Street Foodie Domesticated!: Rotiserrie Chicken Salad.

Every Wednesday evening a guy sells rotisserie chickens out the back of a van outside our apartment complex. Despite a recent jump in price from 5000 to 6000 won, these little babies are exceptionally good value and I always find it hard to resist bagging one on the way back from school (it helps that Wednesday is my worst day for classes.)

These things are as versatile as they are delicious. Fighting the temptation to tear it apart and eat just with the accompanying sachets of mustard and salt is always hard. I’ve had this with potatoes and vegetables as part of a mini-roast, wrapped in tortillas with a spicy tomato sauce, and just last week in some chicken sandwiches on the way to Seoul (the last image our fated camera shared with us.) The chicken is usually super tender, falling of the bone and possessed of just the right amount of lip smacking greasiness.

This week however I finally paid heed to elements by getting my salad on chicken-style. I started by picking and dismembering the chicken, taking care to devour all that greasy/salty/terminally unhealthy chicken skin while I was at it. I then threw the meat in a bowl with some lettuce leaves, halved cherry tomatoes and thinly sliced spring onions, before mixing it up with my new favorite dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, schezwan pepper, sliced chili and cumin.

It worked. The chicken plumped out the leaves and toms perfectly, taking on the flavours of the dressing without losing any of that rotating-on-a-stick goodness. This probably could have served as a meal in its own right but instead I opted to match it with some other salad-y stuff I somehow got possessed into making.

Turns out the boy can cook!

Dakbal: Chicken Feet

“Put enough spicy sauce on anything and it will taste good” I repeat to myself as I prepare for my first Dakbal moment. Slowly, I pick up one of the spindly chicken feet in front of me and, checking for toenails, prepare to put yet another alien object into my mouth (no jokes please, I’m aware of how that sounds.)

To be honest, Dakbal was an easier jump to make than the above paragraph lets on. First off, the feet were suffocated with a red hot sticky spicy sauce (I had a bit of a Lady Macbeth moment in the bathroom afterwards) so I knew hot would be the dominant sensation. Secondly, they looked like they had more meat on them than some of the odds and ends you find in a box of mediocre fried chicken, and last but not least, the toenails had been removed, something I usually insist on in a pre-dinner snack.

As for the eating of the things, that was a different story. I first attempted using chopsticks, but despite my ever-improving skills was unable to angle it sufficiently enough to get a bite in edgeways. Next I downed tools and plunged in fingers first, making a pass at the chicken feet head on. This time however my teeth barely scraped the skin and I ended up with a face full of hot sauce that reminded me of when I dressed up as the Joker at Halloween. Thankfully my next attempt proved more successful, and I was soon dismembering, biting and slurping my way through the whole batch.

Once in, most of what was going on had to do with the hot sauce they were covered in. It was like that crimson, sticky, slightly sweet lava you sometimes get at fried chicken places, with a fair number of chilli seeds and slices thrown in for good measure -REALLY hot! The meat meanwhile clung together in little pockets of goodness and was by in large, tender and easy on the way down, with some slightly crispy skin giving it a bit of extra character to boot.

At 1000 won for ten, you really can’t ask for much more.