When one thinks of smoked meat, pork tends to be the first thing that comes to mind. Unless you're from Texas, where beef, it's what's for dinner. But what about chicken? Low and slow, the BBQ mantra, seems overkill when dealing with humble poultry. I wanted the flavor and succulence of smoked meat, but I wanted it fast and easy so a chicken experiment seemed in order.
I made two foil packets heavy with hickory wood chips and poked a few holes in the top. I set them on top of the grates at opposite ends of the grill. I lit all four burners and let the grill heat up to 500 degrees. I prepared the chicken simply, just a whole roaster, rinsed and dried, sprinkled with salt and placed in a tin pan. By now the wood packets were smoking nicely. I turned off the two center burners and placed the chicken between the wood packets and quickly closed the cover, as not to let out too much of the heat and precious hickory smoke. The temperature hovered around 400 degrees and I set the timer for one hour and fifteen minutes.
It was hard not to peek as we poured a glass of wine and sat and set about enjoying the aroma of the hickory smoke as it filled the air. When it was time, we brought the chicken in and set in on a carving board to rest, it was a lovely golden brown and smelled amazing. The meat was perfectly cooked with a lovely pink smoke ring that dipped down into the top layers of the tender and juicy flesh. The joints came apart very easily and the meat pulled away from the bone in a most satisfying way. The flavor and texture was spot on, exactly what I was looking for. All the rich, smoky flavor and meaty yet melt in the mouth texture but without all the time and effort. Sublime.
Laurin said I should start a food blog. I thought that was a great compliment. I love talking about food and getting in the kitchen and tinkering with new recipes. I was recently in hospital for 6 days having had emergency surgery and while I was there I was on a clear liquid diet. I lost 7 pounds, but other than that lovely bonus, not being able to enjoy food is one of the worst tortures about being confined to a hospital room.
I have low potassium so we bought more bananas than I could eat or make smoothies with on our supermarket stock up when I was discharged on Thursday. A pile of overripe bananas just beg to be made into a succulent banana cake. I have a favorite banana bread recipe, but I decided to jazz it up a bit.
Cranberry Walnut Vanilla Spiced Banana Cake
Basic Banana Bread:
2 cups AP flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs beaten
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I mixed dark and light)
2-3 cups mashed overripe bananas
Additions:
1 tablespoon best quality vanilla extract
1 package cranberry walnut snack mix from Trader Joes (about 1 cup) tossed in 1 teaspoon flour
1 teaspoon best quality ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Whisk together flour, soda, salt and spices. Cream together brown sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat egg and with vanilla and mix into the butter and sugar mixture. Stir in bananas. Mix into dry ingredients to moisten and then stir in the cranberry and walnuts. Pour into a prepared round cake or loaf pan. Bake cake pan for 45 minutes at 350 or loaf pan for 60-65 minutes. Let cool if you can stand the wait and then devour.
I sampled Anaconda, posted my review and then went back and read the other reviews that had been posted as well as the comments in "Anyone Tried It?"
I realize that noses and skin chemistry can be vastly different but I was surprised to see so many comparisons to Sugar Skull, but I didn't find the two scents to be similar beyond their both being sweet scents.
I decided to do a side by side to see if my nose was playing tricks on me. I applied the Anaconda to my left wrist and the same amount of SS'04 to my right.
Wet on skin~
Anaconda is a rich, smoky brown sugar bruleé scent.
SS'04 is screamingly sweet but a very bright sweetness like sticking one's nose into a newly opened bag of white granulated sugar.
Dry down~
Anaconda begins to sweeten up even more, brown sugar bubbling away in a hot sauté pan and then adding Snake Oil to the molten sweet mixture. This scent stays close to the body and the longer it's on my skin, some musky earthiness starts to develop.
SS'04 also intensifies in sweetness but on a bright, white scale. Also I can start to smell the candied fruits lending a lovely purple hue to this stunner. This baby has tons of throw and seems to be gaining power the longer it dries on my skin. This scent doesn't morph much from the wet stage as it dries down.
A few hours later~
Anaconda morphed into a sweet tobacco scent mingling with hints of the original Snake Oil. Much of the sweetness has gone leaving a soft smoky, almost musky scent. Still deep, still sexy.
SS'04 is still throwing tons of white sweetness and candied fruits but now there is the slightest burnt edge peeking out. But this is white sugar bruleé.
This morning~
I can still smell the Sugar Skull's faint fruity sweetness with a touch of the burnt sugar edge. Anaconda was just a lovely memory even by bedtime.
Analysis of experiment~
Even though I got a touch of the burnt sugar edge in Sugar Skull after the long dry down, these scents are still completely different to my nose. The tobacco, brown sugar and Snake Oil components vs. the white sugar and fruits make these scents on the opposite ends of the scent-spectrum. One being bright white and then turning into an almost glowing purple scent, the other being rich golden brown with burnt black edges.
I would say that the brown sugar aspect of Anaconda is much more similar to the brown sugar goodness in Monster Bait: Underpants.
I enjoyed this experiment. If you have both scents available to you, try it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Really looking forward to the Meet Up here next weekend. I did some sorting out downstairs so that my cleaning later in the week will be a breeze. Rob and I also did some yard work. We raked and bags about a billion leaves, we knew what we were getting into when we bought the place. That's the reason she's called Shady Dame.
I wish I had the week off so I didn't have to wait until Thursday to get back to Trader Joe's. I'll get all the bits for the party recipes as well as the stuff to prepare for our weekend meals. It is going to be such fun having TJ's nearby, especially with the holidays rushing in.
