Chicken Cake

We went to the city centre for a leisurely afternoon of shopping today. Well, almost an afternoon. :P Hadi can't really stand shopping for long, it seems. On the way home, we stopped by ShakeKing for some milkshakes - yes, even if its really really cold at the moment. We happened to have an offer voucher, and Hadi had set his mind for shakes already, so we just went ahead and froze ourselves :P But, as it happens, that was a good thing.

See, Hadi was supposed to cook dinner tonight. He fretted about what he should cook, so I suggested an adapted version of his oven-fried chicken from last year. He took this up enthusiastically, and mixed up flour, Parmesan cheese, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, some chicken stock and ... baking soda. To this flour mixture, he added in eggs and milk. I didn't quite realise what he was doing at the time, I just gave him some ingredients to work with. But, when he came back from checking on the chicken about 10 minutes it was done, he told me,"Wow, the coating expanded! Looks like we won't have a problem with gravy, kya-ha~!"

Yes, the flour EXPANDED - rose, just like a cake! Because, by adding the baking soda and eggs and flour together, he was basically making a cake batter. It looked like cake (only it was burnt to a crisp, since it was much thinner than a real cake) and it even smelled like cake, albeit a slightly weird one. One taste of the baked batter, and Justin announced that he just lost his appetite. Hadi was manfully eating the cake as well, commenting that it was slightly bitter. (He finally admitted it was disgusting at the end though, haha) I didn't actually dare touch it.

To be honest, the chicken was actually alright, just a bit tasteless. None of us ate the coating on the outside though, heh. Such a waste. But, the chicken was so tasteless that none of us touched our rice very much. Tomato and BBQ sauces were ceremoniously handed around, but I don't much like tomato sauce with rice - and neither do the other two, I'm guessing. So we were left with a lot of rice, heh. (Nasi goreng, here we come~)

So it was actually a good thing that we went for the shakes, yeah? hehe. I wasn't all that hungry to begin with. But, since the chicken was so bad, I can't actually give you all a recipe for it :( Unfortunately, I also forgot to snap a picture of the "cake" so I can't show you all how it looked like either. (It looked ... "interesting", trust me on this, haha). I do have a picture of the actual chicken though, It didn't look too bad. Just a bit burnt :P

Of course, we all have our own ideas on what went wrong and how to make it right :P

• I think that the problem was the baking soda - just get rid of it, and the mixture *should* make a nice crispy coating on the outside of the chicken. Some marination might be good though.
• Justin thinks that the egg should have just been used to coat the chicken, which would then be rolled in the seasoned flour. This is also quite an ok idea, I think.
• Hadi thinks that it doesn't need egg at all. Just roll the chicken in the flour and it should be ok. This is quite similar to Justin's idea, I guess.

But yeah, not a particularly tasty dinner tonight, but it was good for some laughs, hahaha. This dish still hasn't managed to wrest away the title of "Worst Dinner Ever" from Hadi's Chicken of Death from last year. Although both were made by Hadi, heh. But anyway, another day, another dish~ So let's hope we can give you something better tomorrow :D

Quote of the day: If people take the trouble to cook, you should take the trouble to eat.