After a rough morning, time to get after it.

Motto of the day. Mentally — not physically.

Who's cooler than Tyrion and Bronn? How bout nobody.

Last night's season 2 episode of Game of Thrones was the best yet this season. But the true joy was the brief interlude of what I like to call, "The Tyrion & Bronn Show". The command of respect this unlikely pair receives is just a joy to watch. I'd stay tuned if the show was just about their adventures of fun and debachery. Bronn had the best line yet as the pair strode confidently into the throne room ruining, Joffery's humilation and torture party at Sansa's expense when he clipped Joffery's King's Guardsman with,

"Careful now, we don’t want to get blood all over your pretty white cloak."

I nearly leap off my couch in glee.

Tyrion dished out his own when he added to Ser Meryn

"Bronn, next time he speaks, kill him. THAT was a threat. See the difference?"

Doesn't take much to get me giddy from this pair. I just love watching both of these characters on screen. If it was just them, I'd watch that show ALL DAY.

Half-Life, play it again Sam...

My daughter's; now 12 and 15 respectively have been begging me to replay Half-Life 2. When it first came out for the original Xbox 7 years ago, they'd love to sit and watch me play it for hours on end. They helped me through the puzzles and just enjoyed watching the game unfold. Years later with the Orange Box release, they loved the continuation of the story. They'd never want to play themselves, they just sat and watched. That's how cinematic that series is, how special it is. I think this weekend, might be time to play it again.

Recipe for Khao Man Gai. (Hainanese Chicken Rice)

Thai translantion: Oiled Rice with Chicken.  

Growing up, my mother made this dish about once a month. It’s always been a favorite of mine, one of many, but this one always stood out. I try to make it myself every so often, and every time I do, it makes me smile. My technique is slowly getting to the point where I can confidently serve this back to my mom without worrying if she’ll enjoy it. But it will never be as good, and that’s okay, I can live with that.

When I visited Thailand, I found that this is a very popular street vendor food. There’s cart on almost every corner that serves this dish, and they way they serve it to-go is interesting — all the components are placed in individually tied plastic bags so that you can compile the dish at home. And the reason behind it is that even though the components are seemingly simple and rustic. The complexity in flavor of the combined ingredients really make this dish attack your palette on some many levels. It really is a dish that showcases the simple flavor of chicken like no other. 

The dish has four main components. First the chicken is slowly poached in a stock pot with herbs and vegetables. Once the chicken is fully cooked, it’s set aside and rested. Some of the reserved cooking liquid is strained and used to cook the rice, while the rest is transformed into a wonderfully simple and rich palette cleansing soup. The fourth component is a complex sweet and spicy dark soy sauce that is used to flavor the rice and chicken together as a condiment. The end result is spectacular. The richness of the rice, flavored with cooking liquid is so satisfying, coupled with tender clean slices of chicken meat and fresh herbs allow you to really taste the pure essence of the chicken. The sweet soy sauce adds a nice layer of sweet, spicy, sour and salty which is a common flavor profile for all Southeast Asian Cooking. The thin clean chicken stock soup, with soft floating pieces of cored cucumber and cilantro is a simple way to refresh your palette as you eat the dish. 

Shopping List:

1 3-4 lb. Whole Chicken 

Produce:

• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 bunch of fresh spring/green onion 
• 1 medium onion
• 2 whole medium carrots
• 2 celery stalks
• 1-2 medium Jalapeno peppers -or- Thai Bird chili
• 2-3 large cucumbers
• 1-2 large bulb(s) of garlic
• 1 large knob of fresh ginger (about the size of your palm)
• Ground white pepper 

Here’s an example brandFrom an Asian Market:
You won’t use a lot of this for this recipe but they keep in the refrigerator for months.

Sweet soy sauce
My local market has this brand and many others that are similar. They usually are under $4 for a large bottle. The key is that sweet soy sauce is very thick in consistency, it actually looks like molasses. That’s important, if it says sweet soy sauce and thin like normal soy sauce, it’s not the same.

