Sticky Kicking Chicken, Watermelon Radish Salad and Crunchy Noodles

Meal 47 - June 1st - Sticky Kicking Chicken, Watermelon Radish Salad and Crunchy Noodles

Although I would never claim to be any kind of technological pioneer, I must say that I was surprised with the number of "cook your way through a cook book" type blogs that exist on the internet. Probably the most famous, which I have only discovered since starting this challenge, is that belonging to Julie Powell. She apparently cooked her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 2002. The blog does not appear to exist any more, but has been made famous by the movie "Julie and Julia". I haven't seen the movie but since learning of it I have been pondering various things. How, for instance, did she manage to eat all 524 dishes that she cooked? Was she eating Beef Bourguignon for breakfast? Did she have someone to do her washing up after her? Who will play me in a movie when Hollywood come calling?




All important questions, but while Julie had to contend with cooking an average of 1.44 dishes per day, I'm faced with a measly 0.33, and so if I have a month where I happen to cook only 7 dishes, it's not the end of the end of the world. I resolved to kick start my challenge this weekend with this Sticky Kicking Chicken. The chicken element looked rather appealing, but I was a little dubious of a salad containing watermelon, noodles, radishes and a dressing which turned out to be disturbingly brown.

I didn't make a great start. The chicken went into the pan without too much drama, but tossing noodles in a frying pan is surprisingly difficult. Half of them ended up on the floor for Lolz to clean up later. After this though it was all fairly plain sailing. The chicken was cooked before I finished with the salad, but the extra time it got in the pan seemed to achieve a better colour.

It turned out to be a real hit. The chicken was sweet and spicy, and thigh meat is so much more tasty than breast. The salad worked really well too. - a nice combination of sweet and peppery with a good hit of herbs. Aware of how over-citrussy some previous salad dressings have been, I reduced the amount of lime juice, and the end result was a complete contrast to it's murky brown appearance and nicely complemented the different flavours.

Lolz gave the dish 9/10. Difficulty rating 3/10.