Dan Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart died yesterday. He was one of those musicians that I always thought I should like more than I actually did. (Frank Zappa and Radiohead also fall into this category - go on, throw stones at me.) But when you're having a great day, you don't think "God damn! I should totally listen to some Trout Mask Replica RIGHT NOW!"
Or at least I don't.
That said, he influenced a lot of musicians I have much love for, Tom Waits and PJ Harvey among them. So Cap't Beefy, I salute you and hope your tripping the light fantastic in the great hereafter as we speak.
(I do have to admit, I like him a lot more after finding out how he got his nickname: Frank Zappa gave it to him when they met in school, saying he seemed to have a beef in his heart against the world - my kinda guy. And this song is pretty good laying around the house on a rainy Saturday music.)
I suppose I should have made something beefy to honor the late, great Captain, but I had already planned to make Chao Ga (Vietnamese chicken porridge), and I figured a chicken heart is better than no heart at all.
So here's where I tell you I used to be a vegetarian. For 12 years. That's right, from 13 to 25, I did not eat of the flesh. Why? Because I was an ornery teenager and it pissed my parents off - at first. Then it just was. Until it wasn't. But that's a story for another time.
Even though I have been delighting in my omnivorous ways for 6 years now, I still don't eat much meat and I don't like handling raw meat. Especially chicken. It's just so gaaaaaah. But one of my favorite pastimes at work is to look at food pictures until I see something so delicious looking I think that has to be in my belly.
And so it was with Chao Ga, which is total comfort food (yes I'm still on my comfort food kick). It's chicken soup but better. Ginger and peppers and fish sauce, oh my! And a raw chicken. Just look at it:
Yeah, awesome. Awesomely terrifying. (I once read that chickens were the closest living relatives to T. Rexes, but I'm not sure if that's true or not. It definitely explains the primal need to drop the sucker when I picked it up.) And then I had to pick all the meat off the bones:
See the neck sticking out? Wanna know what's behind the neck? The heart, and all the other organs.
I did it though:
Mmmm, bones. Which I saved and am planning on making stock out of. Let me take this moment to explain this was one expensive chicken. I have guilt over eating animals after not doing it for so many years. So when I buy meat I buy the organic, free range, grain fed, sung to, and loved meat.
The recipe came together nicely and is delicious.
Which is a good thing, because there's a ton of it left. Seriously, check it out:
Okay, it's hard to get a good perspective from that angle, but really, that pot is big enough to submerge a 5 lb. chicken in and it's FULL.
So anyone needing some comfort, of the chicken variety, should totally come by my place.
The recipe I used can be found at Kitchen Runway.
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