Chinese black bean paste
Sometimes referred to as fermented bean paste. It usually sells in a small jar. There’s so many variations of this product. But for the most part, it’s very common in Asian markets. I’ve used several different brands, they are all basically the same.

Substitutions for the above:
If you had to, you could probably replace the sweet soy and bean paste with Chinese Hoisen Sauce. I’ve never tried it, but the result could be similar, but my mother doesn’t do it that way, so that’s enough for me.

• Rice wine vinegar
• Normal soy sauce (I use low-sodium)
• Jasmine rice

Preparing the Chicken and Stock:
Use your largest stock pot. Something large enough to hold your chicken with plenty of room. What I like to do to help measure the amount of water I’m using is that I’ll take the chicken, still wrapped in the tight plastic and place in the pot and cover it with water. Bring the water up to about 2-3 inches of the rim, then take the wrapped chicken out. Now put the pot of water over medium-low heat. This is a slow simmer cooking method, so allow yourself a few hours before service. Quarter or halve the onion, cut the carrots and celery in half and drop them in the water. Don’t worry about how they are cut, but try to keep the vegetables at a manageable size, you’ll strain them anyway.

In a separate saute pan over medium-high heat, and lightly smash 5-6 whole garlic cloves, 3-4 large 1/8 inch slices of whole ginger and about 3-4 whole green onions, chopped in half. Lightly saute in the pan with some vegetable oil. You want to keep the garlic whole if you can, just open them up and let them lightly toast and become fragrant, about a minute or two, careful not to burn the garlic, just lightly brown. If you see it browning fast, just take some of the simmering water and spoon a couple of tablespoons into the saute pan. Season the saute pan with a few generous swipes of ground white pepper and about 2 tablespoons of normal soy sauce and dump the contents of the saute pan into the slowly simmering water. Add some water back into the saute pan to clean it out over the stock pot, you wanna extract as much flavor as possible. At this point, lightly season the water with some salt. Don’t over salt, but also don’t under salt. You want the broth to have a little flavor before the chicken goes in. While your wait for the water to start to lightly boil, clean the chicken, remove the innards and remove the liver from both sides. I find that simmering with the innards clouds the broth. I disgaurd them. Trim the wing tips and set them aside for later. The neck can just get dropped in with the chicken to help flavor the stock. Now lightly salt the inside of the chicken and place a handful of cilantro with the stalks into the cavity. When the stock pot starts to bubble, slowly drop the chicken into the pot and let it come to a boil over medium low heat. This should take about 20 minutes if not a little longer. While the chicken slowly cooks in the pot, be sure to keep the pot clear of the bubbling scum that surfaces and skim that out. Once you see the pot boiling, cover it and let it simmer for another 10 minutes. At this point, take the pot off the heat and let the pot chill for at least an hour with the chicken in it. If you cooked over a low heat, and allowed the chicken to boil softly, the result will be a very tender and flavorful chicken, with the fat and juices slowly leeching into the stock pot.

Carefully, remove the chicken from the pot with thongs draining the juices from the bird as you lift it free. Just place it on a platter or board and cover it with foil and set aside.

Drain the stock pot into a sieve into a new pot if you have one. I like to use cheese clothe as well to insure that the broth is as clear of as much impurities as possible. There should be a layer of chicken fat that rises to the top of the pot. Skim out as much of the fat as possible from the pot into small bowl and place that bowl into the freezer to separate the fat from the broth you may have collected.

Preparing Chicken Flavored Rice:
I have an admission. I don’t know how to cook rice without a rice cooker. I grew up with one in the house and have never lived a day of my life without one. So I’m going to explain this process assuming you have one. It’s not completely necessary, but I’ve tried cooking rice without a rice cooker and what I found is that the rice typically gummy and mushy. It never seems to be the right consistency. If you can fare better without, then by all means.

