Chicken with Spicy Sauce

Sichuan Provence in China is known for its spicy, numbing and flavorful dishes. Like I promised yesterday, here is a recipe that will use up the other half of our cooked chicken. I really like the simple steps to create this dish and the chicken comes out salty, sweet and spicy. This recipe and the chili oil comes from the cookbook "Land of Plenty", which is written in English.



Serves 4

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 0 minutes

Ingredients:
Half of a cooked chicken, about 2 pounds, cooled
1 teaspoon salt
8-10 scallions, white part only, thinly sliced
2 tablespoon and 2 teaspoon white sugar
6 tablespoon light soy sauce
6-12 tablespoons chili oil with chili flakes or store-bought chili oil
4 teaspoons sesame oil
1-2 teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan pepper (optional)

Tips:

1. The chili oil adds a smooth texture and a fiery flavor to the chicken, if you can't find chili oil in your local store, here is a recipe to make it at home.
2. If you don't have cooked chicken on hand, please cook the chicken according to my earlier post Cold Cut Chicken
   

Instruction:

1. Cut the chicken into slices and sprinkle with salt and ground Sichuan pepper if using.
   
2. In a small bowl, dissolve the sugar into the soy sauce, then add the chili oil and sesame oil.
3. Put the chicken slices, scallion slices and sauce in a large serving bowl, mix well and serve.

Chili Oil:
Makes 1 pint

1/2 cup chile flakes
2 cups peanut or corn oil

1. Put the chili flakes into a glass jar with lids.
2. Heat the oil over high heat until smoking
3. Remove oil from heat, let it cool for about 10 minutes, to 225-250 degrees. Pour onto the chilies, and stir couple times. Put lid on the jar and store it in a cool, shady place.

Cold Cut Chicken

This is a famous Cantonese dish, the finishing chicken comes out light, with tender meat and crispy skin. The dip for the chicken is packed with flavor which kicks the chicken up another notch. This recipe comes from Cantonese chef Hu's online posts.



Serves 4

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:
A whole chicken, about 4-5 pounds
2 tablespoon finely sliced scallion
2 tablespoon finely diced ginger
8 tablespoon peanut oil or olive oil
salt to taste, about 1/2-1 tablespoon
20 cubes of ice


Tips:

1. If there are left over chicken, there is another spicy dip that can be made to change things up a bit.
2. The finer dice of the scallion and ginger, the better. Just make sure they are sliced/diced and not chopped, as chopping would make them mushy.
3. It is very important to have the right water temperature when cooking the chicken, because we want to simmer the chicken so it has a tender texture.

Instruction:

1. In a deep soup pot that will fit a whole chicken. Put in enough water that can cover the whole chicken, bring to a boil over high heat. While water is boiling, clean the chicken, if using a whole chicken, take out the necks and organs from chicken cavity, you can keep them if you like. When water is boiling, submerge the chicken into the water. Cover, bring the water back to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 40-50 minutes.
2. The water now should be around 175 to 185 degrees, another way to tell is there will be bubbles lazily rise to the surface. If using a whole chicken, every 15 minutes while simmering, take the chicken out of the water, and quickly dump the water inside chicken's cavity back in the pot, then put the chicken back in the pot. This is to help to keep the temperature inside and outside of the chicken the same.
   
3. The chicken is done when cutting through the thickest part of the chicken thigh and the meat inside is no longer pink.
4. While chicken is cooking, prepare the dip. Put the prepared green onion and ginger in a small bowl, add in salt to taste. Heat oil in a wok to 175 degrees over high heat and let it cool for a minute then pour it on top of the green onion and ginger.
5. During the last couple minutes of cooking, put ice and enough cold water to submerge the chicken in a deep bowl/pot.
6. When chicken is done, put chicken into the ice bath and run cold water on it until chicken is cold. Cut up the chicken and serve it with the dip on the side. Taste test with a small piece of chicken with the dip to see if more salt is needed.
   

Fried Rice with Bacon

This is a moist/soft version of the fried rice. In earlier post I did a Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage, in this version I've substitute the Chinese sausage for something that is much more likely to be found in an American supermarket, and that is Bacon! This is the first difference, and couple other differences are that the fried rice in this version comes out more moist instead of the crispy texture in the previous version and there are additional mushroom and five spice flavor. Please don't worry if you can't find five spice powder, just half the five spice powder amount called for and substitute cinnamon powder.


