I’ve really come to like cooking these protein specific dinners. So far we’ve had a pork meal, a seafood meal and now chicken. Not only does it help me focus, it also makes me feel like an Iron Chef. Take note, that’s a link to the Japanese version, the one that my brother and I grew up watching on KTSF, the cheesy foreign, captioned, pre-dubbed version. Ok so yeah, I won’t be making fish head ice cream any time soon (or will I . . .) but Iron Chef made food dramatic and cuh-raaaaay-zee (at least to our impressionable young minds).

So anyways, back to Battle Chicken. This was an easy menu to develop. We just picked all of our favorite chicken dishes and adjusted them a bit to fit The Wooden Table. I had to do a chicken salad. First, I brined then roasted the bird,and harvested and diced the breast. I mixed in some jicama for crunch, hit it with some whole grain mustard, topped it with a celery / green apple froth an candied pecans, served with an olive loaf and sent it on its way.

And of course, of cooourse we had to do an arroz caldo, a soul nourishing chicken flavored rice porridge. We used Arborio rice, instead of the beloved Cal Rose (Califooorniiaaaaa). We flavored the risotto arroz caldo style, with chicken stock and copious amounts of ginger (just the way mom made it). We topped it with a chicken roulade stuffed with thyme and butter, some micro-greenery tossed in lemon and cracked black, and a fried egg for good measure. We paired it with Ahmad – Back in the day (J-squared remix)