Wash 3 cups of uncooked Jasmine rice with cold water. Wash and rinse several times to wash the cloudiness and starch away from the rice. I usually repeat this step about 4-5 times. Then let the rice soak in cold water for about 10-15 minutes while you prepare the next step.

In large saute pan or pot (enough to accommodate the uncooked rice), take a couple of small spoonfuls of the reserved chicken fat that you separated in the freezer. About a tablespoon and a half. You may need to add just a splash of oil as well and heat over a medium heat. Now add 3-4 cloves of whole garlic, and 2 nice slices of fresh ginger and saute in the pan until is fragrant. Now drain the rice as much as possible and add it into the pan. Lower the heat to low and toast the rice for about a minute, allowing the rice to soak in the oil, fat and flavorings. Lightly salt the rice to taste and now carefully transfer all of the contents of the pan into your your rice cooker pot. Make sure you get it all in there. Pat it all down smooth. Now slowly laddell the stock into the rice pot until the rice is submerged. Remember that the pot should have been idle for some time now, so it shouldn’t be too hot to the touch. The way I measure the water to rice ratio is exactly the way my mother taught me. No matter how much rice you have in a pot, you cover it with enough liquid so that when you dip a straighten finger into the pot touching the rice, the water should not exceed the first bend of your forefinger. Because my hands are larger than my mothers, I measure to mine, then I spoon a splash out. 99% of the time, it yields perfectly cooked rice. Before you set your rice cooker and cover, remember those raw wing tips we saved? Yeah, just drop them in the pot. Set it and forget it. When the rice is done, you can fish out the wing tips, ginger and garlic.

Preparing the Soup and Dipping Sauce:

For the soup:
Bring the stock pot to medium-high heat and boil. At this time you can add some additional seasoning to taste I like to keep the soup light in color, so I prefer to use salt over soy sauce. The stock should be seasoned, but not salty. The taste should be light and delicate, so be careful of being heavy handed. The taste of the stock should taste good on it’s own. Peel 2 large cucumbers and slice them in half lengthwise. Take a spoon and core out the seeds. Slice the cucumbers in to 1 inch chunks straight or on a bias. Drop them into the boiling pot for about 10 minutes until they are soft and almost translucent. I also like to add some shredded white cabbage as well and some small chunks of tofu. When serving, accompany your finished plate with a small cup of the soup and garnish with chopped green onion and a few tears of fresh cilantro leaves. 

The for the sweet soy dipping sauce:
I don’t really follow set measurements, each time I make this, it varies a bit. But for the most part, it turns out the same, and its role in the dish is to tie everything together. My mother uses raw garlic in this sauce, and because it’s assembled in a blender, I find the taste, while delicious — it can be overwhelming for some. So start by again, using your small saute pan and lightly oiled, browning 3-4 small cloves of whole garlic over low heat. You want to cook a bit of the rawness out of it. Once they are lightly browned, Drop then into a blender or food processor. Slice about 2 tablespoons of fresh peeled ginger into your blender. Add 3-4 whole stalks of cilantro with leaves. For spice drop in a full Thai Bird chili, or if that’s too hot, use Jalapeno peppers, and just remove the seeds to control the spice level. The sauce should have a nice kick, but it should not be defined by it. Add 2 tablespoons of regular soy sauce and about 1 Tbs of rice wine vinegar. Now pulse the blender a bit to combine ingredients. Now add about 3/4 of a cup of the thick, sweet soy sauce, with about a 1/3 of a cup of the black bean paste. Blend it all until smooth. Not you can adjust the consistency by adding a little water or more vinegar or regular soy (for salt). You want a nice even compliment of sweet, salty, sour and spice. It’s not an exact science but the end result should be a nice smooth sauce.

Assembling the final plate:
In Thailand, really the only hot component of this dish is the soup. The rice is warm, but the chicken is typically room temperature, and the sauce is an uncooked condiment, so this is a pretty laid back dish in terms of service. 

