Like good little New Yorkers, the boys developed a taste for takeout Chinese early in life. And when we moved to this neighborhood, despite the dearth of choices, we found a place that made a delicious version of their favorite dish, chicken with broccoli. However, it took over an hour for the food to get here, and it was often wrong, and when was wrong it took forever to convince them to bring the right food. Which took another hour to arrive.
Then one time, they asked us to return the wrong entree.
Let me re-write that. They wanted the food. Back. At best, it seemed like a questionable business practice. At worst, it was a supremely nasty idea to contemplate. They've been dead to us ever since.
Using my signature fatherly pluck, however, I resolved to recreate this dish at a fraction of the cost and waiting time. As is so often the case, invention was the daughter of "Fuck You."
It didn't take long to perfect the Daddy Supreme, which comprises marinated chicken breast sautéd with broccoli and served with--and NOT over--white rice. This soon became a crucial dish in my repertoire, not least because it's one of the few that both kids will eat in its entirety. But there remained one problem: the dreaded rice portion.
As TwoBert matures, he is developing into a very competitive second child who will scratch and claw in order to Get His. And whenever I used to dish out the rice, he would study me with the gimlet gaze of a line judge to make sure he got as much rice as his big brother did. Robert's technique was a little subtler, as he would wait until the plates hit the table before decrying the very thought that a cantankerous pipsqueak like TwoBert could receive more rice than he. The back-and-forth would go forth and back until my skull split open and my brains spilled onto the table.
And then, one day, I got smart.
I was plating the Supreme one night when I happened to see my two-jigger shot glass sitting in the dish tray. I molded the rice into silos of fun and placed the chic-and-broc around the perimeter, creating portions that were both 1) identical in size and 2) vaguely weapon-y looking.
And thus, Daddy's Chicken with Rice Bombs was born.
It's been a weekly staple ever since, and it's given me the courage to attempt my latest brainstorm: sculpting light sabers out of chocolate ice cream.