Serves 2

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 strips of bacon
5 button mushroom, sliced
1 tablespoon of Chinese rice wine or dried sherry
5 cups of cooked rice, from the day before, loosened by using a spatula
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon of five spice powder, or 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
1 scallion, green part only thinly sliced

Tips:

1. Five spice powder or cinnamon powder is very strong, we only want to add a tiny bit to give our fried rice an enhanced flavor and at the same time not overpowering it.
2. Generally long grain rice are better for making fried rice because it has less moisture than the short grain rice. If you like the crispy texture of the fried rice, please refer to my early post Fried Rice with Chinese sausage.
   

Instruction:

1. Separate the egg whites from the yolk, and beat the yolk
2. In a medium sized pan, heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil over medium heat, add in the bacon, cook until crispy (about 8 minutes), turning occasionally. Once cooked, place bacon on a paper-towel to drain the grease. Cut length-wise into thin slices.
   
3. Discard the bacon grease, put in the sliced onion. When onion is soft (about 5 mintues), add in the sliced mushroom and wine, when mushroom is soft and the wine is almost evaporated (about 3 minutes), then add in the egg white and cook for 1 minute.
   
4. Meanwhile, in a wok, heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil over medium heat, when the oil is hot but not smoking, add in the egg yolk, let it cook in the oil for about 30 seconds, then break it into pieces with your ladle or spatula.
5. Add in the rice, using the back of the ladle to press the clumps of rice against the wok to break it apart. The goal here is to break up the rice into individual grains. Keep stir-fry and press the rice, and toss the rice and egg regularly to help this process, until rice is sperated into individual grains (about 10-15 minutes) .
   
6. Now add in the cooked onion and mushroom mixture into the rice, add in the soy sauce, five spice powder, and salt to taste. Stir fry until everything is mixed together and turn off the heat. Add in the bacon and scallions then serve.

Fried rice with Chinese sausage

Fried rice is one of the staples in a Chinese restaurant. Every Chinese restaurant I've been to have had at least one version of it, sometimes several different versions. For picking my first recipe on this blog, I figure it has to be a common and popular dish that is easy to do, what is better than fried rice?

Like I mentioned earlier, there are many different versions of fried rice. The variations between them are the ingredients and the cooking method. This version of fried rice I've learned from a Chinese post on the Internet and it has instantly becoming my favorite version. What I love about this version is once finished, every rice grain is separated from each other, and mixed with golden egg pieces. The "mouth feel"/texture of the individual rice grains is filling, almost crunchy, which I prefer much more over the soggy texture. This dish is also very healthy too (). Okay, without further ado, here is the recipe for fried rice.

Fried rice with Chinese sausage

Serves 2

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
2 eggs
Half of a medium onion, thinly sliced
1 links of Chinese sausage, thinly sliced
5 cups of cooked rice from the day before, loosensed by using a spetula
1 scallion, green part only thinly sliced

Ingredients from left to right: cooked rice,
onion, Chinese sausage, eggs and green onion

Instruction:

1. Separate the egg whites from the yolk, and beat the yolk
2. In a medium sized pan, heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil over medium heat, add in the onion. When onion is soft (about 5 mintues), add in the Chinese sausage and continue to cook for 5 minutes, then add in the egg white and cook for 1 minute.
   
3. Meanwhile, in a wok, heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil over medium heat, when the oil is hot but not smoking, add in the egg yolk, let it cook in the oil for about 30 seconds, then break it into pieces with your ladle or spatula.
4. Add in the rice, using the back of the ladle to press the clumps of rice against the wok to break it apart. The goal here is to break up the rice into individual grains so we can have the crispy texture. Keep stir-fry and press the rice, and toss the rice and egg regularly to let the moisture built-up escape. When rice is sperated into individual grains and if you slow down, you can see the rice grains are jumping on the edge of the wok, then this means the rice is done, about 10-15 minutes.
   
5. Now add in the cooked ingrindents from step 3 into the rice, and add salt to taste. Stir fry until everything is mixed together and turn off the heat. Add in the scallions and serve.