A Life in Food
A little bit sweet, with garlic and ginger, and as spicy you’d like it, this fragrant, saucy chicken dish is made in a slow cooker. It’s super simple and requires very little hands-on time. Serve over rice with a generous squeeze of fresh lime juice.
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Let me say that I think we should appreciate our Mom’s on more than just one day a year… It is an incredibly important job that is sometimes thankless. Through terrible two’s and rebellious teenage years, through laughter and tears, joy and fear… you are there for it all.
So, to every Mom out there: Happy Mother’s Day today and everyday for all that you do!
Now that I’ve earned my birthday and Christmas presents for next year, let’s get to it.
This weekend is Mother’s Day and the Internet, food magazines, morning shows, cooking shows, even the evening news is filling the space between our ears with recipes to make for Mom…
Most of them even look really good! But here’s the problem: MOM isn’t the one making them! (I hope)!
More than a few of the recipes featured have ingredient lists long enough to make even the average home cook sweat under the collar, much less someone who rarely ventures into that mystical space from where food magically appears.
Some of you out there are lucky enough to live with people who actually know: A. where the kitchen is located in your home and 2) how to find things in this mysterious room. Then, there are those of you who live with people that open the fridge door, stand there staring at it’s insides and then ask you “what is there to eat?”.
Well, even THOSE people can handle this recipe.
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One of my favorite treats when I was young was homemade caramel corn. Now let me tell you, this was a rare treat indeed. I nearly had to beg with tear-filled eyes to get it because making it left a sink full of dirty dishes and a bit of a mess in the kitchen.
My grandmother would would make the popcorn on top of the stove, as we didn’t have a microwave then, and then she would make the caramel and drizzle it on top of the popcorn and mix it up as fast as possible before all hardened.
There is nothing like it. The caramel corn you buy at the grocery store can’t even come close to homemade. There are pieces that are just barely kissed with caramel, then there are other pieces that are fully enrobed in caramel… nothing perfect and homogeneous about Grandma’s caramel corn and that is part of what made it so good.
I wanted to put a twist on this most delicious treat and elevate it to something you could actually serve to guests (not that I wouldn’t put out a big trough of caramel corn, but you know what I mean).
Instead of making a traditional dulce de leche, I know there is a “cheat” method which simply involves simmering the can with a few holes poked through the top. I must be honest, this never appealed to me.
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