Yesterday for dinner, I decided to make… PARMESAN CHICKEN BURRITO!
Truth to be told, I didn’t know it was going to be called that.
I had in my mind a boneless chicken dish soaked in tomato sauce and eaten with tortilla bread.
It’s quite a big deal for me because I’ve never cooked chicken before.
As in, whole pieces of chicken. La carne!. Minced meat doesn’t count.

As they say, every epic journey begins with a visit to the nearby hypermarket.

First, the chicken. I bought chicken keel because it’s the part with the least bones.
I remember years ago when my sister told me to buy her some chicken.
“Which part of the chicken??” I asked.
“Chicken keel, the chicken keel!”
“Huh what? WTF is chicken keel? Is it ribs? Is it thigh? WHAT???”
“…. KEEL… K-E-E-L! It will be written there lah, go look for it.”

Next, the tomato sauce. Ohai Prego, saviour of inept cooks, aiding culinary noobs since 1981.
Why go through all the headache and trouble of making your own tomato sauce…
when Giant sells a large Prego ready-made bottle for less than RM 10?

Then tortilla bread. Which is, tortilla bread.
Not much introduction. It was on the shelf and I grabbed two.

Spices! I already had in my limited stash: black pepper, basil and oregano.
In the photo, they’re sitting on top of a box of frozen chicken stock.
For that, you’ll need a sister like mine, who makes lots of good (and expensive) chicken stock.
She then freezes them, to be used little by little whenever the occasion calls for it.

Condiments! Lots of chopped garlic, onions and dried red chilli.
I like lots of garlic and onions with everything I cook.
Dried red chilli gives it that extra kick. That was just half of what I used.

Cheese! Two slices of cheddar, to be added to the sauce when it’s simmering.
Premium bacon! Because I had lots of leftover and bacon makes everything nicer.

1: Heat up a deep frying pan (or flat-bottomed wok or whatever suits your fancy). Add some olive oil. How much olive oil? I don’t know, enough to cook the chopped garlic that you’d be putting in next.

2: Add the chopped onions and let it cook for a while. Like, 8 or 10 hippopotamus.

3: Add the red chilli. Make sure that you’d remove the seeds, else you’d camp on the throne.

4: Fry fry fry and it smells really great. Don’t bluff you one. Then dump all of the chicken into the pan. Stir well, make sure that your condiments cover all chicken slices. At some point, feel free to pour in some chicken stock, or not. Up to you. I don’t know if it actually made a difference, but it made me feel better :D

1: Heat up another frying pan and fry the bacon. If you cook it together with the chicken, not so nice lah because it may not turn out as well. I bought this frying pan from IKEA for less than RM13. It has served me well and cooked many a bacon. Worthy investment. Once the bacon is properly cooked, let it chill for a while, then chop it into little pieces. Word of warning: use tongs and not thy fingers to pick up the bacon pieces. The oil is still hot and may fry your skin and flesh. I speak from painful, painful experience.

2: Once the chicken is browned (you can tell when it looks more like chicken you’d eat than its raw state), add some of the marvellous ready-made Prego pasta sauce, about a third of it will do. Stir everything well, make sure the sauce is spread out evenly.

3: Add more of the pasta sauce + some water. Stir stir stir. Dump in the spices. Honestly I couldn’t taste the spices because I put in a lot of chilli and the taste was quite overpowering But now I can say that I’ve cooked something where I added in spices such as basil and oregano, can you??? Heh.

4: Add the rest of the sauce + more water. Stir. Add the bacon bits + its own oil that it was cooked in. For every drop you waste, Zeus creates another Justin Bieber. It’s true. Then look at the big pot of chicken drowning in tomato sauce and realise in belated horror that you’ve cooked enough for 6 people when you’re only 2. I think this ‘unable to calculate’ thing stretches beyond figures…

Anyway, let the whole pot simmer for a while. I dunno, 5 mins? Was never really good with time. Then blast the shit out of the stove (full heat) for about a minute. Again I’m not sure why but like I’ve said before, it makes me feel better, so there.

Oh, you also need shredded cheese to go with your burrito. I think the norm is shredded cheddar, but I have a heck lot of parmesan in my fridge that I’ve no idea what to do with them. Plus I’m not going to pay good money for shredded cheddar when I have shredded parmesan. It’s all cheese, they will eventually taste the same… I think.

On an unrelated note, I need to find use for grated parmesan, all 250g of it. And 10g cheese powder. I have no idea why I bought it, but it was cheap and now I do not know what to do with it. Spread it out in the wind like dandelions?

Finally you’re done! Microwave the life out of your tortilla bread for 30 seconds, then serve everything in front of the telly that’s playing LOTR: Return of The King. I think this was the part where they were in Gondor, preparing for Sauron’s attack from Mordor. Yes, I know the movie is not Mexican ala burrito but I am not a thematic eater. That, and I do not know how to make lembas.

How to eat the fantastic Parmesan chicken burrito, you ask? Easy like Britney!

1: Place desired amount of chicken + sauce onto a piece of tortilla bread. Sprinkle cheese.
2: Fold the bottom to cup the filling, then fold the left.
3: Then fold the right and waheyy!!! it’s like a pocket!
4: Bring it closer to your mouth and om nom nom nom nom!

Comprender? Buen provecho! Quiero ver tus tetas!
Heheheheh, not really.

Today is Dong Zhi, aka Winter Solstice Festival. It is a time of Chinese get-togetherness/ family reunion, something about unity and harmony and other such nilai-nilai murni yang dipentingkan oleh bangsa Cina. Check out the Wikipedia entry for more information.

Apparently this festival is more important than Chinese New Year. I’m unsure of the reason, but my sister is doing a good job of making sure that we try to get together for Dong Zhi. A couple of years ago I made other plans on this date and my sister gave me a hard time about it. Since then I try to make sure that I don’t do anything else on Dong Zhi other than to be with my family <3

Last night after dinner, we went back to my sister's to make tang yuan, glutinous rice balls. It is a dessert traditionally consumed on Dong Zhi; again the sticky balls and sweet soup adds on meaning to the family unity bit. I’m glad my Mom gave us this bit of tradition as kids, we had so much fun back then making them.

I think she was trying to pass on the tradition for Ryan the Nephew, but judging from last night, it didn’t seem that he was very interested. Oh well, he will learn, heh! She ended up making most of the glutinous rice balls because I wasn’t very good at it.

As you can see from the list of ingredients, you’ll need glutinous rice flour that is mixed with a bit of water. They are then rolled into little balls and cooked in plain water, then served in sweet syrup. You can add fillings to the rice balls; we had red bean paste (my favourite!), lotus seed paste and fragrant sweet peanuts.

Mom making tang yuan while Dad does what he does best – sitting there :P

The sweet soup to go with the tang yuan was made from water, rock sugar, pandan leaves, red dates and lots of ginger. Yummilicious!

A bowl of tang yuan

Ryan the Nephew didn’t want to eat the tang yuan. I told him that all Chinese people eat tang yuan and he may not be Chinese if he didn’t eat it! Hehehehe.. Then I made him go ask his Mom and Dad if he was really Chinese. You should have a nephew like Ryan too, it’s so fun!

In the end his Dad made him eat one or two tang yuan just for the festival. He wasn’t too happy about it, heh.

That’s my eldest sister -_-” because I stopped her to take a photo just as she was about to dig in.
And that’s Ryan swallowing the tang yuan before he rushed into the kitchen to get water to wash it down.
Ahh.. one day he’ll learn…!