As much as i love to cook, I never have time to plan weekday lunches. After a frazzled morning at the desk, trying to get just one more bit of work done, I am ravenous by 1 or 2pm. My lame attempts at breakfast (usually Wheatables and fruit gummies) do not suffice.

I storm out of the building in a mad search for anything edible on the street. Unfortunately, other than mediocre $10 sandwiches and faux-Mexican, there is nothing except Safeway and Whole Foods. So I go for supermarket soup. Soup is filling. Soup is warming. Soup is cheap (well, not at Whole Foods). But sooner or later, you get sick of Chunky Chicken Noodle and Spicy Southwestern Bean. I still craved a piping hot bowl of broth-and-protein in the early afternoon, but needed a change.

This week I decided to add a Chinese take-out touch to chicken noodle soup. And make a big batch on Sunday night. While I still like the hot and sour soup I posted two year ago, this one is much, much more filling. And if you are low on Asian pantry staples like canned bamboo shoots and lily buds, you can still make this. I went to the market and bought chicken breast, mushrooms, and scallions, et voilà. 

It took me too long to realize. What was missing in my life was a man. Specifically, a poultry butcher. Yes, I learned to carve a whole chicken in culinary school, but bad student that I am, found it too much of a chore. After graduation I rarely brought home whole chickens to dissect. Instead, at the supermarket, I made a beeline for neatly packaged drumsticks and wings.

In China's wet markets, however, you can select your chicken from the poultry guys, who will pluck, carve, and bag your bird in a matter of minutes. The more expensive chickens at the wet markets are free-range, ol' skool-style, raised by local farmers who let them run around their neighborhoods and feed them grain or table scraps (consider the alternative.) The cheaper birds at the wet markets, not to mention any packaged chicken you'll find at supermarkets, are factory-farmed. These are what Chinese people mean when they refer to "chicken that has no chicken taste."

So, a poultry butcher is a lazy cook's best friend. Especially when it comes to making stupidly easy but insanely addictive dishes like Three Cup Chicken.

I worry a lot these days. Like everyone, I worry about how much longer this recession will last. I worry so many publications will fold that all freelancers will have to panhandle for survival. I worry nobody will pick up a real book anymore. The gloomy winter days aren't helping. Shanghai is so dreary I have not seen the sun in 3 weeks.

My eating habits are a good indication of my mood. When I'm cheery and light-hearted I'll fuss around with salads and labor-intenstive sweets. If I'm anxiety-ridden, comfort food is all I can stomach. 

So bring on the chicken noodle soup. Rather than the American version flavored with bay leaf and thyme, I decided to make a Sichuan-style broth with star anise, cinnamon, tangerine peel, and Sichuan pepper. (There will be a mild tingle from the peppercorn, to jazz things up.) The best part: you can shred leftover roast chicken, itself a cost-saver and recession favorite, and add it to the soup at the last minute. The simmering anise and cinnamon will make your kitchen smell good. And slurping the steamy chicken noodle soup will get you through these dark days.

Almost nobody in Hunan has ever heard of General Tso's Chicken, the most famous Hunan dish in America. Like many other American-Chinese favorites, the roots to China are vague but interesting.

You may know the dish as General Tsuo's, or Tzo's or Tao's or some other variation. You couldn't really pronounce the name, but order it anyway at Panda Garden because of its addictiveness. Who cares if it isn't really Chinese food, like your ABC friend hinted?

General Tso's Chicken became popular in America via some enterprisingly Taiwanese chefs who opened Hunan restaurants in New York in the 1970s. Hunan cuisine is traditionally very spicy, full of smoky chilis and pickled vegetables. But to appeal to American diners, the chefs started deep-frying, and sweetening the sauces. They improved upon each other's crispy chicken dishes until they got a crunchy, sweet, sour, and mildly spicy coating. You can read more about the history in Fuchsia Dunlop's NYT article, or Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles; both writers trace the original General Tso's back to Taiwan.

I spent some part of my childhood living in Puerto Rico, in a small town near Ponce. I was the only Chinese kid in my kindergarten class, and my aunt and uncle ran the only Chinese restaurant in town. It was usually flooded with customers (especially on pay day), possibly because the place also doubled as an ice cream parlor. In addition to healthy portions of tamarindo ice cream, there were huge platters of things like seafood fried rice with plantains and sweet and sour pork with fresh pineapples. It was considered Chinese by the local Puerto Ricans. My 5-year-old self, having recently moved from Guangzhou, thought it was Western food.

(Even though my little town lacked Chinese food, cities certainly had their fair share, as I learned after many weekends of eating at dim sum spots in San Juan and Ponce. It's like going from rural Kansas to San Francisco.)

