Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

This is an interesting dish which marks the virgin use of my new mortar and pestle.

I remember I once chatted with a food stall owner (he sells rice with Indonesian dishes) on how I was not able to make my curry as tasty as his. I told him I had used a premix, and I think I detected a snigger as he replied in a half-scornful voice that it’s a lot of hard work to get the paste right.

Now I know what he meant when he said “get the paste right”. This Dried Chicken Curry dish (also known as “Kari Ayam Kering” - “Kari” means “curry”, “Ayam” means “chicken” and I think “Kering” must then mean “dry”?!?) requires mincing and pounding of ingredients to meld the paste ingredients into one aromatic paste, which is then saute’d till fragrant and stir fried with the chicken.

For this cooking attempt, I didn’t use an electric blender to first mince the paste ingredients which was why the paste still had little bits of garlic and shallots visible. A mortar and pestle die-hard fan would probably shake her head and wave a finger of shame at me, since the paste should have well blended indistinguishable ingredients.

That aside, this post is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Kuchenlatein from Germany. Lemongrass is the herb, Dried Chicken Curry (Indonesian style) is the dish.

An ancient Malaysian legend has it that lemongrass was once considered a sacred herb by native tribes of Malaysia. The belief was that if warriors applied lemongrass balm on the skin, together with special incantations and prayers by a priest, they would be able to prevent a sword from penetrating their skin.

I don’t recommend that you rush to buy lemongrass to test this tribal belief. Instead, I would provide you with the Dried Chicken Curry (Kari Ayam Kering) recipe :):

Ingredients (Serves 4):

- 6 chicken thighs
- 4 tbsp yellow curry powder
- 1 pc galangal, 1 inch thick
- 1 stalk lemongrass (only use the whitish part)
- 2 tbsp cooking oil
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt

Paste Ingredients:

- 8 dried chillies (soaked in warm water for 15 mins)
- 8 small shallots
- 6 candlenuts (or 12 raw cashew nuts. I did not have candlenuts, so I used 2 raw cashew nuts for each candlenut requirement)
- 5 cloves garlic

Cooking Method:

1. Rub yellow curry powder on chicken thighs and set aside for 30 mins.

2. Cut galangal into thinner slices. Flatten galangal and lemongrass with handle end of knife or using a pestle.

3. Squeeze dry soaked chillies. Use electric blender to mince chillies with the rest of the paste ingredients, then grind with mortar and pestle. If you do not have an electric blender, then use knife to cut the chillies and paste ingredients into small, minced pieces before grinding.

4. Heat 2tbsp oil in wok. Medium heat. When oil is hot enough, saute ground paste until fragrant, then add galangal and lemongrass and stir fry for a few minutes.

5. Add marinated chicken and stir fry briefly to mix well with paste. Add coconut milk and cook over low heat. Add sugar and salt, cover wok and continue to simmer chicken using low heat until chicken is cooked (about 20-30 minutes).

6. Serve with plain white rice.

Cook’s Notes:

1. If chicken thighs are too thick, make small deep slits on the thickest part of the chicken before cooking so that the marinate and paste ingredients flavor can penetrate. This also allows for more even cooking of the chicken.

2. To check if chicken is cooked, pierce chicken with fork and only clear juices should flow out, or pry into the incisions to see if the meat is no longer pink.

3. For leftovers, cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Throw out the bones. Mix chicken meat well with gravy so that the spice paste does not burn. Reheat in oven (450F) for 10 mins, then under broil (450F) for another 5 minutes.

The morning that Melting Wok posted her Hainan Chicken Rice recipe, I showed it to J and asked him if he likes to eat Chicken Rice - with roasted chicken instead of white-skinned chicken. I got a VERY enthusiastic nod and I think I caught a bit of drool from the side of his mouth.

It is a breeze to cook Hainanese Chicken rice with Prima Taste Premix, but making it from scratch is new to me so I told him “I can follow this recipe… but no guarantee ok?” When I say “no guarantee” to him, it means I may or have screwed up the recipe and the hidden connotation is “please still finish up everything.”

Since I was only cooking for two, I bought two big chicken leg quarters and halved all of Melting Wok’s recipe ingredients. The only dubious ingredient I had was thick sweet soy sauce. I knew what Melting Wok was referring to, but I just couldn’t find it in Ranch 99. I even resorted to shaking a few bottles of soy sauce to see if they had a thicker consistency than the regular dark (savory) soy sauce. In the end I went to another Asian supermarket and got a dodgy brand - I had no choice - it was the only brand sold there.

I also have a problem visualizing the ingredient measurements in ounces. What is one ounce of garlic? So I guesstimated the ingredient measurements and equated one ounce to one tablespoonful. Ha! No wonder I had to tell J “no guarantee”.

Because the chicken leg quarters were quite thick (it was from a fat lazy chicken) I made a few deep incisions on the non-skin side of each chicken leg quarter so that the marinate can seep through. The secondary purpose is that the inside of this big fat chicken leg quarter can cook faster and I won’t risk the skin burning but the inside not cooked.

