Tangy Chilli Chicken

My housemates can be so weird sometimes. Recently, Justin asked me (with some horror) "Is that a chilli with wings?!". It was actually a dragonfly pendant.

...

It seems as if he has chillies on the brain. I am running out of names for his dishes... First there was Chilli Chicken, then Sweet Chilli Chicken, then Sweet Chilli Chicken Stirfry and now another one! And they wonder why I always offer to cook (come on... the monotony of their dishes, plus I get to skip out of the washing! ;) I'm there!) Anyway, here we go!


What you need:
3 boneless chicken drumsticks, cut into bite-sized pieces
Cornflour, for coating chicken
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Vegetable oil, for frying
Thai sweet chilli sauce, as much as you like
1 dried chilli, chopped
1 shallot, sliced thinly
2 teaspoons sugar
Rind of 1 orange (Justin just grated the skin)

What you do:

1. Combine the cornflour with the baking soda and mix well. Coat the chicken pieces.
2. Combine the sesame and vegetable oils and heat in a wok. Once hot, add the chicken pieces and fry until golden brown. (shallow-frying)
   
3. Remove the chicken pieces and set aside. Discard the oil.
4. Add the dried chilli and shallot and fry until the shallot is softened. Add the Thai sweet chilli sauce, sugar and orange rind.
   
5. Simmer for about 2 minutes. Add the chicken, mix well to cover in the sauce. Serve immediately.

This was a slight improvement over his earlier dishes. Usually, he would add the stirfry sauce into the chicken WITHOUT removing the oil.*shiver* I told him that you could get crispy chicken pieces by frying it in cornflour, but neglected to mention that you actually remove the chicken from the oil. I would've thought that was commonsense (right??? with that much oil!) but apparently not. It was only when I pointed it out recently that he actually removed the oil. Sigh. What are you supposed to do with people like this???

On a side note, we actually decided to put in the baking soda in an "experiment" to see if the chicken would be any crispier. They read that somewhere. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. :P The chicken goes soft almost as soon as it is added to the sauce. We were hoping to get the chicken crisp under the sticky sauce though. Gives a really good texture! I managed to do that back home, but for some reason its not working here. It turned golden-brown better than before, for some reason, but still turned soft in the sauce. Perhaps we need to deep-fry the chicken instead? Oh well...

Hadi and Justin really liked the orange rind. They think it gave a pleasant "tang". To be honest, I didn't like it much. It was a bit too bitter for me. There was also a rather strange orange-y sweet taste with the chicken. Justin added it because he wants to do "something the restaurants always do", and was rather proud of it. Hadi liked it well enough. I just don't like mixing my food groups. ;) Chicken is chicken, fruit is fruit, chocolate is chocolate. Oh well, up to you, I guess. If you like lemon chicken, you would probably like this as well. I actually liked his Sweet Chilli Chicken dish better, among the four chilli dishes (so far!) that he's cooked. Without the orange rind, this would probably have tasted quite similar to that. I don't like the orange rind. I mentioned this point over and over again. I hope he gets the hint ;)

Quote of the day: Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.