Fermented black beans, while not as ubiquitous in Chinese cooking as soy sauce, are a worthy pantry staple for any Chinese cooking aficionado. These little soybeans, packed and fermented in salt, give a pungent dimension to your stir-fry sauces. You may have encountered them before in Cantonese black bean spare ribs (usually served at dim sum) or Sichuan dishes like mapo tofu or twice-cooked pork. Just a tiny amount can add a big whopping amount of umani to your everyday stir-fry.

Yesterday I stir-fried some chicken with the fermented black beans and a little chili oil, a landlubber's take on the Cantonese shrimp in black bean sauce I've eaten many times over.  You can find these little beans at any Chinese grocery store, packed in plastic. Before using, rinse them in water or rice wine to get rid of excess grit. I store my black beans in the fridge in a little plastic container, but I know tons of cooks who keep them in cabinets; with tons of salt and no moisture, bacterial growth is minimal.

Do you cooked with fermented black beans, and if so, what's your favorite dish to make with them?

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Other chicken recipes:

Despite my pledge to eat healthier, I'm still on an Indian-Chinese food kick this week.  Following up my fried Gobi Manchurian, I decided to make fried chicken lollipops. A good excuse would be that this is a handy appetizer to know in case I ever host a last-minute party.

Since chicken is one of two meats that are popular in India (the other being lamb), it's not surprising that cooks would get creative with a little drumstick. All you need is a paring knife to cut the tendons and scrape down the meat so the meat forms a nice round ball at the end. And the end result is wings that are much less messy to eat, especially when you're dealing with the hazards of a spicy, sticky sauce. 

I first made lollipops way back in culinary school in my hors d'œuvre module. My chef-instructor hinted that this was his original idea, and that he deserved credit if we were to ever offer them on our own restaurant menus. I was impressed, until later when I began to see these not only in Indian-Chinese restaurants but also on the Food Network. So much for original ideas. At least you can rest assured that this is a better lollipop method than jamming chicken nuggets on popsicle sticks.

It's the end of July. Which means that journalists, foreigner tourists, and mainland Chinese alike have started flooding into town for the Olympics. In the next few weeks, many of them will probably eat their fair share of Kung Pao Chicken, which has been designated the official dish of the 2008 Summer Games.

Why not a native Beijing dish, like Peking duck? My guess is because Peking duck is labor-intensive, somewhat expensive, and suitable only for large groups. The humble Gongbao Jiding(宫爆鸡丁) from Sichuan province, however, is easy to prepare, cheap, and more filling than a Clif Bar if you're eating alone. Heck, the sporting venues could even sell it in the stands, as the Chinese equivalent of caramel popcorn or hot dogs. And since Kung Pao Chicken doesn't contain offal or an awkward English translation, Westerners absolutely love it. 

From my post in May on Kung Pao Tofu:

"The origin of (Kung Pao Chicken) is much debated. One popular theory is that Ding Baozhen, a Qing Dynasty emperor, enjoyed eating it so much that the dish was named after his officlal title, Gong Bao. Most people believe it to be of Sichuan or Hunan origin, though this NYTimes article says otherwise. What is important, though, is the sensational salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors and mingling on the palate.

Every time I am at a congee shop, I wonder if the congee business might be the most lucrative and relaxing in the restaurant industry. Your main ingredients are rice and water (and stock, but that's also mostly water), which are dirt cheap. You make one big vat of porridge beforehand. Your menu can be vast, but each of those variations (pork, egg, seafood, whatever) requires just a tiny bit of cooking or heating up at the end. And congee is such amazing and versatile comfort food that people will flock to it for breakfast, lunch, or hangover relief.

My latest congee "effort" makes use of stir-fried chicken and goji berries. The latter is because I had leftover meat from my Orange Sesame Chicken, and the former because I just bought an expensive bag of organic gojis that I should cook with instead of snacking on like raisins. I don't know how many of the antioxidant claims attributed to gojis are true, but I'll keep eating them if they are reputed to help your eyesight. (Food blogging and other frequent computer usage doesn't exactly do wonders for myopia.)

While I sometimes complain about Chinese food in the U.S., there are certain foods and restaurants I love and miss. One such place is a tiny kosher restaurant near Boston that serves unabashedly Americanized Chinese food. The food was good in the low-brow indulgent way that Kewpie mayonnaise and powdered Milo on ice cream are good. And given the depressing state of "authentic" Chinese food in the Boston area, I ended up eating there about every other week during my college career.

Taam China was close to my very Jewish university, so it seems that everyone who patronized the restaurant either attended or graduated from the same school. I was frequently the only Asian face there other than the staff's, which probably lent the place a tiny whiff of authenticity for the duration of my meal.