Oh! I had trimmed off the fats from the chicken leg quarter, but threw them into the pan when pan-frying the chicken. I wanted to get as much oil out as possible (so sinful right?) so that I can use that to stir fry the rice with the flavoring ingredients (ginger, shallots, garlic) later. Chicken Rice is supposed to have some oil so that it’s Fragrant Chicken Rice. There isn’t such a thing as Healthy Chicken Rice. You might as well eat plain white rice.

I was very happy that the chicken skin browned very nicely. I drizzled a bit of the sauce mix (that has ginger, shallots, garlic) onto the chicken for photography purposes.

I had to add a little bit more light soy sauce to the chicken during the meal. The chicken tasted a little different from what I was used to, but on the whole it turned out fine. I didn’t make the chili sauce as I was tired after pan-frying the chicken and preparing the rice. I still said “no guarantee” to J and he still finished everything. :)

For the full Hainanese Chicken Rice Malaysian Style recipe, please refer to Melting Wok.

I wanted to cook chicken with spaghetti the other day so I went around surfing for a chicken spaghetti recipe, but all I could find were stuff on chicken casseroles. I was thinking of something simple like my stir fried spaghetti with black peppered beef, or my spaghetti with shrimp and anchovies.

I did think of just adding salt and pepper to the chicken thighs and then baking it in the oven. Then I thought of pan-frying them to get a nice brown skin. I also thought of cutting them into smaller pieces and stir frying them with light soy sauce but decided that wouldn’t go very well with spaghetti.

See how fickle I am? So what? I have the biological right to be fickle heh! I am after all a woman. And one with the hormone levels out of wack at the moment.

Finally I decided on a stir fried spring onion chicken dish to go with plain white rice. Here’s the quick and easy Chinese recipe.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

- 2 chicken thighs
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 stalks spring onion
- a few slices ginger
- 1/2 tsp minced garlic
- 1 tbsp rice wine
- 1 pc rock sugar
- 1/4 cup water or chicken broth

Cooking method:

1. Debone chicken and cut into pieces. Marinate with dark soy sauce and set aside for about 15 minutes.

2. Heat up 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a wok. While doing so, cut spring onion on the bias into one and a half inch pieces. Cut ginger into slices.

3. Stir fry garlic and chicken until chicken changes color. Set aside.

4. Stir fry ginger and spring onions until fragrant. Add chicken, rice wine, rock sugar and water (or chicken broth). Mix well, cover wok and allow to braise over low heat for about 10 minutes.

Luckily for me, my husband is not one whereby he tunes his taste buds according to what I tell him I will cook for dinner. You know… how sometimes you’ll say let’s go for Kentucky Fried Chicken or something… then you keep thinking about that fried chicken you are going to eat soon. I don’t know about you, but my taste buds can be “programmed” and if you suddenly change the menu, my taste buds get a bit disappointed that they have to be “re-programmed”.

So this is my “How the chicken spaghetti became a stir fried spring onion with rice” story. And everyone continues to live happily ever after.

This is the third time I am making Hainanese Chicken Rice and I am proud to say I finally got the chicken texture I desire.

Usually when I first attempt a recipe, I would follow the recipe instructions lock stock and barrel. Then I would adjust the cooking technique according to my own experience and substitute the ingredients according to my own taste.

For this Hainanese Chicken Rice, of course I had help from my favorite Prima Taste premix. The first time I made this, I used a small whole chicken. I decided that it was too tedious to cut the chicken into its parts. Besides, I am not too keen on breast meat, although that is supposed to be the healthier part of the chicken. The packet instructions also said to simmer the chicken in the stock for half an hour. Because the stock is made from a packet of Prima Paste, it kind of discolored the chicken meat and the end result was that the chicken meat did not look whitish, like what you find in authentic Hainanese Chicken Rice.

This time round, I got a good tip from Chubby Hubby: “Bring a deep stockpot, filled with enough water to cover the chicken, to the boil. Lower the chicken into the pot—it should be completely immersed. Immediately turn off the heat, cover, and leave to stand for 1 hour. At 15-minute intervals, lift the chicken and drain the water from the cavity to ensure that the chicken cooks inside as well. At the 30-minute mark, reheat the water almost to boiling point, then turn the heat off. Never having been allowed to boil, the chicken should be cooked to succulent and juicy perfection.” That was the statement that caught my eye and made me see light!

I used 4 chicken thighs this time, and using the great tip above as well as using the rest of Prima Taste Premix, I got it just right this time - chicken cooked to succulent and juicy perfection! BINGO!

So sad that summer is over. With daylight saving, sunset seems so early. I had so much fun barbecueing chicken wings at the beach during summer. This three-ingredient soy sauce chicken was the most used form of marinate for my chicken wings. Overnight marinating would infuse more flavor into the chicken, but for this time round, I only marinated the chicken wings for 15 minutes or so. It still tasted great, eating in the comforts of home.

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