Like we could sip wine or drink beer with friends or whilst watching TV, or candlelight dinner...
*Yea right*...
Reality kicks in really quickly and all these illusions are quickly corrected.
The hassle of preparing a special dinner is really not worth the trouble. Yes, I cook some nice stuff when I feel like eating something nice, but I don't really bother about the presentation. Basically, cook, eat, wash up and quickly settle down so that we can watch TV, chat and rest for tomorrow...
So when we first moved in, before reality kicked in, I bought 2 cartons of beer, couple bottles of wine.
The wines aren't really a problem, cos I can always give them away during housewarmings and such...
But for the cartons of beer... well... I needed to find something to do with them.
Somehow as I grow older, my body doesn't really react well to alcohol anymore. After I have a drink, I end up having a sleepless night. So I've pretty much stopped drinking unless it's some special occasion. I like to drink, just that, I don't like the after effects of a sleepless night, so I just avoid it now.
Sometimes, I'm stupid enough to think that the happiness of drinking is worth the sleepless night and I "kaykiang" and have a drink... it never is worth it. Cos the enjoyment may be for 30 minutes of a drink, but the tiredness lasts the rest of the next day.
Well anyway, I still have around 6 cans of beer remaining from my earlier purchase. So I was thinking, what am I going to be doing with this. I can't drink it, I can't give it away, I could just throw it away, but that's a waste so... I needed to think about what to do with it.
I was pretty much thinking... Ok, beer is a consumable, so I can only drink it or eat it. So I need to cook with it... And I was trying to imagine what dishes would go well with beer... (I think people who cook are pretty imaginative, cos they tend to dream of stuff they can put together)... Anyway, I came down to chicken and fish, cos red meats are pretty heavy tasting and would overpower the flavour of the beer.
Then I went online and "Woah!" so many recipes.
Ok, I know some people are thinking... woooo beer battered fish and chips. Yummy... No. I don't fry anything at home. The clean up just isn't worth it. I'd rather pay to eat something fried, cos frying really messes up the kitchen. But I don't really like fried stuff anyway.
Anyway, I decided to do a chicken soup with beer. Just a simple ABC soup but using a portion of beer.
You can try it if you are interested. It's not hard to do. Great for a busy couple.
It's not really any recipe I took from online, I just improvised from what I usually make.
**********
Ingredients...
1 whole chicken, chopped with bones.
(I reckon if you don't like breast meat you could just use 1kg worth of drumsticks/thigh meat.)
1 potato, cubed
1/2 carrot, cubed
1 small onion/shallot (around the size of your thumb) finely chopped
1/2 clove of garlic (around the size of your thumb) crushed
2 tablespoons of barley (those that you use to boil barley water)
600ml water
1 can of beer
Instructions
The hardest part of the steps...
1. Crush garlic, then wait 10 minutes before cooking to maximize health benefits. Allowing the crushed garlic to stand for 10 minutes before cooking further enhances formation of allicin, ensures the maximum synthesis of allicin, and also makes it more stable and resistant to the heat of cooking.
(http://www.healthyandnaturalworld.com/common-mistakes-when-using-garlic-as-an-antibiotic/)
Allicin is the major biologically active component of garlic. First reported by Cavallito and Bailey in 1944, allicin is the key ingredient responsible for the broad-spectrum of anti-bacterial activity in garlic. Research also showed that allicin is responsible for lipid-lowering, anti-blood coagulation, anti-hypertension, anti-cancer, antioxidant and anti-microbial effects.
--http://www.allicinfacts.com/about-allicin/what-is-allicin/
2. Wash and clean everything and throw it into a big pot and boil.
(You can simmer for 30 minutes or 6 hours. The length of time is positively correlated to the intensity of the soup, but negatively correlated to the texture of the meat.)
3. Add salt/light soy sauce and pepper to your own preference.
Optional
4. If you really want to cheat. You can add a bottle of chicken essence into the boiling pot just before serving.
The Troublesome method
If you're not a lazy cook like me, it would be more optimal to de-bone the chicken. Use the bones to boil the soup for many hours til the essence comes out, then remove the bones, then just lightly boil the meat in the soup for a few minutes just before serving. This is more troublesome but the texture of the meat will be better.
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That's it. A simple way for me to use up my beer.
We ate the soup with rice for 2 dinners. Both of us enjoyed it very much. So I'll likely do it again.
Contrary to popular belief, alcohol doesn't boil away when cooking, so there will be some alcohol remaining after cooking.
The study also revealed that alcohol content diminishes with cooking time. After being added to food that then is baked or simmered for 15 minutes, 40 percent of the alcohol will be retained. After cooking for an hour, only about 25 percent will remain, but even after 2.5 hours of cooking, five percent of the alcohol will still be there. Of course, the amount of alcohol in an individual serving will be quite low.
--https://www.drweil.com/diet-nutrition/cooking-cookware/does-alcohol-really-cook-out-of-food/
I'm still looking for other easy ways to use up my beer cos I have another 5 cans left, and I like to experiment with different recipes.
I totally hate wasting food or drink. So I always tend to keep track of what's in the fridge and use them up instead of throwing it away. I know couples who just buy lots of groceries but in the end they use a bit of it then the rest is kept in the fridge for months and they end up throwing it away. Somehow, that's quite common behaviour. Cos I know many of my friends/neighbours are doing that.
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