Death by Ate My

Note: I unwittingly made this photo series during dinner to celebrate my older sister, Ditchie's passing the Bar exams in April 2005, almost 3 years ago. When I looked at the pictures I took with my mobile phone, this story popped out because of 2 things: 1) Daddy looked positively dead in one photo, and 2) my eldest sister, Ate My, looked like she had something to do with Daddy's so called death. I suppose it's a bit morbid, some might say even disrespectful of my dad. But he loved it when I showed the series to him. I made a comic in my Macbook but the software I used doesn't translate to PC. So I just made a low-tech version to finally share my little gem of morbid serendipity to anyone who likes some black comedy with their bogchi. Dead straight.

Chicken and Potatoes

My dad brought a cool titanium pot when he came home from the States. It's a pretty thing, and functional too. It takes only a small flame to heat it up so menos gastos sa gas. My dad claims food cooked in it tastes better too. But that's my dad, the infomercial believer, talking. I still think it's the chef factor (but, of course).

Anyway, in my quest to discover healthy but tasty dishes for my poor, bloated tummy, I experimented with a chicken and potatoes recipe that turned out great. Now, I know I always say that the recipes I create in my humble kitchen are awesome. But that's only because it's true, they are awesome. And as an amateur cook, I'm pretty skilled. (And modest too!).

So, again, here's another recipe from the ever expanding menu of Bogchi ni Bochog. Again, amounts are arbitrary. Cooking is an art, not a science. Or, it's an inexact science. Depends on the perspective you take regarding the methodological distinctions between art and science (but that's neither here nor there).

CHICKEN AND POTATOES

Ingredients:
1 chicken, whole or cut into parts
1 cup olive oil
2 medium-sized heads of garlic, minced
1 medium head of garlic, in cloves
1 medium onion, halved
3 medium tomatoes, halved
juice of 4 calamansi
dry basil, crushed pepper flakes, chili powder, salt, pepper, and other spices (all to taste)
6 medium potatoes, quartered

For the gravy: butter, cornstarch, chicken stock, salt and pepper

Procedure:
1. Mix 3/4 of the olive oil, calamansi juice, minced garlic, and all spices. Marinade chicken in the mixture for at least an hour.
2. Coat bottom of pot with the remaining olive oil. Put the chicken along with the potatoes, garlic cloves, onion halves, and tomato halves. (When using whole chicken, stuff the garlic cloves, onions, and tomatoes into the chicken cavity. Place the potatoes along the sides of the pot, surrounding the chicken).
3. Put pot on low heat. Cook for 40 minutes.
4. After cooking, transfer the chicken (which by this time is flaky, the meat falling off the bones) and potatoes onto a serving bowl or dish.
5. To make the chicken stock, get the aromatic veggies along with bones and meat that have stuck to the bottom of the pot and put them in another pot. Pour 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper.
6. To make the gravy, add 2 pats of butter and some cornstarch to the drippings in the pot where the chicken and potatoes cooked. Add the chicken stock and stir. Season with salt and pepper.

A note about the gravy: Uh... it's not healthy. It actually defeats the whole purpose of not frying the chicken and letting the fat and drippings run out. But then, one cannot reasonably expect gravy which, by definition, is made from drippings, to be healthy. Right? So, for health buffs, the chicken and potatoes taste good enough. The gravy is an option. A very heavenly option that spells the difference between joy and ecstasy.

Excuse Me While I B.A.R.F.

Was praying with my family, ie my dad, 2 sisters, and our kasambahay Daya, last Saturday (Mama was out making money, which can be a form of prayer, I suppose, if you do it religiously and ritualistically. Ahem.). While it was not an unusual occurence for mi familia to pray together, it had been a long time since the last group thanksgiving-slash-supplication. We (and by we, I really mean my eldest sister and my dad) just felt like saying thank you to God because we've been feeling especially blessed the past few days. So in a fit of Protestant gratitude, we prayed.

When it was my turn to pray, I felt fake because I hadn't prayed in a long time. A long time. Possibly years. The kind of prayer that requires sincerity, heartfelt gratitude, and more importantly, the acknowledgement of God's control over one's life. I've become too William Ernest Henley, too "Master of My Fate", for that. Nevertheless, I prayed. It was sincere enough but I knew too that I was just regurgitating many of the words. And then... out of nowhere, the words came out of my mouth, "Lord, help each one of us carve our own paths."

That sounded so foreign to me, and a little bit jarring. Not because I've never said or thought about carving one's own path (in fact, that's all I think about) but because I had never ever prayed it. I was brought up to believe that a Christian could never be a Humanist and vice versa because to be humanist is to assert man's inferiority to no one (much less to someone who remains unseen).

And yet there I was praying what can only be called a humanist's prayer. And while I was jarred for a microsecond, I felt good afterwards. Imagine that. One can be a Humanist Christian, I suppose, or a religious academic, one who prays in a scholarly (seemingly secular) manner. Sometimes, I wonder at my Westernized academic orientation with its inordinate fondness for creating artificial dichotomies. As if we don't live our lives in a fairly integrated (and unconscious) manner. (Don't you just love the mind? It's a lean, mean, rationalizing machine. Hehe.)

What does prayer have to do with FOOD? Uh... it's food for the soul?