Roast Hoisin Chicken

For all my complaining of how often Justin and Hadi use Hoisin Sauce, they actually hardly ever use it. Well, they haven't used it in awhile anyway - the fresh jar we bought this year has very very little left in it, which indicates just how much they (particular Justin) have been using it. The thing is, hoisin sauce is so strong that you get tired of it pretty quickly, or at least I do. :P Because it is so strong, its flavour almost always overwhelms anything else you put in, no matter how little you used. Here, Justin tries to use the hoisin to "complement" the other flavours, instead of just having hoisin flavour all the way through. So... here we go! :D

What you need:
Chicken thighs (or any other piece)
1/2 tablespoon hoisin sauce
3 teapoons BBQ sauce
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Crispy fried shallots

What you do:

1. Mix the hoisin and BBQ sauces, honey and the fried shallots together, and rub all over the chicken pieces. Leave to marinate at least 30 minutes if you can, then rub the sesame oil over the chicken pieces.
2. Meanwhile, preheat an oven to 190 C. Once hot, put the chicken in and cook until juices run clear, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serve immediately, with the juices from the pan.

Its the weirdest thing. Whenever we have roast chicken, somehow or other, Hadi and my chicken pieces are always always slightly undercooked so we would have to pop them into the microwave for about a minute to cook it completely (chicken should never be undercooked, unlike beef ;) ). But Justin's chicken is always perfectly done and tender. And the annoying thing is, he ALWAYS allows us to pick the pieces first. Either he's very lucky, or we're very unlucky, hehe.

But anyway, like I "hinted" above, we could not taste the BBQ sauce (as well as the sesame oil) at all. It was just hoisin hoisin and ooh, more hoisin! Its not a bad thing, after all hoisin sauce is quite tasty, but it means Justin did not achieve what he set out to do, hehe. He said that he'll try to reduce the amount of hoisin sauce next time, but I actually think that the problem here is that he doesn't have enough BBQ sauce. 3 teaspoons is almost equal to half a tablespoon, and to push down the hoisin flavour a little, you need much less of it than the competing ingredient. So if you want to try this, I would advise putting in more BBQ sauce as well. ;)

Apart from that, the chicken was really very good! There was a slight hint of honey, which complemented the almost non-existent BBQ flavour nicely. It was, of course, sweet overall because of the hoisin sauce. The crispy shallots were also a nice surprise - there would be little shallot bombs all over the chicken. Very tasty. :D One thing he could have done was marinate it - he didn't so this at all, which was a shame. The flavour was nice, but it didn't permeate through the whole chicken piece. But of course, there was the yummy gravy to mop up, so all wasn't lost, hehe.

For dessert, we had a blueberry pie - a survivor from our New Year's dinner last time. We've actually been having desserts for the past 2 days - and will be continuing to have more the next few days, unfortunately, hehe. Not good for the waistline, particularly after the holidays. :P The pie was from Marks & Spencers, but Justin commented that it didn't look like it was bought from M&S. True, it wasn't as classy as something you would expect from there, but it still wasn't too bad looking, I suppose. One bite though, and I think the boys were convinced of its "quality". Justin particularly liked the pastry crust, since it wasn't so "crumbly". I actually prefer my pastry less firm, and more melt-in-your-mouth-y, but oh well, different people, different opinions. Hadi, of course, loved it because it was sweet. The filling was sweet, the pastry was sweet, the glaze was sweet. :P On the other hand, I'm not all that big a fan of fruity desserts, so I didn't like it all that much, but hey! The other two liked it, which means that it must be good (although the both of them are notorious for eating anything :P). So if you're in the UK, you might want to give this a try. ;)

Quote of the day: We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.