Phoenix Talons, Drunken Style

The Cat loves the taste of drunken chicken.  She likes the gelatin more than the actual chicken.  It’s hard to make drunken chicken in this house, the gelatin usually gets eaten up before the chicken does.

In one of those Reese’s moments, since The Cat likes both chicken feet and the gelatin from drunken chicken, I wondered if I could make chicken feet (phoenix talons) in the drunken chicken style.  This way, the gelatin and solids (chicken feet), could be eaten together.

There are two ways of cooking the chicken, steaming or simmering.  I chose the simmer method which resulted in chicken (phoenix?) stock.  Here’s a recipe that basically describes the process: http://rasamalaysia.com/drunken-chicken/.  The difference between chicken and chicken feet is that I simmered the feet for over five hours instead of for ten minutes.  After refrigerating overnight, the stock/gelatin looked like this:

Chicken (Phoenix?) Gelatin Stock

It looks a little gross right now, but when I added Shanghai cabbage, black fungus, and shiitake mushrooms, it looked like this.

Phoenix Soup with Fungus and Cabbage

The phoenix talons, drunken style ended up looking like this.

Phoenix Talons, Drunken Style

The Cat liked it so much, she cleaned the plate (we didn’t have to wash this one), just kidding. 😉  She rated this dish as four paws.

The Cat preferred this dish over regular drunken chicken.

Sometimes, Reese’s moments turns out to be a good thing.

The use of meat gelatins is not exclusive to the Chinese.  See Wikipedia discussion on aspic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic.

Enjoy.

The Mouse