Poultry – Shananigans Blog

Three Cup Chicken – San Bei Ji

It’s been almost two years since I’ve written a blog post. Where did that time go? I have my excuses. With Shane and Shan relocating from China to Ireland, weekends have been dominated by spending time with Dermot, now aged 4, and his little brother Conan just 9 months old. It’s hard to find time to blog when two little ones are careering around the house, even if Dermot is a willing sous chef and loves to help his Nai Nai cook. Yes, beyond my wildest imaginings, Dermot loves to hop up on a step beside me or his Mum and have jobs to do. It’s not just Chinese food he loves, it’s the magic of making pasta from scratch, the fun of identifying different herbs and spices, the pleasure of seasoning a dish from a height and maybe, sometimes, there might even be dessert…
Meanwhile in Australia Caitlyn is 22 months old and her baby brother is due to arrive around her second birthday. To her I’m “Granny” at the end of a FaceTime connection or for short joyous visits here in Dublin or in Sydney. Being a long distant grandparent never gets easy but it has it’s wonderful moments.
And then there was the “grand projet” – after over 30 years of trying to cook in a cramped kitchen space we finally bit the bullet last June and extended the back of the house to create the kitchen of my dreams. So after 5 months of living in “a squash and a squeeze” while the building works were underway, I now have my island, a gas wok burner, a walk in pantry and a lovely light airy space in which to rediscover my cooking mojo. It’s also a wonderful communal space where several of us can prep and cook food side by side or where Shane and Shan and other family members can gather on stools to chat over a glass or two while I cook. Sometimes I just hand over the cooking to them and wait happily for it to be served.

I had almost given up on writing but for the occasional nudge on line or in person from those friends who still dip into this blog from time to time and enjoy the recipes. You know who you are. Thank you for your patience. And then over the Chinese New Year I attended a masterclass in Chinese cooking by Kwanghi Chan and Mei Chin of slaintchi.com in Cooks Academy and I was bitten by the bug once again.
So below is a recipe for Three Cup Chicken that I served as part of Dermot’s 4th birthday meal earlier this month. I first tasted a variation of this dish in a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Sydney and since then I’ve been trying to track down an authentic recipe.
I asked my daughter-in-law Shan to trace the origins of the dish. The oldest and slightly gruesome version of the story links the recipe to Ningdu in Jiangxi Province and relates to a Chinese national hero, Wen Tianxiang, a general in the late Song Dynasty (960AD – 1279AD). According to the story, General Wen was captured and imprisoned due to his efforts in fighting against the Mongolian invasion. An old lady came to visit General Wen when she learnt he was about to be executed, and she only brought a clay pot, a chicken and a jar of rice wine with her. One of the prison guards was impressed by her compassion and let her visit the General. In prison, she set up a small fire and cooked the chicken with the 3 cups of rice wine in the clay pot with low heat for two hours. Later General Wen was beheaded.
When the prison guard retired and returned to his hometown Ningdu, he cooked the chicken dish on each anniversary of General Wen’s passing, however he changed the recipe from 3 cups of rice wine to 1 cup of wine, 1 cup of lard and 1 cup of soy sauce. The dish became famous over they years and was nominated as one of the main dishes during the 2008 Beijing Olympic banquet.
Nowadays there are many variations of the recipe and the most modern include some or all of the following ingredients – rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil (instead of lard), sugar, ginger, garlic, spring onions, dried chilli and thai sweet basil. Over the years the Taiwanese seem to have made the recipe their own and I suspect it was they who introduced basil into the recipe.
I found a few recipes on line and adapted them to produce a Shananigan’s version for Dermot’s birthday dinner. It may not be authentic but it follows the wonderful Chinese tradition of adapting recipes to the ingredients at hand. One of the great joys of this recipe is that it can be cooked a little more slowly than stir-fry dishes and let simmer gently while you get on with preparing the rest of the meal. It’s not a particularly spicy dish so it suits young palates and the dried chilli can be reduced or eliminated to taste. It’s a very easy supper dish that’s packed with flavour despite its few ingredients.
I used boned out chicken thigh and leg as I prefer the flavour, moisture and tenderness of the leg meat but you could use breast meat (which I find can be dry). As I couldn’t get hold of thai basil that weekend, I used ordinary basil. The whole garlic cloves add a delicious sweetness to the dish. I don’t normally cook with sesame oil – I just use it for seasoning as it has a low burn point – but if you don’t let the heat get too high it gives a subtle nutty flavour to this dish which I loved.
Three Cup Chicken – San Bei Ji

Serves two as a main course or four as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

450g boned out chicken thighs, skinned and chopped into bite size chunks
3 tbs toasted sesame oil
A thumb sized chunk of ginger, peeled and cut into thin slices
12 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
4 spring onions, trimmed and cut into 2 cm pieces
3 or 4 dried chilli peppers crumbled
1 tbs sugar
½ cup Shaoxing rice wine
¼ cup light soy sauce
a bunch of Thai sweet basil or fresh basil leaves.

Cooking

Heat a wok over medium/ high heat and add the sesame oil. Allow it to reach the point where it shimmers but doesn’t smoke.
Add the ginger, garlic, spring onions and chilli pepper and stir-fry for about 2 minutes until the aromas are released.
Push these ingredients to the side of the wok and add the chicken pieces, allowing them to sit and sear on one side for a minute before stir frying for 5 or 6 minutes until the chicken pieces are browned and just beginning to crisp on the edge.
Add the sugar, rice wine and soy sauce, stir to combine and bring to simmering point where the sauce is just beginning to bubble.
Lower the heat and simmer gently for about 15 minutes until the sauce has reduced and thickened.
Turn off the heat. Tear in the basil and stir it into the dish. Serve with rice.

