Szechuan Chicken

Despite the mysterious appearance of this sign on our fridge, my dear housemates Hadi and Justin have been coming to me to take pictures of "beautiful" food. Hadi, in particular, has been trying hard to improve the presentation of his meals.

On Tuesday, Hadi cooked the Buttermilk Chicken...again. AND he wants to do it .... again. He really really likes it. Here's how his version looks like. It was quite ok, except it was a bit too spicy for me. He added more dried chillies, and more milk (just normal one) to increase the amount of the gravy.

Justin, on the other hand, was very proud of his dinner last night. It was an European-style breakfast, so....its a bit out. But it looked quite good, I admit. What did me and Hadi have? Tex's chicken, but more about that next week, heheh. ;)

Anyway, that's just past news. Today's meal was Szechuan chicken. It was deceiving. Szechuan cuisine is usually very spicy, but for this recipe, the spiciness was barely noticeable. It was nevertheless yummy though (and the not-so-spicy makes it perfect for me! :P) so here's the recipe! ^^

What you need:
450g chicken fillet, sliced and seasoned with chicken stock (powder)
oil for frying
corn flour
1/2 tsp chinese five-spice powder
4 dried chillies. wiped clean
1 large onion, quartered
2 slices young ginger - I used ginger powder instead, since we're out of ginger
1 stalk spring onion, sliced

For spicy sauce (mix well):
2 teaspoon chicken stock
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar
ground black peppercorn - use Szechuan peppercorns if you can find them

For thickening sauce (mix well):
1/2 tablespoon cornflour
1 tablespoon water
1-3 drops sesame oil

What to do:

1. Heat oil in pan over a high heat. COmbine cornflour and five-spice powder. Coat marinated chicken in the flour micture and fry (deep or shallow fry, as before) until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.
2. In the remaining oil, deep-fry dried chillies for 1/2 minute. Careful not to burn! Remove and leave 3 tablespoons of oil in the wok/pan.
3. Stirfry ginger and onion until onion is soft. Add ginger with the sauces if using ginger powder instead of fresh. Add both spicy sauce and thickening sauce. Bring to a boil.
4. Once it thickens, add chicken, dried chillies and spring onions. Although it doesn't say, I sliced up the chillies (after frying) to give the dish more flavour. Mix well. Stir fry for 30 seconds and dish out. Serve with rice.

And you're done :D The boys seemed to like this dish, so everything's good. Hadi said that it had a certain taste that was quite de-lish! For him, it was plate-lickin' good, haha. ;) The fact that the chicken was crunchy under the sauce was really nice as well. I should do that more often :P I actually got this recipe for the back of Knorr's Chicken Stock (with no added MSG! *gasp*), and I find it quite surprising that this kind of recipe actually tastes yummy, considering the source, haha :P Oh well, as long as it works, yea? ;)