le blog de tranny

It’s a rewarding feeling to realize that two of the dishes I love to order while eating out are easy to replicate at home. I love these low brow bite-sized beauties!

Wonton Noodle Soup
Making wontons is ridiculously easy if you have the wrappers, which I think most grocery stores do. I followed Steamy Kitchen’s recipe with few adaptations (I eyeballed it mostly). For 4 people, you need:

1/2 lb ground pork
2 stalks green onion, minced, plus extra for garnish
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp cornstarch
pinch of sugar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
wonton wrappers at room temperature, covered with a damp towel to prevent them from drying out
cornstarch slurry = 1 tbsp cornstarch + 1/4 cup water (cornstarch slurry)
a carton or two of chicken broth (and maybe some water and soy sauce)
4 or 5 bok choy
chili garlic sauce

Make the wonton filling: combine first 7 ingredients in a bowl. You don’t want the mixture to be so wet that it won’t stick together. Using chopsticks if possible, put a few teaspoons of the filling in the center of the wonton wrapper. (Don’t get too greedy — if you overstuff the wontons they’ll break apart.) Brush all edges of the wrapper with the cornstarch slurry and then fold in half diagonally, pressing down the edges to seal. Brush slurry on one of the triangle base edges and then bring the two triangle base edges together. Does that make sense?

Keep the wontons covered with a damp paper towel as you make them so they don’t dry out.

Bring the chicken broth to a boil. Do the wontons first. Boil them, in batches, so as not to overcrowd the pot. They should be done when they float to the top (the meat in the middle cooks pretty quickly, but test one if you’re unsure). Once you’ve cooked and removed all the wontons, cook the bok choy then the noodles in the same pot. Add water (and a bit of soy sauce to taste) to the broth as it boils down to keep the water level high enough. Once you’ve cooked everything, assemble your bowls then adjust the flavor of the broth with water, soy sauce and chili garlic sauce. I supplemented the chicken broth with vegetable broth actually because that’s what I had on hand at the time. It was fiiine.

Popcorn Chicken
Well it was girlz night and my oil thermometer had just come in the mail so I decided to celebrate by making some popcorn chicken. The great thing about popcorn chicken (other than it maximizing the proportion of delicious fried outer layer you get in each bite) is that it requires less oil (which can be quite spensies — I used canola) than regular fried chicken. The recipe I’m posting here is a hybrid of Paula Deen’s recipe and this recipe I found on this website purporting to have all the legit KFC recipes. This is really my recipe though so go me, because it was delicious.

You need:
1 cup of hot sauce (preferably Frank’s Red Hot!)
1 cup of flour
2 cups of panko crumbs
salt and pepper
garlic powder
onion powder
1/3 cup of milk (I used 2%)
2 eggs
4 chicken breasts

This fed four hungry ladies with enough leftovers for us each to bring home a little sampler to our manz.

- Cover the chicken breasts with some wax paper and pound them to a uniform thickness (I used a small frying pan to do this; it was kind of intense). Cut them into bite-sized pieces. Season them liberally with garlic powder, onion powder and s&p on both sides.
- Make the wet mixture: beat the eggs and add the milk and hot sauce. Mix well.
- Make the dry mixture: combine the panko and flour in a separate bowl.
- Fill a heavy-bottomed pot with frying oil until it’s about half an inch deep. The chicken doesn’t have to be fully submerged, maybe three quarters of the way. Heat the oil until it reaches about 350 degrees F. Dip each chicken morsel in the wet mixture then the dry, so that it’s covered on all sides with a good amount of the bread crumb/flour mixture. Fry the chicken in batches, turning if necessary, until it’s golden brown. Keeping the oil at the right temperature is kind of tricky if you’re just using an oil thermometer. You kind of have to fiddle with the temperature nob on the stove a lot. Try and keep the oil temperature between 330 and 370, because if it surpasses the lower bound it won’t really fry properly and if it hits above 375 it will burn.

My new toy — only $20 on Amazon! I’m gonna olive oil poach some shit.

Jealous of our monster-sized bottle of Frank’s?

Nina made a delicious Bakesale Betty’s style coleslaw with cabbage, cilantro, red onion, jalapenos, red wine vinegar, dijon and a little bit of Greek yogurt. Jane made some yummerz sage biscuits using a recipe from Epicurious.

I made a lot of chicken.

I also made some chocolate pudding for dessert that no one ate besides me and Caroline because I thought it would be funny and it only cost a dollar. At least we had some fresh whipped cream to go with it!