What's bred in the bone – Shan's Tingling Fragrant Chicken – 麻香鸡

When I was young one of our favourite Sunday drives was from our home in Wexford town to Hook Head. My three brothers and I would pile into the back of the car, all elbows and knees and arguments about who would have to sit “in the middle”. Released from the car we would race around the headland and clamber over the rocks as the fierce water surged, going as close to the edge as we dared while the gentle light house stood guard over us. There was no Hook Lighthouse cafe then but if we were good we might stop for an ice-cream in Slea Head on the way home.
As a child Hook Head mesmerised me, the awesome power of the sea, the still place in the shelter of the lighthouse, the steady flashing of the light visible from afar, the slippery flat rocks that felt secure and scary at the same time. It was the wildest and most remote place in my young life, a marked contrast to the calmer beauty of Curracloe and Ballinesker beaches. And the lighthouse – that beacon of hope and security, that sweeping light that scanned the moody sea with yearning and wander lust – I could watch it for hours.
So in 1999 a much older and better-travelled me took just 15 minutes to decide to purchase, on pure impulse, a little holiday home in Duncannon with a view of the sea and a direct line of sight to the lighthouse, a house I had not even been inside. And now that light beats out its rhythm on my dormer windows and I can sit in the kitchen and gaze out at it on a moonlit night when I am down there at weekends. There’s something about it that stills my soul.
My son Shane inherited my love of lighthouses. Like me he searches them out wherever he is in the world and in the 15 years he has been visiting Duncannon, Hook has become his special place. He brought Shan there on her first visit to Ireland. It’s where they took Dermot to mark Shane’s first Father’s Day. On Christmas Day 2013 they took Shan’s visiting Chinese family down to the Hook for a bracing pre-dinner walk. We nearly lost a few of them to the elements such was their fascination with the place, coming as they do from Urumqi, the most inland regional capital in China.
And now it’s Dermot’s turn. Just turned two and recently arrived from Beijing to live in Ireland he remembers it from earlier visits. “Deng ta 灯塔” he calls over and over as he tries to explain its magic to me in his own unique combination of Chinese, English and “Dermish”. “Deng ta” he yells if he sees any photo or painting it, recognising not just any lighthouse but his very own light house. He loves to visit it, hates to leave and wants to return the very next day. When his MaMa had shown him how he could see the light from his Duncannon bedroom window he got sad when day light came and the light was “aw gon”. Back in the city streets of Dublin he searches for lighthouse like shapes in street lamps and buildings and talks about it incessantly.
Yesterday I walked him around our house as he pointed out all the extended family he now recognises – MaMa, DaDa, YeYe, NaiNai, Claire, Mikey, Tai Tai, Jodie, hesitating only when he came to the photo of my Dad. I realised with a jolt how much my Dad would have loved getting to know this little man who loves lighthouses and cars in almost equal measure. What’s bred in the bone…
He is a near neighbour now is our Dermot, living just 5 minutes drive down the road from us in Bray. I still can’t get used to the joy of the proximity, the endless possibilities to plan little outings, the goodbyes that are no longer a wrench from the heart, the sleepovers – he had his first with us this week, the babble and chatter in two languages (or is it three) – as ordinary a grandparent relationship as it gets but for me, after two years of FaceTime and airport partings, extraordinary.
Cooking is bred in my daughter in law Shan’s bones and an unexpected bonus of their arrival to live in Ireland is impromptu invites to dinner in their new home where she puts together meals that set our tastebuds alight and transport us back to Beijing. I suspect Dermot may inherit that from her too. Already one of his favourite things to do is to leaf through my Chinese cookery books licking his lips at examples of hao chi – tasty food – and telling me the names of the main ingredients.
Shan never needs a cookbook of course. She just comes up with the dishes by instinct with whatever ingredients are to hand. Last night she served us a lip-tingling Sichuan style chicken dish that was so good that I got her to write down the recipe before she forgot it. Here it is.
Shan’s Tingling Fragrant Chicken – 麻香鸡

Serves two as a main course or 4 as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

400g skinless and boneless chicken thighs
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
½ a carrot
¼ of an onion
4 cloves of garlic
Small chunk of ginger
1 fresh chilli
2 tsp Sichuan peppercorn
½ of one star anise
½ tsp cumin seeds
A few dried chillies
1 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tsp sugar
Salt
Sunflower oil

Preparation

Dice the chicken thigh into small cubes about 1 to 2 cm on each side.
De-seed the red and green pepper, peel the carrots into to similar square flat pieces.
Peel the onion, garlic, ginger and cut into thin slices.
Thinly slice the fresh chilli.
Line up your other ingredients.

Cooking

Heat 4 tbs of sunflower oil in a wok over moderate to high heat. Put 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn and star anise and the ginger into the wok while the oil is getting hotter, adding the onions in when the scent of Sichuan peppercorn is oozing out. Stir fry for a minute then add the diced chicken thigh meat and cook until the chicken is well done. Then take the chicken out of the oil and rest it on kitchen paper. Drain your wok and wipe clean.
Heat 2 tbs of fresh sunflower oil in the wok, adding 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn, ½ tsp of cumin seeds and dried chillies while the oil is heating up. When the scent of Sichuan peppercorn and chillies starts to ooze, add garlic slices and stir fry for a bit, then add the carrots (don’t wait until the garlic has burned!) After the carrots have had a few moments to soften, add in the peppers and the fresh chillies.
Add 1 tsp of dark soy sauce and stir for few seconds then return the chicken to the wok. Stir-fry for 2 minutes to mix the flavours, then add 2 tsp of sugar and stir for another 2 minutes.
Add a little over ½ tsp of salt, adjusting the seasoning to suit your preference. Then stir-fry for another minute or two depending on your preference for how well the peppers are cooked – we like ours crunchy – and serve immediately with steamed rice and a stir-fried vegetable such as broccoli with garlic.

Variations
You can use chicken breast meat if thigh is not available and groundnut oil instead of sunflower oil. You can use all fresh or all dried chillies, whatever you have handy and adjust the chilli heat to taste.
Thank you Shan for the recipe, the inspiration and getting me blog-writing again, Shane for the photos of Hook Head taken last Monday and Dermot well just for being Dermot.

Shananigans Crispy Sweet and Sour Chicken

I haven’t been creating many new Chinese recipes recently. That’s partly a reaction to all the cooking I did over the Twelve Days of Shananigans Christmas. But I have also been pining a little for my family returned to China and Australia and I have been busy with work.
Things are getting back to normal now in our three Shananigans households. Shan, Dermot and her Mama will return from Urumqi to Beijing tomorrow night to be reunited with Shane. He has used the time they stayed on with her family in Xinjiang Province to catch up on work and watch lots of films but he has had enough of the semi-batchelor life for now and is looking forward to their hugs and company.
Meanwhile in Sydney, Claire and Mike have become home owners for the first time. Australian citizens, now owning a house there – I guess their Australian adventure is set to last.

There is something about your first-born child buying a house that makes you acutely aware that she is all grown up – a responsible adult with a mortgage, many impressive spreadsheets compiled by Mike to cover all the budgetary implications and a life of her own on the other side of the world. I am so delighted for the two of them as they set out on this next stage of their lives together. Two young emigrants from Ireland and Wales who made good.
I fell in love with their Federation house in Randwick in the suburbs of Sydney as soon as I set eyes on the photos. It is a happy place that must store its share of good memories deep in its walls. In my imagination I can already glimpse the memories still waiting to be made there like shadows dancing around the still empty rooms, rooms waiting for their photos, their souvenirs, their infectious energy. All going well this is where we will celebrate Christmas 2014 with Shane, Shan and Dermot.
I love the natural light in the house which flows past bedrooms and a living/ dining room to a large kitchen and a patio out the back. And I am green with envy of the six burner gas hob in her kitchen. Claire tells me that I can get lots of practice on it in December. That was enough to set me thinking about what I would cook for them all.
The recipe that gets most hits on the blog is Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef. I know that lots of readers substitute chicken for beef in this dish and several have wondered if it would be possible to make a version of it without chillies. Well here is a variation based on a traditional Beijing recipe for sweet and sour pork. This is not the cloying sauce you might associate with chinese takeaways. Instead black vinegar, sugar and light soy sauce provide the delicate, tangy balance. No chillies need apply.
As for Claire and Mike, much as I miss them, how can I be anything but happy for the life they have built on the other side of the world. Claire sent me this Sunday morning photo earlier today as they celebrated their house purchase with an early swim at Icebergs near Bondi Beach. She captioned it simply “gratitude”.

Shananigans Crispy Sweet and Sour Chicken

Ingredients:

300g chicken breasts or chicken thighs, off the bone
1 egg white, beaten
Good pinch of salt
About 3 tbs potato flour or cornflour
A pinch of baking powder
Oil for deep frying – use good quality sunflower or groundnut oil
2 carrots cut into thin matchsticks and blanched for 1 minute
2 heads little gem lettuce, root removed and leaves torn into shreds (optional)
2 tsp garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp leek or the white part of spring onions, finely chopped

For the sauce:

65 g caster sugar
120 ml of Chinese black vinegar or Chinkiang vinegar
2 tsp light soy sauce
80 ml water
2 tsp cornflour mixed with a little water
Roasted black and white sesame seeds and the green part of spring onions, sliced to garnish (optional)

Preparation:

Cut the chicken into slices against the grain and then into thin shreds.
Dip in the egg white and mix with your hand, leaving it to rest for a few minutes.
Mix the potato flour with salt and baking powder.
Drain off any excess egg white and dip the chicken strips in the flour mix, shaking off any excess.
Mix the sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and water in a small jug and stir to combine and dissolve the sugar.

Cooking:

Fill a wok quarter full with oil and heat to 140 degrees.
Add the chicken, using your fingers to separate the pieces as they go down in the wok. Let them sit for about 30 seconds until the batter hardens, then use a ladle or chopsticks to separate the strands. Cook the chicken for 3 – 4 minutes, stirring to keep the strands separate, until the chicken is crispy and golden.
Remove with a mesh strainer or slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Drain off most of the oil from the wok
Reheat the remaining oil over medium/ high heat and cook the carrot for 1½ minutes before removing and draining on kitchen paper. Add the little gem lettuce and stir-fry for a few minutes until wilted and set aside with the carrots.
Add another small amount of oil to the wok if necessary and re-heat over a medium heat. Add the leek or spring onion and garlic. Stir-fry for about 5 seconds to release the aromas.
Increase the heat to high, add the sauce mix and stir for 20 seconds or until the sauce bubbles. Add the cornflour and water mix and stir thoroughly.
Add back the chicken, carrots and lettuce and toss to coat and heat through. Add a dash of sesame oil for shine, garnish with sesame seeds and the green part of spring onions sliced at an angle. Serve with steamed rice.

Tips:

You can substitute pak choi, green beans or sugar snap peas for the lettuce. If using the beans or peas blanch them first. You can also substitute beef or pork for the chicken.
Check the seasoning when you add the sauce and balance to your taste with a little more soy sauce, sugar or vinegar if necessary.
You will find Chinkiang vinegar in the Asia Market, any Asian supermarket and some good greengrocers. At a pinch you could substitute balsamic vinegar but the flavour will be different. Check out my post on Chinese Kitchen Essentials for a handy check list of Chinese ingredients.

The calm before the storm (and a recipe for Beer Duck)

I’m sitting here by the fire having a glass of wine. Shane is finalising the details of his and Shan’s wedding service and Dermot’s christening next Saturday. My husband and daughter in law have headed for the airport to collect the first of her arriving relatives – her cousin Wei Wei from Shanghai with her three year old daughter You You. The rest of Shan’s family arrive tomorrow evening and then, finally, my daughter Claire and Mike from Australia via Manchester at 9 am on Christmas Eve.
It has been a blessed time – seven days of having Dermot living in our house, watching him go from clinging nervously to Shane and burying his head in his chest, shy at all the new faces around him, to clambering over every surface, diving under the coffee table to appear cheekily with a sweet paper, crawling across the room at breakneck speed for a reading of “That’s not my Santa”, finding any surface on which to make music.
We have passed to him, the youngest member of our family, the tradition of placing the angel on top of the Christmas tree – that’s on the Christmas tree Dermot – not off!

A 35 year old angel - passing the tradition across the generations — A 35 year old angel – passing the tradition across the generations

All the plans are made, the menus are finalised. Tomorrow I swing into cooking action. Tomorrow it all begins.
Only one mishap so far – a puncture in Duncannon – but guess what, the world didn’t fall in. It will be alright on the night.

Calm in Duncannon after last night's storm — Calm in Duncannon after last night’s storm

Tomorrow’s menu for our travel-weary guests has a distinctly Chinese theme – I’ve included links to where the recipes where have already been posted on the blog:

Braised Pork Rib
Gong Bao Chicken
Beer Duck
Spicy red cabbage
Stir-fried Baby Corn and Peppers
Garlic Pak Choi and Mushrooms
Steamed Rice

Wish me luck!
Beer duck – Pi jiu ya
Beer duck is a recipe I learned at Hutong Cusine in Beijing in October. It is simple and delicious.

Chun Yi preparing duck legs at Hutong Cuisine — Chun Yi preparing Beer Duck at Hutong Cuisine

Ingredients

1 kg duck skinned and chopped into 4 cm pieces – use a whole duck or duck legs but not lean breast on its own
Cooking oil (groundnut or sunflower)

Spices

5g ginger sliced
4 garlic cloves peeled and smashed
2 spring onions, white part only
1 star anise
½ tsp Sichuan pepper
1 thumb size piece of cinnamon
4 bay leaves
4 tsp broad bean chilli paste – douban jiang

Seasoning

1½ tbs light soy sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 bottle or can of Tsingtao beer or other lager

Garnish

A few pieces of coriander cut into sections

Method

Blanch the duck pieces in a pot of boiling water until the scum rises. Remove from pan, wash to remove any remaining impurities and pat dry.
Season the wok with one tbs oil over medium heat. Add the duck pieces and fry until the duck brings out about 2 tbs oil and the pieces are lightly browned (if the duck is too lean to release oil, add up to 2 tbs to the wok).
Push the duck to the side of the wok let the oil make a well at the centre, add the broad bean paste until the oil colours, then the remaining spices and cook for one minute until fragrant.
Turn the heat to high, mix the spices and duck together. Add enough beer to barely cover the duck, then add the soy sauce and sugar.
Bring to the boil then cover and simmer on a low heat for about 1½ hours until the sauce has nearly all gone. Stir in the coriander and serve.

Gong Bao Chicken

One of the many things I love about a trip to Beijing is the chance to attend a few cookery classes, pick up new recipes and tips and improve techniques under the watchful eye of a professional Chinese chef. This recipe for Gong Bao chicken from my recent visit is so good that I feel like taking to the streets with a placard and megaphone to encourage everyone to try it. It has to be one the tastiest and best value winter warmers around and perfect for the coming cold snap. But first a bit of the back story on the recipe. Continue reading Gong Bao Chicken

Stir-fried Chicken with Celery with Tom Chef's Pickled Shitake Mushrooms

Summer has arrived in Ireland at last. The temperatures are heading for 30 degrees. While in China they dial up the chilli heat when the temperature and humidity rise, here in the drier heat of Ireland I find myself reaching for a simpler, lighter dish with lots of vegetables that’s good to enjoy outside on a balmy evening.
This is a Cantonese style recipe that was submitted as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations back in early February by the New Millennium Restaurant in the city centre of Dublin – the restaurant is just along from the Gaiety Theatre – I’ve adapted it slightly to include Pickled Shitake Mushroom prepared to a recipe given to me by Tom Walsh, Chef at Samphire at the Waterside, Donabate.
The pickled mushrooms are yet another ingredient that you can make up a batch of to have in your fridge or store cupboard along with Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam and Homemade Chilli Oil. So far I’ve discovered these mushrooms work well with steak marinaded in a soy based chinese sauce and griddled on the barbecue, mixed in with a duck noodle salad or on the side with oven roasted whole duck or duck breast.
This simple, non-spicy supper dish will tickle your taste buds and go a long way to meeting your 5-a-day vegetable intake.
Stir-fried Chicken with Pickled Shitake Mushrooms

Chicken with Celery and Shitake Mushrooms — Chicken with Celery and Mushrooms – photo courtesy of New Millennium Restaurant

Serves 2 to 3
Ingredients:

2 large or 3 small chicken breasts
1 large egg white
1 tbs cornflour
½ to 1 tsp salt
¼ to 1 tsp white pepper
2-3 tbs groundnut oil
1 tsp light soy sauce
2 cloves of garlic, each sliced into 5 pieces
6-8 large stalks celery thinly sliced on the diagonal
½ a large carrot, sliced on the diagonal into thin slices
4 thin slices of ginger, peeled from a thumb of ginger
5 or 6 pieces of canned bamboo shoot
About 8 thick slices of Tom Chef’s Pickled Shitake Mushrooms, drained (see below)
150 ml boiling water
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs of Shaoxing cooking wine
About 1 tsp sesame oil

Preparation and cooking:

Cut the chicken across the grain into thin strips.
Mix with egg white, cornflour, 1/2 tsp of salt, 1/4 tsp of pepper and soy sauce until smooth. Set aside while you organise the remaining ingredients.
Heat about 1 tbs of vegetable oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add all of the coated chicken strips and the garlic to the wok. Cook for about 5 minutes until the chicken pieces turn golden making sure not to burn the garlic. Transfer to a plate.
Reheat the wok over a high heat. Add the celery, carrots, ginger and 150 ml boiling water and boil fast for 30 seconds to blanch the vegetables – you want to soften the vegetables slightly but keep their crunch – then strain and set aside on a plate.
Heat 1 tablespoon of groundnut oil in the wok over a high heat. Return the chicken strips and vegetables to the wok along with the mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Cook for about 3-4 minutes until heated through.
Add the oyster sauce, sugar and Shaoxing cooking wine and cook for about 1 more minute until bubbling. Season to taste with remaining salt and pepper if necessary (I usually find the salt content of the soy sauce is sufficient seasoning) and add a little sesame oil to taste.
Serve immediately with plain boiled rice.

Tom Chef’s Pickled Shitake Mushrooms

Ingredients:

1kg fresh shitake mushrooms, stems removed and thickly sliced
500ml Chinese white rice wine vinegar (or ordinary white wine vinegar)
250 ml bottled still water
200g castor sugar
a few star anise
A few cloves
2 or 3 bay leaves
A few sprigs of fresh thyme

Method:

Simply boil all the pickle ingredients except the mushrooms.
Chill the pickle then add the sliced mushrooms.
Leave to infuse, covered over night, then store in sterilised kilner jars in the fridge until needed.

Quick Tips:
If you haven’t time to make the pickled shitake mushrooms, use a few canned straw mushrooms drained and sliced or a handful of dried shitake mushrooms soaked for about 20 minutes in hot water, then drained, the moisture squeezed out of them, stem removed and thickly sliced.
You will get canned bamboo shoots in most supermarket – Blue Dragon is a reliable brand – and the leftovers will keep in a sealed container in the fridge. Canned straw mushrooms are available in the Asia Market.

Shananigans Chongqing Chicken

Some of my regular readers don’t eat red meat and have been asking for more recipes using chicken or fish. This Chongqing Ji Rou is especially for you Siobhan and there are more chicken recipes to come.
Chongqing is a mountainous city that lies east of the capital of Sichuan Province, Chengdu. It used to be part of Sichuan Province but is now a separate municipality. It’s one of the so-called “huo lu” furnace cities, like Turpan in Xinjiang Province which I visited with Shan’s family last summer. The response of residents to summer heat and humidity is to eat even more chillies and Sichuan pepper than their neighbours in Chengdu.
According to local lore the Chongqingers look down on the people of Chengdu for being lazy and out-of-date in their eating habits, while the inhabitants of Chengdu regard Chongqing food as coarse and crude and in need of the refining touch of Chengdu chefs. Chongqing Chicken – Chongqing Ji Rou – is a simple dish but what it lacks in complexity it makes up for in colour and flavour.
I had Chongqing Chicken in the China Sichuan restaurant in Dublin a few months back and loved its authentic ma la, hot and numbing flavours. It contained diced chicken pieces seasoned with coarsely ground Sichuan pepper and mixed with chunky cashew nuts and lots of dry and fresh chilli. The large pieces of dried Chinese chilli topped the serving dish and added texture and colour. The dish packed a powerful and delicious punch – just enough chilli heat perfectly balanced by the numbing and addictive Sichuan pepper, the chicken succulent and tender.

Chonqing Chicken — China Sichuan’s Chongqing Chicken

Dried Chinese chillies from Sichuan, sometimes known as “facing heaven” chillies because of the way the plants grow, are a lot milder than their more fiery Thai cousins but they are not intended to be eaten. Chinese people pick them up with their chopsticks, suck any sauce that adheres to them and pile the discarded chillies shells in a neat pyramid beside their rice bowl.
I couldn’t find a recipe in any of my Chinese cookbooks so this is my attempt at recreating Chongqing Chicken at home based on what I know of the principles for creating a Sichuan stir-fry that I learnt at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing. The results were pretty close to the original and went down well in our house last night. I could probably have used a little more dark soy sauce to deepen the colour but that’s a matter of taste. I made it with chicken thighs as I prefer the flavour and texture of the meat. It’s a particularly quick and easy dish to prepare.
Shananigans’ Chonqing Ji Rou

Chongqing Chicken — Shananigans’ Chongqing Ji Rou

Ingredients:

A good handful of cashew nuts
2 chicken breasts or 4 chicken thighs
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs of Shaoxing rice wine
A pinch of salt
A thumb sized piece of ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp of Sichuan pepper finely chopped
1 spring onion
I large fresh green chilli
A handful of Chinese dried red chillies
A dash of dark soy sauce
A dash of Chinese black vinegar
A pinch of sugar
Vegetable or groundnut oil

Preparation:

Roast the cashew nuts on a baking tray in the oven at 180 degrees C or dry fry in a hot wok until golden. This should take no more than 10 minutes but keep an eye on them as it is easy to burn them.
Meanwhile dice the chicken into small pieces (about 2 cm cubes). Mix first with salt and light soy sauce and then with the rice wine and let rest in a dish while you prepare the other ingredients.
Finely dice the ginger and garlic.
Finely chop the Sichuan peppercorns.
Finely slice the spring onions, separating the white and green parts.
Finely slice the green chilli.
Break the dried chillies into pieces about 2 cms long and discard any seeds.

Cooking:

Heat some oil in the wok to over a medium heat.
Fry the minced garlic, ginger, spring onion whites and Sichuan pepper for a few moments until they soften and the fragrances are released, being careful not to burn them.
Increase the heat to high and add in the marinated chicken and stir-fry over high heat until cooked (about 3 minutes).
Add in the spring onions greens and green chilli and stir-fry until heated through and the fragrance is rising from the pan (you don’t want the green chilli and spring onions to lose their texture).
Add the dried red chillies and cashew nuts and heat through quickly.
Add a spash of dark soy sauce and Chinese vinegar to darken the colour and a pinch of sugar to taste.
Serve with steamed rice.

When two met one over a summer BBQ and Duck Spring Rolls

We’ve a little thing going on my four month old grandson and I. We dance around the bedroom to the same song, “Tiny Dancer”, each day of this his brief visit home. He joins in the fun as I sing along out of tune.
We converse. I tell him what I think is important, how I feel about him, what it’s like to have him snuggle against me and chew my shoulder with his teething gums, how I will never forget these moments. He stretches his legs, bounces on my lap and answers with intense concentration, with burbles and giggles and smiles as he struggles to articulate … He seems to understand….
I thought of that tonight as I listened to the writer John Banville in conversation with Olivia O’Leary. What distinguishes humans from animals, he said, is the ability to use words, the capacity to create sentences. I wonder what sentence Dermot will speak first and in what language…
We had our own little Gathering last Sunday, one of those days from which memories are carved.
We were joined for a BBQ in our garden by my Italian friend Solange, her Argentinian husband Agustin and their identical twins, just 10 months old.
The last time we adults had all been together was for Christmas 2011 when Shan came to visit us for the first time. That was very special as Claire and her Welsh husband Mike were also able to be with us from Australia for part of the time, an event described by one wit on Twitter as a cross between the Davos Convention and an international rugby tournament.
This time we were feeling the absence of Claire and Mike but the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, and it was still a day to savour.
While she has attempted to teach me Italian, I have kept company with Solange through her journey into motherhood and she has supported me as I adapted to being a long distance granny, sharing hugs from her little boys. It felt important to introduce these three little people to one another with the hope that some day “i cugini” might become friends.

Well “introduce” might be pushing it a bit but they all got to eye one another up with varying degrees of interest while one set of parents remembered what it was like to cuddle a snuggly little person and the others imagined a day when their little man would be taking off on all fours at a rapid pace to explore a small urban jungle.
Between us we had at least 6 languages – English, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Irish – and 5 nationalities, but the 3 little boys all hold Irish passports and are set to be multilingual citizens of the 21st century.

Ni hao Fred and Oli, or is it Oli and Fred…

In all the circumstances it seemed appropriate to have a barbecue that was a bit Irish, a bit Chinese and a bit Italian so a big thank you to Rozanne Stevens for the inspiration in her new Relish BBQ book.
From it I chose:

an Italianish main course of Norman’s butterflied leg of lamb with lively salsa
an Asian mushroom, pak choi and potato salad and
a Chinesish dessert of lychee jam jar cheese cake.

All were a resounding success.
For starters I recreated an Irish take on a Chinese classic – confit duck spring rolls from Chef Tom Walsh of Samphire at the Waterside in Donobate who gave me this recipe for a post I did for Taste of China during this year’s Chinese New Year Festival. Tom was one of the nominees for chef of the year in the Dublin regional finals of the Restaurant Association of Ireland Awards this week. Pay his restaurant a visit and enjoy his great food.
Tom Chef’s Confit Duck Spring Rolls

1. Confit Duck Legs:
Ingredients:

2 duck legs
Salt and pepper
2 jars of duck fat or goose fat
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme
A few whole cloves garlic
2 star anise

Preparation:

Allow the duck legs to dry out at room temperature and season well with salt and pepper.
Place in a small oven proof dish along with the rosemary, thyme, garlic and star anise.
Melt the duck or goose fat and pour over the duck legs making sure they are covered completely. (Top up with light olive oil or sunflower oil if necessary.)
Cover with foil and confit slowly in the oven at low temperature until the duck meat is falling away from the bone – at least 1 ½ hours at 130 degrees C, or you can cook at 110/120 degrees C for several hours.

2. Duck Spring Rolls:
Ingredients:

2 confit duck legs (as above)
1 carrot cut into thin julienne strips
1 red onion thinly sliced
100g bean sprouts
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 clove garlic (crushed)
20g pickled ginger*
25g chopped coriander
25g chopped chervil
6 sheets of spring roll pastry 10’’ square
1 egg white
Sunflower oil for deep-frying
Chilli jam* to serve
Corander and/or chervil to garnish

*See below
Preparation:

Shred the confit duck leg and mix with all the other prepared ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning to taste.
Take 1 ½ sheets of pastry for each spring roll.
Placing a full sheet down and a half on top, from one corner, fill the doubled-side, near the centre with some duck mix.
Starting at the doubled corner, roll to half way then fold in the sides and continue rolling to the end.
Brush some egg white on the far corner to stick the pastry together.
Fill a wok about a third full with sunflower oil and heat until a cube of bread turns golden in a few seconds. Deep fry the springrolls until golden.
Slice each spring roll in two on the diagonal and serve with the chilli jam garnished with coriander and/ or chervil.

3. Pickled Ginger:
You can buy pickled ginger but I love Tom’s homemade version which keeps for weeks in the fridge.
Ingredients:

200g fresh ginger
250g white wine vinegar
125g still mineral water
125g sugar
2 star anise
4 cloves
2 bay leaves
Good sprig of thyme

Preparation:

Weigh all the ingredients, except the ginger into a saucepan.
Bring to the boil all and leave to chill.
Peel and slice the ginger and steep in the chilled pickle.
Store in a sealed container in the fridge.

4. Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam

Since Tom gave me this recipe, I have served it as a dip with everything from crisps to barbecued chicken wings and my guests rave about it. Bottled chilli jam will never again cross our threshold. It keeps indefinitely in a Kilner jar in the fridge. It is very simple to make, just take a little care to cook it slowly so that it doesn’t burn.
Ingredients:

6-8 red chilli peppers chopped roughly
300g castor sugar
300g white rice wine vinegar (ordinary white wine vinegar will do)

Method:

Place all the ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and cook gently to reduce to a syrupy, jam-like consistency being careful not to burn.
Blend with a stick blender.
Store in a sealed container in the fridge.

5. Homemade Chilli Oil

And while I’m on a roll, here’s another store cupboard condiment that transcends western and Chinese flavours and is great for barbecues. I picked up this recipe at cookery class in Hutong Cuisine in Beijing. It is simple to prepare and, once savoured, you will never want a shop bought version again. In recent weeks I’ve brushed this over prawns and crab claws and sizzled them on the BBQ, painted it on to fish fillets to be baked in the oven and drizzled it over Italian pizza, even though it was originally just intended to accompany this Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad.
Ingredients:

200g rapeseed oil (or sunflower oil, groundnut oil or vegetable oil)
2 pieces star anise
2 thumbnail size pieces of cinnamon (preferably the wider Chinese type)
1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns
1 large cardamom pod, crushed to release seeds (preferably the large black Chinese cardamom pods)
4 bay leaves
4 tsp Pixian broad bean paste (Lee Kum Kee Toban Djan chilli bean sauce, which is readily available in Ireland can be used instead)
2 slices of ginger
1 spring onion, white part only, cut in two
4 tbs crushed chillies
2 tsp sesame seeds

Method:

Heat the oil in a wok over low heat and add all the ingredients except the chillies and sesame seeds. Stir slowly over gentle heat for at least 8 to 10 minutes until the spices have begun to turn brown in colour, released their fragrance and infused the oil.
Sieve the oil and discard the spices. By this time it should have turned into a gorgeous warm red colour. Return it to the wok with the crushed chillies and sesame seeds. Stir over a very low heat until the chilli has turned light brown in colour.
When cool, pour the oil into a glass container and keep over night before use. Store unused oil indefinitely in an airtight jar.

Yes when Chinese meets Irish meets Italian, who knows what fun things can happen.
Grazie Solange, Agus, Oli e Fredi per la giornata indimenticabile 🙂

Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad with Home Made Chilli Oil

I figure I’d better give you my lovely readers a few new recipes soon or you will begin to think that this is less of a food blog and more “The Ramblings of a Besotted Nai Nai”. So to start with here are two I practised at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing – Sichuan spicy chicken salad and homemade chilli oil.
I learned such a lot from the lovely Chunyi and Chao at Hutong Cuisine. Their cookery school has a cosy, personalised feel as if you were in your Granny’s kitchen – if your Granny was Chinese and lived in a courtyard house in a hutong that is! Claire and Mike also attended a class there and were equally impressed.

