Chicken with Spring Onion Sauce

My two housemates have an irrational fear of spring onions. Late last year, in one of our dinners, the spring onions that were thrown in for garnishing tasted very very very bad. Like bangas (expired) soap, if you can imagine that. From then on, Hadi and Justin have refused to use spring onions in their cooking, heh. Whenever I ask them to buy spring onions for me from the supermarket, they always glower at me, so I always change my mind. I finally used it for the first time this year in the Cheese and Onion Quiche - and they accused me of tricking them, since it was "hidden" under the cheese! It didn't taste bad at all! It tastes of normal fresh spring onions, but they claim they are scarred for life.

...

But anyway, from that bunch of spring onions I used for the quiche, I still had quite a few stalks left, so I decided to use it to make this dish. :D Coincidentally, the boys were out for tae kwon do, so they didn't have to see me cooking with it, hehe. So, here we go!

What you need:
Three chicken drumsticks/thighs, boneless

Marinade:
1 inch fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 teaspoons roasted Szechuan peppercorns
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar

Sauce:
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 inch fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon vinegar
150ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
3 spring onions, finely sliced

Cornflour, for coating
Oil, for frying

What you do:

1. Mix the ingredients for the marinade together, except for the soy sauce, and grind in a mortar and pestle, until it makes a smooth paste. Add in the soy sauce and mix well. Add the chicken, and rub in the mixture (with your hands) as well as you can. Marinate in the refrigerator for 2-4 hours.
2. After the marination, coat the chicken lightly in the cornflour. Heat one tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok, and add the chicken pieces (in a single layer). Fry until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through - about 10-15 minutes. Place on a plate and set aside.
   
3. To the same wok, add another tablespoon of oil, and fry the garlic and ginger (from the sauce ingredients) for about 2 minutes.
4. Add in all the rest of the ingredients except for the spring onions, and mix well to combine. Simmer for about 3 minutes, or until slightly syrupy. Add the spring onions and simmer for another minute.
5. Add the chicken pieces, and roll to coat in the sauce. Simmer for about a minute or two, or until heated through. Serve immediately. Cut into slices if you wish.

The chicken itself looked very good, even without the sauce. There were little green bits of spring onion stuck within the flour, and looked so tasty, hehe. As always, I wasn't sure whether the sauce would taste nice (scarred from the Honey Garlic Chicken attempt ;) ) but Hadi tasted it and pronounced it okay, hehe. Add the chicken, and voila! Chicken with spring onion sauce :D The boys were surprised at how little time it took (after they came back, that is). I was surprised myself, since I was cooking for less than an hour, which is relatively unusual. Of course, I marinated the chicken this morning, so that's less work, I guess.

The chicken itself was yummy~ Another nice surprise, hehe. The boys really liked it, so much so that Justin even urged me not to take a PhD and open a restaurant, or something, while Hadi suggested doing a catering business in Brunei! HAHAHA. Of course, they weren't all that serious, but its nice to hear they enjoyed it all the same. Even if it DOES have a lot of spring onions.

Then again, when I pointed out to them that see, spring onions are not really all that bad, they did an abrupt about-face and said,"Well, we're still not using spring onions in cooking." Although they don't mind eating it, it seems. After all, the sauce had a lot of spring onion-y taste. But Hadi claimed that the spring onion tasted "a little strange" while Justin (who was, moments ago saying how yummy it was) said that the spring onions doesn't go all that well with the sauce. Maybe they really are (psychologically) scarred from last year's incident, after all? hahaha

Hadi, of course, loved this dish since it was slightly sweet. Not overpoweringly so, though, hehe. Justin was really interested in dissecting what was in the sauce, and was particularly curious about the "role" of the tomato ketchup. What can I say, it was on a whim, hehe. It adds a little depth to the flavour though. (You know how soy sauce always seems a little empty? At least it does to me.) The ginger flavour was a bit too strong for me, but I put a bit too much in, anyway. The boys definitely liked it though. As Hadi ALWAYS says, he likes his food strong. :P (At this point, Justin would crack a "joke" about food going to the gym. Um, right.) Although its weird... When you say spring onion sauce, in my head, I have this image of a green sauce, hehe. Doesn't sound very appetising though :P This one is more of a reddish colour, as you can see from the picture. A much better colour for a sauce, hehe.

Quote of the day: The rule of cooking is, if at first you don't succeed, order a pizza.