Mojo Chicken, Corned Beef, and Leftovers

An interesting combination of foods this week.  Hope you like them.  

Mojo Pulled Chicken Dinner

This is a really good "taste of the islands" kinda dish.  If you can't find Mojo (that's mo-hoe not mo-joe) sauce locally, you can easily make your own (see below)

8 skinless, bone-in Chicken Thighs

1 ea 20 oz bottle Mojo Sauce (I like Badia tm brand) -- or make your own (see below)

1 cup Jasmine Rice

1 Sazon Tropical packet (Badia tm) or a teaspoon of a Latin seasoning blend plus 1/4 tsp Turmeric

Marinate the chicken in the mojo sauce for at least 6 hours, overnight if you can. Then transfer chicken and sauce to a slow cooker or to an oven proof dish. If using the oven, bake the saucy chicken for at least an hour, until it is shred-able. It's hard to overcook thighs, so more cooking is better. I did mine in our Saladmaster tm 12" electric skillet set to 325F.

When the chicken is done, save the sauce, and pull the meat off of the bones, discarding bones and gristle. Add some of the sauce back into the bowl of shredded meat and give it a toss.

I served the Mojo Chicken with Aroz Amarillo made with a Sazon Tropical packet and Jasmine rice, and a helping of frozen peas and carrots. There are other Yellow Rice packets out there (Vigo tm Brand comes immediately to mind) that can be doctored with a bit of minced red bell pepper if you like.

This meal is between 300 and 400 calories.

Make Your Own Mojo Sauce (from Three Guys From Miami tm):

3 heads garlic

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

1 1/2 cups sour orange juice (In a pinch, use two parts orange to one part lemon and one part lime)

1 cup minced onion

2 teaspoons oregano

1 cup good olive oil, but not EVOO

Mash the garlic, salt, and peppercorns into a paste, using a mortar and pestle (if you're traditional) or a food processor. Stir in the sour orange juice, onion, and oregano. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes or longer.

In a saucepan, heat olive oil to medium hot (~220 F) and remove from heat. Carefully whisk in the garlic-orange juice mixture until well blended.

My Wild non-Irish Dinner

Truth be told, this is not traditional Irish fare. If anything, this would have been an English-overlord-in-Ireland kind of meal. The native Irish mostly couldn't afford beef (or meat for that matter) even corned (pickled) beef.

Still and all it makes a tasty meal. There are two cuts of corned beef brisket -- the flat, and the point. I chose the point as it is usually better marbled and comes out really tender.

This started as a 3 lb corned beef brisket.

The most important part is to not overcook the cabbage as so many generations of Americans have done. It does not need boiling or simmering for even an hour! I steamed the quartered cabbage for 12 minutes to keep the flavor, color and nutrients. Or boil it for about the 8-10 minutes total.

The combination of "smashed" potatoes and turnips -- a.k.a Tatties and Neeps -- gives an ordinarily bland potato dish a nice kick of flavor. Just add a bit of black pepper after boiling the chunk-cut pieces to fork tender.

Serves 3

3 lb Corned Beef

1 head Cabbage, quartered thru the stem, leave the stem butt to hold the leaves together during cooking

2 Red Potatoes, quartered or eighthed

1 Turnip, quartered or eighthed

Black Pepper

In a crockpot or electric skillet cook the corned beef, with the included spice packet, about an hour per pound. In the last half hour of cooking, bring the potato/turnip water to a boil and cook them about 15-20 minutes, until fork tender. At about the same time start the water to steam or boil the cabbage.

Lay the corned beef out to rest a few minutes before slicing against the grain to ensure tender bites. You're not going to have anywhere near 3 pounds of meat from a 3 pound brisket. Roughly smash the potatoes and turnips and dust with black pepper. Cut the butts off the cabbage as you plate it.

I've not done it, but "they" say that making your own corned beef is easy. Next time I see a sale on beef brisket, I'm going to try Alton Brown's recipe for myself. His sure looks a lot better than the $4+ per pound packaged corned beef I looked at (and bought) in the megamart the other day:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/corned-beef-recipe.html

Mango Brulee Dessert

serves 4

2 Mangos

4 tsp Brown Sugar

1/2 tsp powdered Ginger and Cinnamon

1/4 tsp fresh ground Nutmeg or Allspice

1 Lime cut into wedges

Preheat the broiler.

Slice 'fillets' off the sides of mangos. Leave the skin on each fillet. Make diamond slashes in the surfaces. Dust each fillet with a bit of ground ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. Sprinkle a teaspoon of brown sugar over each mango filet. Optionally then drizzle each one with 1 teaspoon rum.

Set mango halves on a broiler pan or baking sheet, propping with wrinkles of tinfoil to keep them flat. Broil until tops are light golden, 5 to 7 minutes. Serve with lime wedges.

Leftovers

We love leftovers. You get some really interesting flavor combinations! With the leftover Tatties & Neeps, I made Bubble & Squeak for Sally, and Corned Beef Hash for myself. To each plate I added a serving of the leftover Mojo Chicken for a complete dinner. The tangy-ness of the chicken went well with the richness of the other two dishes.

Bubble & Squeak

This is a classic Brit 'leftover' made from cooked potatoes and cabbage, and any other bits of veg. To both of my dishes I added a small handful of thawed frozen peas & carrots for color and flavor.

Roughly chop and mash everything together into a sort of patty, and fry in some oil, letting the patty almost burn on the bottom before flipping and flattening. Repeat until you get enough browned bits.

Corned Beef Hash

At least one ancestor of Corned Beef Hash is Bubble and Squeak (which can include bits of minced meat). The origins of both dishes dates to the food rationing of WWII and the postwar years in Britain. Cans of corned beef and roast beef were imported from Argentina and Australia. Either version of canned beef was preferred by many to highly salted canned ham (Spam tm and its imitators).