The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 4

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 4

Mixed Nuts

This is one of my newer favorite Christmas movies. My sister and I discovered it in a random pile of cheap dvds at an office store years ago and bought it to try it out and immediately fell in love with it. What's not to love about Madeline Kahn, Steve Martin, Liev Schrieber, and Rita Wilson in a Nora Ephron film? It's absolutely bonkers and absolutely hilarious.

One of the scenes in the movie revolves around the group eating Chinese food, and that's what inspired tonight's meal.

I picked three recipes and immediately realized it was too much food and pared it down to two: egg drop soup, and Chinese-style barbecued chicken. Both are old recipes without sources so I will write them out here. Chinese food can be very labor-intensive and time-consuming and I'm excited that these two were not that. They were super easy! First up:

Egg Drop Soup

4 cups chicken broth

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. dry sherry

1 Tbsp. cold water

1 Tbsp. cornstarch

2 eggs, well-beaten

2 green onions, bias cut

2 tsp. sesame oil

1.) Combine broth, soy sauce, and sherry in large saucepan; bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low; simmer 2 minutes.

2.) Stir water into cornstarch in small bowl; mix well. Stir mixture into soup; simmer 2-3 minutes or until slightly thickened.

3.) Stirring constantly in one direction, slowly add beaten eggs to soup in thin stream. Stir in green onions. Remove from heat; stir in sesame oil. Serve immediately.

4 servings

I used frozen homemade chicken stock and honestly because I didn't label it, it might have been turkey stock, but it doesn't really matter, the flavors added cover it up. You could even use vegetable stock if you're vegetarian who eats eggs. This isn't completely thawed in this shot.

Here are the rest of the elements for the soup. It's very simple.

My system is acting up so I can't rotate photos tonight for some reason so this is an odd angle, but here is the soup after you stir in the soy sauce. Most egg drop soup I've had in restaurants is the color of the chicken broth so this definitely looked different to me, but the flavor was really good.

Here is the soup after you add the egg and stir it well. It basically cooks as soon as it hits the broth, so you don't have to worry about raw eggs, if that bothers you.

And the final product. I topped it with the green onion instead of stirring it in, and did a few drops of sesame oil.

This recipe was really tasty! It's amazing how filling something a simple as broth and eggs is, but I had this as an appetizer and had planned on making potstickers(frozen) to go with all this but found it was enough to skip them. This has made me curious to try all the other egg drop soup recipes I have because it was super easy and fast to make this. We'll see how this reheats tomorrow because I made a half batch of this recipe and ate half tonight.

My entree tonight was this:

Chinese-Style Barbecued Chicken

1(2 1/2lb) chicken, quartered

1 Tbsp. peanut oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbsp. dry sherry

2 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 tsp. honey

Dash cayenne pepper

1.) Rinse chicken pieces and pat dry. In a medium bowl, combine oil, garlic, sherry, vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and cayenne. Stir to mix well. Add chicken pieces and turn to coat. Marinate at room temperature, turning once or twice, 30-60 minutes.

2.) Prepare a medium-hot fire in a grill or preheat broiler. Set chicken about 6" from heat and grill or broil, turning and basting with marinade every 10 minutes, until browned outside and white to the bone but still moist, about 25 minutes.

4 Servings

Here is the chicken marinating. I used hindquarters instead of a whole chicken because I didn't need 4 servings, just 2.

Post-marinating, ready to go into the oven. I didn't do what the recipe says. I baked them in the oven, turning once, cooking about 40 minutes before putting them under the broiler. I also didn't have rice wine vinegar so I used a combo of rice vinegar and white wine instead.

Here is out of the oven, pre-broiling.

Action shot in the broiler!

And post-broiler. It looks burned but it's not, it just gets really dark. The bigger piece ended up needing about 10 more minutes in the oven so we ate in shifts.

Again, I can't rotate this shot, but here's the final product. We made this with Trader Joe's vegetable fried rice on the side which is tasty and really easy to make.

The chicken we perfectly cooked and the skin was very crispy. I felt that it wasn't very flavorful, however. I think it needs to marinate longer than an hour. In the future I'd probably marinate it all day in the fridge. And I should have added a few more shakes of the cayenne pepper shaker...!

Like I said, I was impressed with how quickly this all came together. It was relatively hands-off except for stirring the soup. I really loved the soup and can't wait to make it again some day!

If you've never seen Mixed Nuts, you definitely need to eat Chinese food when you watch it. Just make sure not to forget the fortune cookies, like I did!