Recipe: Caramel Chicken

I'm going to share this amazing caramel chicken recipe that Ellie of Almost Bourdain put up earlier this year. I used pretty much everything that is listed in the recipe but modified it a little. If you've noticed, I've also used her recipe in the previous post for a chicken dish.

I'm addicted to chicken at the moment because I realized that the biodynamic meat shop that I always get my pork and lamb from sells chicken parts too! And the chicken has this beautiful corn yellow colour to it!Not to mention, they taste very different from the free range kinds. Slightly expensive but I am not complaining for 70 percent of my budget is spent on food. 30 percent is spent on bills and transport.

Oh and before I give away the recipe, I don't know if you guys know it, but don't ever rinse your chicken under cold water. I've read it on Associated Content or was it Shine! Yahoo that doing so will not clean up your chicken.

However, not to worry, there are two ways of preparing chicken before cooking it:

1. Just boil a pot of water and then dump the chicken into it for 30 seconds and turn off the heat. Let it sit in the boiling water for about 3-5 minutes. You'll not only remove blood from it but also internal fats. :) After that, you rinse it under cold water and remove the external fats. Trust me, it's easier to remove fats this way than going through it with your knife! They are easier to cut too!

2. Brown the chicken in a little oil and set aside. When you set aside, you'll realize that it oozes water tinged with blood. Also, fats will be rendered out during the cooking process

Caramel Chicken

Recipes: Caramel Chick! en (Serv es 2)

Ingredients:

A:
-3 chicken thigh fillets, diced
-3 drops of sesame oil

B:
-2 drops of sesame oil + 1.5 teaspoon of olive oil
-2 clove of garlic, finely sliced
-3 spring onions, chopped into 1cm lengths
-1 capsicum, seed removed and chopped into 1cm by 1cm squares
-One teaspoon of Chinese rice wine

C:
-30 ml of dark soy sauce (About 3 tablespoons)
-50 grammes of raw sugar/ rock sugar ( I used rock sugar)
-30 ml of fish sauce
-1 teaspoon of gochujang (Korean chili bean paste)

D:
-1 cup of frozen peas
-A pinch of black pepper

Instructions:

1. Rub the thigh fillets with sesame oil. Heat up small enough pot for chicken, brown chicken and set it aside. Drain the liquid from the chicken. Pour away the fat from the pan.

2. Heat up the same small pot with medium gas. Add vegetable oil, garlic and spring onions. Stir for 1 minute or until fragrant.

3. Add in chicken and capsicums again. Stir until capsicums are slightly softened. Add Chinese rice wine for sweeter capsicums.

4. Add in all of the ingredients from list C. Bring to boil. And then let it simmer for around 20 minutes, with pot uncovered so that the sauce will be reduced to a thick consistency.

5. Turn on high heat and add frozen peas. Stir for about 2 minutes and reduce the heat. Let the sauce thicken a little more. Turn off heat. Add pepper. Stir and plate it up. Serve with rice and Asian greens. :)


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Before May kicked April out of the big picture, I had the weirdest weekend. On Saturday, I was as happy as a bird during spring.I went down to the CBD for coffee with friends that I've been dying to meet and learnt so much from their experiences! On Sunday, however, I was having a nervous breakdown and lamenting over why my neuropsychology lecturers are so incompetent when it comes to their notes. Seriously? Recycling first year psych material and copy-pasting screenshots of research journals?!