Chinese Fried Chicken

While I did not follow the recipe exactly (I never do, at most I try to get the right ingredients), I was delighted to realize that corn flour and plain flour make the chicken tender yet delicately crispy. Yumz

The ginger adds a piquant kick to the chicken. I like ginger and did not have a electric dicer, so I just cut the ginger thinly and mixed it into the chicken. Without removing the ginger, I deep fried the chicken. This recipe gets a 5/5 from me~!

Marinade
7.5 cm ginger of juice (discard the pulp)
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons soya sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
ground pepper
salt

Coating
1/4 or 35g all purpose flour
1/4 or 35g cornstarch

Marinate the chicken overnight then coat the chicken next day and fry.

[source: Easy Chinese Recipes by Bee Yinn Low]

Lazy Silvester lunch

Just wolfberries, scallops and huaishan were harmed in the making of this gruel....

Ringing in the new Year with Samsui Ginger Chicken

Samsui women refer to the hardworking women who emigrated from China (mostly from the Canton region) between 1920s to 1949, to Singapore to earn a living working backbreaking jobs in hard labor industries such as construction or as domestic workers. They usually never marry and often live in cliques, looking after each other. At one point there used to be about 200,000 them in Singapore, contributing to the development and prosperity we enjoy today. Now there remains about 100-200 of them in their 80s and 90s. 

From the Liu Kang Exhibition

I saw it fitting to finish out the last meal of 2011 with a dish dedicated to these hardworking women, who were easily identified by their red hats as they toiled under the blazing sun. This dish, samsui ginger chicken, is a very popular dish at Soup Restaurant which extols it as a " traditional Samsui dish consumed by the Samsui women in Chinatown. Due to their low income, the Samsui Ginger Chicken was only consumed once a year, during the Chinese New Year" on their website. 

Samsui Ginger chicken is eaten with minced ginger and lettuce.

My version is different from Soup Restaurant which serves the chicken steamed. Mine is boiled with garlic, ginger, onions and soya sauce, before I dunked it in cold water to stop the cooking process (and giving the chicken more bite). I serve this with cold lettuce (you must wash it in cold water then dump it inside the fridge). The ginger is more difficult to make, because it requires minced ginger and I don't have a electric dicer *faints*. I had to mince it by hand.

The pain I go through sometimes...

This is where I became a bit confused. I was supposed to make samsui chicken right? Because I was preoccupied with thoughts about work, I absent-mindedly poured in Shaoxing wine (which we use in another recipe for Three Cup Chicken, my other specialty). OOPS~!

Surprisingly it tasted still pretty yummy, and the wine gave the ginger a kick. I poured in some stock (especially the oil floating on top) that I had from boiling the chicken then dumped ginger, garlic, soya sauce, sugar and sesame seed oil (and the wine *zzz*).

I accompany this dish with tomatoes, lettuce, and a dish of finely julienned chilli in soya sauce for an additional kick. How you eat this is, take a lettuce leaf, put a slice of tomato, then dunk the chicken in the chilli (pick up a slice of chilli if you dare) and then the ginger mixture. Wrap and oh nom nom nom nom.

A simple dinner - oyako don

Had a simple mum mum at my favorite izakaya at Cuppage Plaza after Singapore Art Museum. Oyako don. A simple yet heart-warming dish which is easily digested after that horrendous tunch (tea-and-lunch) Bär and I had earlier in the afternoon.

Starchy Corn soup with Chicken 甜玉米羹

I made Thai mango salad. I think the uncle at the market conned me of my $$. How can two tiny raw mangoes cost more than a big ripe mango? *sulks* I ban the uncle.

I overdid the chilli though, and the heat of the mango salad struck our tongues badly. This will teach me a lesson putting three chillis into the salad. Ow.

I remembered fondly the stallholder at one of my ala maters who used to cook a mean corn soup. Love their hot starchy chicken with corn soup. It is a no-brainer and takes a really short time to cook. You just need to dump a can of starchy corn into a pot of chicken stock and chicken slices (I like having dark meat in the soup). When it boils, you just pour in some corn starch to thicken the soup before drizzling some beaten eggs into the soup. Pepper then drink drink drink.

Christmas Lunch

A hot bowl of clam chowder on a cold Dezember Christmas afternoon after opening presents. Elijah, my new toy penguin felt the cold too. =D

I think I may want to make German onion bread next week. Yes I know I can get the generic Gardenia bread at S$2.00 but what is the fun in that? I love pounding and kneading the hell of the dough while thinking "very fondly" of a few people.

白萝卜汤

Clockwise from left to right. Tomato with minced pork quick stir fry, radish and carrot soup, thai-style fish and turnip rice.

I think that 白萝卜 tastes best with the rich flavors of dried seafood (so I chucked in some baby dried scallops, which I bought a box of at S$12.60, and dried cuttlefish, but B1 complained that he missed the flavor of pork ribs. Some people just cannot be satisfied.

I think the sour mango added a nice contrast to the fish, because one would expect those green slices to be salted pickle, but it turned out to be the tangy green mangoes. I also swapped out yam for turnip in the "yam" rice. Usually the way Chinese do it would be to fry the ingredients then pour it onto cooked rice before mixing and eating. My style is more paella-like, which is to fry the rice together with the rest of the ingredients then pour in the stock and cover till cooked.

白萝卜汤 is considered a "cooling" soup because of the white radish which can also improve your appetite, digestion and prevent coughs. So technically this soup was better drunk during the hot summer months. Haha. OOpz.