Chicken
By now you can butcher the chicken. I carefully remove both breasts retain the skin and slice them on a nice flat bias for presentation. The rest of the meat, I remove the skin by hand and shred the flesh my hands. More like strands of dark meat chicken then say pulled pork. If serving family style, arrange on a platter. 

Garnish
An understated but important part of the dish is the fresh, cool garnish of thinly sliced cucumbers, with chopped spring onion and fresh roughly shredded cilantro leaves. It adds nice fresh crunch to the dish. Have some on hand at the table.

The Final Plate
On a nice clean white serving plate, you can spoon a nice portion of rice in the center of the plate. Add a few pieces of dark meat off to the side of the rice, and then fan out a few slices of white meat over it for presentation or fan our slices on both sides. Add a few slices of cucumber off to the side of the plate and top the rice with some green onion and fresh cilantro leaves. You can drizzle the sauce all over the plate, or have a small dipping bowl on the side of the plate to hold the sauce. When serving, make sure to have a matching small soup bowl with the accompanying soup and be sure to garnish it with cilantro for presentation.

Enjoy.

If Aliens vs. Predator were a sitcom...

Came across this on a message board and I lost my shit I thought it was hilarious.

New Team Hayastan-IMB MMA Shirts.

Well, these babies are final, and over the next few days they should be hitting the silkscreener. Sensei Paul Booe and I went over the intial designs and worked out some final modifications regarding the sizing of the graphics along with the usage of color and narrowed it down to what you see here. I'm really pleased with the final result, and I cannot wait to get my hands on these shirts. I have to admit, I've got several school shirts that are pretty rank, I feel bad rolling with people cause as soon as the sweat hits, people might wanna tap so they can switch partners.

Hayastan-IMB MMA "The Modern Warrior" | Click on the image for a larger view

Here's the first design, we called the "Modern Warrior" shirt. I covered the thought process behind the design in an earlier post, but one addition we made on this shirt, along with the other school shirts is the addition of crossing swords on the back with the full school logo. With it I added a quote I found that I thought seemed appropriate that states, "We do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training". I thought the quote seemed fitting as a motivator. I read it simple as, 'Don't assume you'll succeed at something, because you'll only be as good as the preparation you put in'. Paul made a good ppoint that it may be misinterpreted as being negative, but I think if you really read into the words, the meaning is there, and it's meant to motivate. We had limitations on the actual size of the graphic on the front, I would have preferred for it to be larger, but it simply wasn't possible for this run, but I still think this is a great shirt, and I'm excited about it.

Hayastan-IMB MMA "Samurai" | Click on the image for a larger view
This shirt has easily been my favorite. Wasn't hard, the Samurai art was a stock clipart I found, and I added the school logo into the helmet and added some degraded effects into it. The back of the shirt has the same quote from the other shirt, and overall is the same design, just for this shirt, the colors were changed. I love the design simply because I love gray Tees, so this one is exciting and I got a lot of feedback from people saying this one was their overall preference. It will be interesting to see of the two, which one will be the popular seller.

Hayastan Grappling Challenge "Heel-Hooked" | Click on the image for a larger view
Lastly, here is the final design for the Hayastan Grappling Challenge shirt for the upcoming tournament coming up on March 19th. We tried several different designs, but we finally ended up with the "Heel-Hook" dig. I actually found a great image I was able to posterize and trace into a simple graphic vector. I'll give you props if you can make out who the people are. I know it might be somewhat obvious, but still. Kudos to you if you can.

Well that's it, hope you enjoy them. Make sure you buy'em up with you see them at the schools.

