When Rose is away, the chef will play.

Explored the stratosphere today.

By now I hope everyone has tried Chicken Stinkum, the dish of teary-eyed champions. I hadn’t had it for awhile and had a busy day so I didn’t have much time to cook. But I did have almost half of a roasted chicken that needed to go, and so it seemed like a minimalist, fast, extreme stinkum was in order. This rivals the Original Recipe for flavor and beats it for speed.

Extreme Stinkum

some roasted chicken
1 medium onion
hot roasted peppers to taste (use a LOT)
a dash or two of red wine

Heat olive oil in a pan while chopping the onion. Toss it in and let the onions blacken while stripping the meat from the roasted chicken and chopping it. I was doing this while listening to Dark Winter Nights and was laughing so hard that I became the teary-eyed champion earlier than usual in the stinkum process. As regulars will recall, stinkum gets its name for the burst of capsaicin that hits your nose and eyes when the peppers hit the pan (that should be a hit song, When the Peppers Hit the Pan; the Fine Young Cannibals should have stuck together and put it on an album to follow The Raw and the Cooked).

Extreme Stinkum, ready to roll and eat

Anyway, we still have some of the New Mexico powderkeg roasted pepper paste in the freezer, so I lobbed in four good spoonfuls of that. (I put the rest into an avocado – that’s a whole nother realm of savory flavor.) The red wine provides needed moisture but also a complementary flavor. Serve on tortillas and sprinkle on some cheese. I know, we need to ban pre-shredded cheese and Make America Grate Again (see below), but one makes do with what’s at hand. More of the red wine accompanied the meal, and wow. It is not possible to describe the flavor, glow, sweat, and tears. Amazing. Definitely on the repeat list.