During our culinary mission in Thailand we came across the best and the worst outlet for chicken dishes. Let's start with a very well known dish called Stir Fried Chicken With Cashew Nuts. Actually its my favorite chicken dish and now, after many years, I have finally identified Secret Garden in Bangkok as the best restaurant dealing with this dish ever.
I was so enchanted by the flavors, aromas and taste of this dish, that I forgot to take a proper picture, so we have to do it with this one, the plate at the right side...
The cook must have learned this recipe straight from its inventor: normally the oyster sauce overwhelms the whole dish (at least that's the case at Da Shi Da, my provider in Dubai, but in Secret Garden I could distinguish every separate ingredient: sweet peppers, carrot, garlic, french onions, celery, dried peppers, unexpected small bites of ginger and not in the last place the cashews and chicken chunks. Wonderful!
This dish traveled all over the world, and I discovered even its origin: In 1963, David Leong served the first cashew chicken dish at Leong's Tea House in Springfield, Missouri, USA. Leong moved to the United States from China in 1940, and since then he had been searching for an Asian-influenced dish that could please local residents.
Well, honestly I think mr. Leong just brought it from China to the US, but okay, the Americans, lets give the Americans also a bit of history...
So Secret Garden remains a secret, I really can't tell you exactly where in the Thai capital you can find this place. We were simply dropped of there by a taxi driver...
Another secret chicken recipe is even more known across the globe, but for several reasons I am not interested at all to find out how to make it: The Colonel's secret flavor recipe of 11 herbs and spices that creates the famous "finger lickin' good" chicken remains a trade secret. Portions of the secret spice mix are made at different locations in the United States, and the only complete, handwritten copy of the recipe is kept in a vault in corporate headquarters. Yep, we are talking about this colonel.
In Phuket - no other option was left to get rid of our hunger - we were forced to enter this fast food chain and order the chicken pieces. Or is it still chicken, cause it's not really recognizable. The eleven spices in breaded butter are so strong and widely wrapped around the chicken, that I am quite convinced that you eat more oil breaded spices than chicken...
Above you can see the different pieces of KFC in the middle of our late 'dinner'. Completely over the top are the so called chicken popcorn... I have opened at least two pieces of breaded spices without finding anything that could point in the direction of a bit of chicken. I need to admit that I never liked KFC and so I can conclude that the myths around its secret recipe is much more interesting than the dish itself, read here.
The colonel was bought out of KFC in 1964 and during the following years the food chain added oil, salt and flour and less chicken. The colonel reacted angry that they prostituted every goddamn thing I had. I had the greatest gravy in the world and those sons of bitches-- they dragged it out and extended it and watered it down that I'm so goddamn mad!
If the table hammering colonel then started cooking Stir Fried Chicken With Cashew Nuts in a Secret Garden in Siam, is never confirmed...
Wow..a well-researched entry from the man who ordered chicken cashew for at least five times in Thailand...
ReplyDeleteBut true,Secret Garden's dishes were truly memorable...the pasta I ordered is one of the best I had,...ever....