one of these recipes.  It is a Roman recipe from a period cookbook written by Marcus Gavius Apicius.  This is a pretty close translation of the original recipe:

Ingredients
1 fresh chicken
100 ml oil
200 ml liquamen
1 branch of leek
fresh dill, saturei, coriander, and pepper to taste
defrutum

Directions
Start to fry the chicken and season with a mixture of liquamen and oil, together with bunches of dill, leek, saturei, and coriander.  Then cook in the oven.  When the chicken is done, moisten a plate with defrutum, put chicken on it, sprinkle pepper on it , and serve.

I needed to turn this recipe into something everybody could use.

Spice Rack Challenge March: Cardamom

This month's challenge is Cardamom.  Definitely an underused spice in my arsenal.

whole pods

cracked pods and whole seeds

pods removed (mostly)

It's defined as "A spice (whole pods, seeds, or ground).  Seeds are in pods the size of a cranberry, inside of a white or green pod.  Member of the ginger family.  Spicy-sweet pungent aroma, expensive.  Uses: cakes, curries, cookies, fruits, Indian recipes, Scandinavian bread."  ( http://www.abigslice.com/herbsspices.html ).  It's also common in Middle Eastern and Greek cookery as well.