rice and chicken thigh

Fried chicken skin, and garlic pickle.

Four chicken thighs are pressure-cooked with their bones and skin. Overcooked, actually, so they shrink from the bone and pull off with no resistance. The way I like it.

The rice is pressure cooked too. Separately. And both these things in succession went so fast it'll make your head spin.

And there is no cleaning the pot. Both thighs and rice are cooked inside their own bowl placed on a trivet inside the pressure pot.

The thighs had been brined first and they produced a lot of liquid that can be used for very flavorful gravy.

The rice was flavored excessively in a way that Japanese cooks don't do. They like their rice white and unadulterated. This has teaspoons of sugar, rice vinegar, fish sauce, toasted sesame seed oil, and half an anchovy smashed. And altogether that's a lot of flavor permeating each grain. I could have used seaweed and bonito flakes.

The chicken was not seasoned beyond brining.

This rice bowl is extraordinarily flavorful. Its outstanding. It's a whole new unique thing unto the world, based upon a million previous things.

I was watching the Samurai Gourmet and the guy took home his extra cooked rice with something pickled, and I thought, man, that sounds really good. And it is. It's just so weird to think of adding picked anything to rice. But we have weird pickles too. It doesn't have to be dill, it doesn't have to be cucumber. It can be anything pickled and in any favor. Why does dill monopolize the pickle aisle anyway? Those things are rather gross to begin with. Yet there they are taking up all the space on the shelves. I wish they'd pickle things with ginger.

The basil took off faster than everything else in the Aerogarden and needed to be trimmed. What the heck.