Super Quick Chicken Arrabbiata Recipe

While my wife is away visiting family in Japan, I've had to go back to my bachelor days of preparing quick meals for myself. As a foodie, I needed something more gourmet than a tv dinner so I'll share one of my secrets to an easy gourmet meal in just a few minutes. The key to this recipe is Trader Joe's pre-packaged and frozen pastas. You can just heat it in a saucepan and serve. By not having to boil water to cook dry and making sauce from scratch, you save lots of time. If you don't have a Trader Joes in your area, just find any frozen pasta that you like and use a single serving portion of it.

Prep/Cook Time: 15 minutes
Servings: 1 (multiply ingredients by the number of servings)

Ingredients:
1 breast from a Rotisserie Chicken (Costco)
1/2 pkg Trader Joes Arrabbiata Pasta
1/2 stalk of green onion (chopped)
1/2 bell pepper (sliced)
pecorino romano cheese to taste (Trader Joes, grated at home)
1 Tbls vegetable oil

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. While waiting, slice bell peppers (cut to the size of the pasta noodles) and add to the pan. While that cooks, dice chicken breast into bite sized pieces and add to pan. Cook until chicken is completely heated through. Add frozen pasta and a few tablespoons of water. Cook until all pasta sauce is completely melted. Add more water if the sauce seems too thick. Right before plating, add half the green onions and give the pasta a stir. After plating, grate pecorino cheese and sprinkle the rest of the green onion on top as garnish.

Enjoy!

Variations:
Zucchini and/or squash cut into sticks can be added with or instead of the bell peppers. Just keep the total quantity of vegetables relatively the same. Also good is quartered artichoke hearts which you can find canned or jarred. Instead of chicken, you can try canned tuna in oil (not water). Be sure to drain the oil from the tuna. For garnish, you can use parsley or Italian flat-leaf parsley, but reduce the amount you use. In general, this is a good dish for using up any vegetables you may have.

FYI, that really is a picture of this dish.

Anime for the Masses, Appleseed: Ex Machina

I've seen my fair share of anime to understand why it hasn't become mainstream in American society. A large part of it has to do with changing people's preconceived notion that anime is a genre, when in fact it is more of a medium. We would never lump Casablanca, and The Three Stooges in a "Silver Screen" genre so it makes little sense to lump all animations together also. Although, there are sub-genres (i.e. fighting robots), which are unique to anime, upon closer inspection, all genres from horror to romance is represented in anime.

Anime as a Style
Anime is a medium, but to the confusion of many, it also represents a style much like how Film noir is tightly coupled to black and white film. The anime-style may include features like characters with large eyes and barbie-doll like body proportions, highly detailed technological objects, and excessive blood and violence. While these features may not be present in all anime, they are in enough of them to present an unhealthy stereotype for the mainstream American viewer.

Japanimation
Being an export of Japan, the stories told in anime often have Japanese cultural influences which do not always translate to American audiences. This is not so much an issue with anime as it is a result of writing stories for the Japanese market. Couple this with a healthy American entertainment industry where the audience never has to understand a foreign concept and you can see what an uphill battle it would be to get anime into the mainstream.

Crossing the cultural divide
Appleseed: Ex Machina is a wonderful film that is able to blend a style of anime into something not just palatable, but beautiful to Americans. The use of 3D computer graphics is akin to the many video game cutscenes we are used to seeing, but the use of cell shading for the characters' faces brings home this film's anime roots. The characters' eyes have been shrunken, while a prodigious use of motion capture really increases our sense of realism. Best of all, a talented team of American voice actors were given free reign to modify the script to suit American audiences. Never before have I wanted to listen to the "dubbed" version of an anime movie. However, I can't really call this dubbing as it is more of a transformation through dialog. Many of the lines of the movie has been completely changed to conform to American sensibilities.

It's all in the Woo
The biggest draw for Americans, may be John Woo's contribution to this film. Although Woo is known for his action, it is his combination of symbolism, character nuances, and cinematography
that makes him irreplaceable. When watching this movie, you really get a sense that this is much more than an action flick. You see the emotion connection between the characters without having it thrown in your face. All in all Woo is the final key in making this not just a good Japanese or American movie, but a great movie in general.

Here's the trailer:

Another good song: Feist - "I Feel It All"

I saw the Colbert Report today where he interviewed the girl on the iPod commercial. I didn't particularly like the song on the commercial, but the song she sung on the show was great. Anyhow, here it is: