Try this recipe to surprise the Texans or anyone else in your life.

You need about 3 and ½ pounds of chicken legs and thighs with the bone in and the skin on the pieces. You can use chicken wings, especially if you are making an appetizer. This will serve 4-6 people, depending on their eating style – if some don’t eat chicken or are vegetarians, it will go much further and you can invite some more friends over. We put Cajun rice on one side with another side of fresh green beans blanched and tossed with water chestnuts and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with Italian spices.

Please note at this point you are preparing a meal of Texas Czech Cajun Vietnamese Chicken, Cajun Rice and Italian Green Beans. It may be better not to tell your guests this until after you’ve plated the food. That way if they leave screaming with their hands in the air at the sight of all those spices, you will have at least enjoyed their company through the appetizers and catching-up chit-chat before the meal.

Back to the main dish — the secret is the marinade.

In a nice big mixing-type bowl, put in the following 7 ingredients:

½ cup of soy sauce

(It’s that dark liquid in the bottle with the red cap and the Asian character on the front. It tastes salty and you’ve probably used it on Chinese food and rice. These parenthetical comments are optional and can be ignored by real cooks.)

2 tablespoons fish sauce

(If your guests are Texans, definitely do not tell them about this ingredient until after they’ve eaten. I will tell you all this, but shhhh, the only ingredients in fish sauce are pressed black anchovies and sea salt. It’s really quite good – in moderation down here in the southwest, of course. This is only ½ the recommended amount from the original recipe. This “halving” is the “Czech” part of this recipe, because most Texas Czechs have never heard of “fish sauce,” wouldn’t believe you if you told ‘em and would certainly grab your hand and cut back if they saw you pouring — bless their fun-loving polka-dancing hearts. My fish sauce says “Made in Vietnam” on the label, and it’s the real thing.)

2 tablespoon Asian sesame oil

(I used an “Unrefined for Medium Heat Toasted Sesame Oil.” I have no idea what this is, but it smells good and is oily.)

2 tablespoon brown sugar or granulated sugar

(I know this! It’s under the counter. I used brown sugar.)

4 teaspoons five-spice powder

(You can find this one in a regular grocery store in the spice section, if you look hard. I had to go to the specialty grocers for the fish sauce and sesame oil. The label on this one says 5-spice powder is a mixture of cinnamon, fennel, cloves, star anise and white pepper. It smells a lot like Christmas. Oh, for those cooks like me, you can unscrew or pry off the shaker top so you can get the teaspoon measuring thing into the bottle – much easier than trying to shake the powder into that little teaspoon thingie.)

1 teaspoon salt

(I used sea salt because, at this point, I was beginning to feel somewhat international and culinary.)

Texas Cajun hot sauce

(I added 3-4 shakes of Tabasco sauce, and I call this the Texas Cajun part of the recipe because there was no hot sauce in the original version and because Tabasco from Avery Island, Louisiana is right at home in Texas, which is part Cajun anyway.)

Now, mix up the soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, sugar, 5-spice powder, salt and hot sauce. It will look kind of thick and oily with little bits of powder floating and sticking to the sides of the bowl, but that’s okay – I hoped.

Next, stir into the bowl and the mixture the following 2 ingredients, which you remembered to buy, right, because you took a copy of this recipe to the store with you? If you forgot, go buy ‘em. The rest can wait. When you get back, stir in these two:

2 tablespoon finely chopped garlic

(What is “finely” and how to you chop garlic anyway? I found this fresh and already smashed and mashed at the specialty grocer. Worked just fine and I didn’t have to wash my fingers ten times, which I would have had to do if I had tried to chop that garlic myself.)

4 teaspoons finely chopped ginger

(Don’t try. I saw the ginger root and put it carefully back. They have jars of this. What a relief.)

That’s it, the marinade is ready.

Now, unwrap the chicken on the paper next to the bowl of marinade. Look at them both, and wonder what to do next to bring them together? This may have been the most challenging part of the recipe for me.

What I did was put the chicken in a big zip-lock plastic bag. Then I carefully poured the marinade into the bag and zipped it shut and tight. Then I turned the bag over and pressed some of the dark liquid into the chicken pieces. Then, I put the bag of marinating chicken into a Pyrex baking dish (so if it leaked, it wouldn’t get out and make a mess). Next, I put the dish of bagged chicken into the refrigerator overnight and until the next afternoon. Every once in a while (not when I was sleeping, but the other times), I would pull the dish out of the fridge, set it on a counter, turn the bag over, give it a couple pats to distribute the marinade and carefully return it all to the cooling box.

The next afternoon for the evening dinner party, I preheated the oven to 375 degree Fahrenheit (about 200 Celsius), put aluminum foil on a baking sheet (for easier clean-up), placed the chicken pieces on the foiled pan, popped the chicken in the oven and cooked it all until Mary said the chicken was ready, which meant it was a rich crispy brown on the outside and fully done on the inside (she stuck a fork in and wiggled it to determine doneness), which was about 1 hour and 15 minutes for our oven, but it could be less or more for yours. (I found a “Mary” a helpful addition to the cooking phase of this recipe.)

Use hot pads, get it all on out of there and serve that Texas Czech Cajun Vietnamese Chicken as hot and fast as it can be put on the plates with the rice and green beans.

The rest is history. It was a success. The recipe has been requested, and this is what they’re getting. I can see you smiling.

I may not be Julia Child, but, owee, that Texas Czech Cajun Vietnamese Chicken sure tasted good.

Bon appétit,

Grandpa Jim