French Fry Foodie Chronicles: Mike's Dry Chili Popeye's Cajun Sichuan Popcorn Shrimp

I am not a chef, nor do I play one on TV, but I have always felt that if I were going to criticize them, I had a responsibility to learn to cook like one.  Despite what every 5 minute easy meals cookbook tells you, cooking is hard. To be good, you have to do the Malcolm Gladwell thing, and put in the 10,000 hours.

And yet, while eating is essential and a source of our greatest happiness, we’re not often willing to put in the time.  Which is weird because if you told someone to work on getting good at sex, another source of joy, for 10,000 hours, they’d ask you where they could sign up.

The fear of really understanding the preparation of food is partly why the hospitality industry finds itself in a bind right now. Restaurants are some of the lowest margin businesses in America. They are always short on cash. They’re depending on a really good sales week next week to pay for the current one. This is because while we can burn toast and spread avocado on it and post it on Instagram, we think we know what it takes. Unless you are a Republican presidential candidate, you understand the price of milk and eggs and you think when you eat out, the meals you consume should be in line with what you pay at the grocery store. This rarely happens in other industries. No one says I know the price of semiconductors and memory and batteries, so I’m only paying $29.99 for my iPhone.

One thing tech toys and restaurants have in common is the ignorance of the labor involved. We don’t Facetime with the child labor making our Facetime machines, and we don’t step foot in the kitchens making our Peking duck. 

To make a good Peking duck, you have to air dry that thing for days or at least stuff a Shopvac under the skin and pull the moisture out. You have to coat that bird in maltose syrup. If you really want to get sexy and modern, maybe you slow smoke it over applewood. You don’t even know where to get maltose syrup, or what it is, which is weird because you’re amazing at finding your weed dealer anytime of night.

If you’re trying to replicate, say Chongqing or dry chili chicken, you don’t even have the BTUs on your home range, bro. You also don’t have a wok master imparting his voodoo, a phenomenon known as “wok hay”, which means essence or breath of the wok. This may sound like something Ms. Cleo sold you on a late-night phone call via her 1-800 line, but it’s very real.  I once heard a story about a big-time chef who was opening a Chinese spot in Vegas, so he hired a bunch of wok chefs from China and brought them to the states to cook at his restaurant. When they arrived in America, they started to do what they did in their previous places of employment, chain smoke while searing the heck out of stuff.  One day, the chef noticed the food didn’t quite taste the same. After investigating, he found out, this being America, the hotel had cracked down and told the cooks they could only smoke outside.  I am not suggesting these cooks were ashing in the woks or that the smoke had anything to do with this. I’m not even saying this story isn’t a myth, but it illustrates that something spiritual happens when wok hay is not in balance.

I do not have wok hay myself, though I’ve recently acquired a 22,000 BTU burner. This is honestly nothing. Panda Express is working with at least 50,000 BTUS and you mock their orange chicken. That being said, my new burner is 30% hotter than my old burner, and as a result, there has been a lot of smoke in my house. I find myself waving at my screeching detector with a blanket, shaking, crazy-eyed like Professor Trelawney of Hogwarts (your kids and Wayne Rooney – he’s like Brian Urlacher of soccer, he has the same hair treatments and The Philosopher’s Stone is his favorite book - know what I mean).

If I were going to set the house on fire, it should be for a worthy cause. Shut in during this COVID-19 pajama party, I set my sights on a home facsimile of Lao Szechuan’s famous dry chili chicken. This is a top ten desert island Chicago dish. Everyone who eats it risks life and limb and a certain degree of chili-induced pain, but they do so because it is in the words of every citizen reviewer who has ever been on WTTW’s Check Please! “to die for!”.

But, remember, I told you cooking is hard.  You need rice flour. You need to chop chicken. You need to air dry that bird. You need to be fast enough sauteeing the sauce and the aromatics, so that you don’t lose the delightful crunch you just set up with the initial fry.

But, what if, like me, who has taken to showering at noon these days, or maybe not at all, you could honor the laziness inside you and skip the fry step altogether?

You can, if you call Popeye’s. However, you can’t just cut up their chicken tenders. And for some reason, popcorn chicken is a seasonal thing at the Louisiana Kitchen. Thankfully, popcorn shrimp is always available. It is available solo in ¼ lb batches or part of the surf and turf combo which comes with tenders, a suitable kitchen snack for rewarding oneself for being so damn lazy, I mean resourceful.

You need at least two ¼ lb orders of the shrimp for my recipe.  You also need a family size red beans and rice for your fourth meal later in the evening. Popeye’s red beans and rice is the best red beans and rice in Chicago. Hot Doug Sohn of Hot Doug’s once told me it was one of his favorite things in the world until he started getting mysterious “old man” pains after eating it and he had to cut down.

And guess what, Popeye’s, even during Spring Break 2020 COVID-19 edition, delivers!  I can tell you every single fast food joint that delivers in Chicago, because I have researched this very subject deeply ever since Postmates opened in Chicago. You may want to revoke my food writer card for this, but you have to remember, for professional reasons, I have consumed more foie gras than Seth Rogen has smoked ganja. I am the human version of a foie gras duck, and my liver is fattier than a Michelin man.  This is actually a lie. I had my liver checked last year because of some slightly high enzyme levels, and it turns out my liver is pretty healthy, although the doctor noted it was slightly bigger than average. I am told this is not an abnormality, but just a statistical comparison. I would brag about this more, but I am already married. My point is when other people pay for your meals and you spend as much money eating as Floyd Mayweather does on cars and watches, black truffles and caviar are no longer a luxury, but a Shake Shack SmokeShack burger is.

Remember I told you when we started, cooking is hard. If you’re in to cooking, you will have MSG, Mirin (rice wine), Sichuan peppercorns, oyster sauce, hoisin, fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil in your pantry.  And if you don’t, like the fortune cookie says, a long journey begins with a first step.  So, go buy this stuff, but maybe try to get it from an online resource right now so you don’t die for this dish, but like I said, it IS to die for. Sichuan peppercorns are probably the trickiest to find, and The Spice House has a fantastic online store and they do delivery.

If you said, “But, Mike, MSG gives me headaches!”, I will ask you if you like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Doritos…you will say yes. And then I will tell you that those foods have MSG in them, and because you didn’t get a headache when you ate them, the good news is you’re not allergic to MSG. The bad news is you’re probably a little bit racist.

Basically, once you gather a bunch of this stuff from your pantry (or you can call Lao Szechuan, because this newsletter is all about encouraging delivery and take out) you can begin below. It will blow your mind.

Stay safe. Stay hungry. Cook softly and carry a big ladle.

--Mike

Ingredients

½ lb Popeye’s popcorn shrimp, 2 orders

3 scallions sliced finely on a diagonal, or whatever shape your knife skills allow

1 tbs ginger finely chopped

1 tbs garlic finely chopped

1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns (crushed)

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tbsp oyster sauce

1/4 cup mirin

1 cup of steamed rice cooked like you like to cook rice: Instapot, rice cooker, whatever…if you got Chinese takeout last night, microwave the leftover white rice from your fridge

Method

1)    Open your Popeye’s shrimp box, house biscuit, or save biscuit for serving with beef bourguignon the next day

2)    Spread shrimp on a sheet tray so they don’t steam in their own heat and you lose the crispiness

3)    Heat a skillet or wok or saute pan over medium high heat, when it seems pretty warm, throw in the vegetable oil and sesame oil. If it gets shimmery and ripples, you’re ready for the next step.

4)    Toss in ginger, garlic, and scallion. Saute until soft, likely 30 seconds to a minute if you really are on medium high heat

5)    Throw in peppercorns and sesame seeds, saute for like 10-15 seconds

6)    Deglaze the pan with mirin.  You could also use a riesling, but you probably don’t have that either, so also maybe white vermouth, but if it’s been on your bar for six months after you used it on that one martini, it’s also toast. Champagne or chardonnay (non-oaky) would do, or sauvignon blanc if you have to

7)    Reduce heat to medium, sprinkle in the sugar, MSG, and throw in the oyster sauce. Technically you would not use an oyster sauce in a real dry chili recipe, but you didn’t marinate the shrimp in soy and right now it tastes like Cajun shrimp.  You would also saute a bunch of dry chilis too, but you do not have them and neither did I. This is ok because the shrimp has Cajun heat and the Sichuan peppercorns are the key

8)    Now toss in the shrimp and coat the nuggets with the sauce. The key here is to make sure the peppercorns stick to the shrimp. You do not want a mouthful of peppercorns only.

9)    Divide the chicken over equal servings of steamed rice. Take a bite. Yes, that numbing sensation on your lips is normal, you do not have COVID-19 – it is called “ma la”, it’s a thing.