SICHON-T-Shirt-DESIGN-er | Some T-shirts I've been working on for my MMA school

Hayastan-IMB MMA "Samurai"
I was recently asked by my Sensi Paul Booe and owner of Hayastan-IMB Mixed Martial Arts to try to do a few t-shirt designs for the school. I was more than happy to oblige. I've never designed T-shirts before so I was anxious to try it out. Obviously because of cost and silk-screening limitations, I could only work with 2 to 3 colors max, most cases just 2-color would have to suffice. I came up with a few different options. All of these designs in this post are still in concept phase, we're all still working out the details and figuring out which ones will get printed. I'm hoping for the "Samurai". The helmet is a piece of vector clip art I came upon that I thought would make a great shirt. MMA T-shirts as you know are generally very gaudy and over the top. Mostly donned by douche-bags, but if you're wearing one, and you're actually standing on a mat, sweatin' it out with other guys trying to hurt you, you can't be called a douche-bag for fear of a knee to the face. It's that fat guy ordering a cheeseburger at Wendy's in a yellow TapOut shirt. He's a douche-bag. So when I was designing these, I thought generally about if I'd wear this out, and yeah, some of them are pretty over the top, but in general, sure, I'd wear'em, fuck yeah.

Click to read more ...

I'm back, and I'm a Martial Artist.

Well over a year ago, I stopped updating my personal blog, for various reasons, some personal, some professional. But now I've decided it was time to start up again... again for various reasons. Wanted to share again that for the last 3 years or so, I was introduced to submission grappling and jiu-jitsu. I started training at Hayastan-IMB Mixed Martial Arts out of curiousity and out of the need to try to really get into shape. I loved it, and it did get me into great shape, in some ways choosing that path changed my life, because it made me really keep up with a healthier lifestyle. But during that first year or so of training, I never really took it very seriously. Some weeks I stayed commited, other weeks I would attend classes sporadically. A lot of people go through some of the same motions, some take to training like crack, others love it for a while and get disinterested. I fell a little more into the latter category, some of it was due to a hectic work schedule, some of it out of laziness. One thing that didn't change thankfully was that in between not being at the gym and rolling on the mat, practicing with the other guys, I still stay commited to working out, so I still maintained a reasonable amount of fitness — for me anyway.

Then something happened. I got hurt. Actually I twisted my left knee on a takedown defense drill in class months prior, but it didn't swell and I was back to normal in a coulpe of days, and then I went on with life. But several months later, I suddenly woke to find my knee swollen, and my abiliy to apply weight on it was impossible. MRI reveal an ACL tear, and it needed to be replaced. So training stopped. Life got slower, and I was in recovery mode. Over the course of the next 2 years post surgey, I stayed in shape. Worked out regularly, and practiced some moves at home while lifting. I went back to Hayastan months later, and I decided to ease back into shape by taking a strength and conditioning class 2 days a week. It's kinda their verison of a boot camp and fight readiness conditioning because a lot of the movements are specific to combat sports. I loved it. But everytime as I left, I'd watch a lot of the same guys I trained with come in and get ready for their classes and I wanted to be among them. Sweat with them, get mashed and do some mashing if you will. So yesterday was my first day back as on official Martial Artist again. I started back with fulltime classes of Kickboxing and Submission Grappling, to go along with my Strength & Conditioning class. I'm back in the Adult Grappling program with a full belt system based on a modified teachings of Gokor Chivichyan's training organization. I'm starting back on square one. New fish. What I learned before gets relearned. What I know now is meaningless. What I'll learn in in the coming months is the only thing that matters. This time, I'm pledging as a Martial Artist with a clean white belt, to apply myself and remain focused and commited. I want nothing more than to be a capable Martial Artist, like anyone that steps into a gym or dojo. Wish me luck.

BTW, I weighed myself this morning... 190.8. Lowest I've seen in years. My goal is to be a hard and lean 185. I have a lot of work in front of me.

Wow... I've been neglecting this place.

For reasons that are just way too complicated to explain, and even if I did, you'd be compelled to pour lighter fluid on your face and burn it off. I've been unable to post updates here on my blog. But in the coming days, I'm going to rebrand, and reassess my place on the blogosphere. 

I know you guys give a rats ass.

By the way, I really should have at least updated the page AFTER I finally saw Terminator Salvation. THAT MOVIE SUCKED BALLS.

OMFG... need I say more?

NIN is always a nice touch. Can't wait til the end comes.