Xiaojin, Chao and Chunyi at Hutong Cuisine — The team at Hutong Cuisine

Once I got over jetlag I relished getting back into the kitchen at home at the end of a busy day although I miss using a gas hob and the ease with which you can tell on sight whether you have the “fire heat” correct. I had discovered that the single biggest mistake I was making in my Chinese cooking was the assumption that “high heat = good” and I have been over-using the boost function on my induction hob as a result. In nearly every new recipe I learnt, the trick in releasing flavour lay in cooking the oil over moderate or gentle heat. Already this has begun to transform the results.
Take home made chilli oil for instance – la jiao. Many Sichuan recipes call for a tablespoon or two of chilli oil with sediment and a dash of it can enliven milder Cantonese dishes. Up to now I’ve been making do with bottled chilli oil from the Asia market but not any more. The recipe below can be prepared and cooked very easily and bottled to use when required. Once tasted there is no going back to a shop bought Chinese version. So when I had a sudden longing for a Friday evening Sichuan kick and a fix of Dan Dan noodles, it was as good a time as any to make up a batch so that I could use some in the sauce.
Home Made Chilli Oil – la jiao

I used a good quality organic Irish rapeseed oil to make this as I love its flavour and I guessed its rich golden colour would become a beautiful shade of red as it became infused with the spices and seasonings. Crushed chillies, picked up on my expedition to Jiang Tai market with qing jia mu, added flecks of colour, texture and sediment to the oil. (At cookery class we used vegetable oil and ground chilli powder). This oil will keep indefinitely in an airtight jar.
Ingredients: Continue reading

Slow-cooked Chinese Chicken "Cure a Cold" Soup

There is some instinct in women, especially mothers, that makes us want to nourish those we love and care for. Somehow we believe deep down that the right nutritious food will cure all ills. Whether we are encouraging someone to eat well for the sake of her baby yet unborn, comforting a listless toddler on our knee, visiting a friend convalescing in hospital, sitting with a sick relative or watching out for an older family member who has lost their appetite, the words “eat up, it will do you good” are never too far from our lips. It’s the urge in us to fix things even when there are some things which just cant be easily fixed.
In China more than any other cuisine, the medicinal properties of food are intrinsically linked with day to day cooking. Every time Shan or her MaMa have served me a meal or sent me a recipe, they have commented on the health-giving properties of one or other of the ingredients. They are not unusual in this. According to The Food of China, achieving balance at every meal is an essential part of Chinese cooking. “Every ingredient is accorded a nature – hot, warm, cool and neutral – and a flavour – sweet, sour, bitter, salty and pungent – and these are matched to a person’s imbalances: a cooling food for fever, warmer food after childbirth.” The Chinese use exotic foods too, that are believed to have special properties, such as black silky chicken in special soups and preparations.
In different regions of China, people explain their food preferences in terms of the local climate and its effects on the body and the spirit, changing their diets with the season and even with age and sex. That deep understanding of the impact of different foods and spices on the body and the spirit is handed down seamlessly from generation to generation. Chicken and chicken soup features in their lexicon of cures. I remember Ching-he Huang seeking out a traditional chicken broth when her immune system became depressed during the making of Exploring China – A Culinary Adventure.
In Shan’s recipe for Winter Chicken Ginger Stew, she and Shane explained to me how they use chicken and the the complimentary spices of garlic and ginger to “heat from the inside” during the cold days of a Beijing winter. Ginger has traditionally been used in Chinese medicine and cooking to prevent or cure the common cold and warm the body. Garlic is considered a ‘warrior’ for the body, cleansing harmful bacteria picked up in every day life and from less healthy eating.
As winter in Northern China is very dry, they generally advise against eating too much spicy food or chilli at this time of year as this can affect the balance of a body and its ability to retain moisture. Here in Ireland of course our winters are very damp and chilli can help sweat the moisture out of the body and speed up the metabolism.
The Chinese are not the only ones to believe that chicken soup is good for body, and even the soul. The phrase Chicken Soup for the Soul has become part of the vernacular and spawned a world wide movement for life improvement. We believe in the healing and preventative value of chicken soup here in Ireland too and I recall a lovely post by Mum of Invention earlier this winter whose tagline is “let food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food”. She wrote about using simmered chicken and its stock to prepare your defences against the common cold.
With all that has been going on since the beginning of the year, we’ve been feeling a bit under the weather recently and I felt as if I was about to come down with something earlier this week. I set out to find a recipe for a Chinese version of chicken soup that included garlic, ginger and chilli to open my pores and push those bugs away.
A Twitter conversation with AineD about using slow cookers got me thinking about using them in the way the Chinese might use a stock pot or clay pot for a long-simmered soup. So I trawled a few slow cooker cookbooks and I came across the recipe below in Anthony Worrall Thompson’s Slow Cooking and tweaked it a bit.
Although this particular recipe is described as a Chinese soup, it has influences from Thailand with its use of lemongrass, red curry paste and lime. It has flavours evocative of thai red curry but without the added coconut. It packs a powerful, spicy punch and certainly clears the tubes. I made it using the stock from our free-range turkey at Christmas, a breast of free-range chicken and lots of fresh vegetables. With the addition of a nest or two of noodles, which are optional, it is a meal in itself and a perfect supper for a cold, miserable, January evening.
Chinese Chicken “cure a cold” Soup
Continue reading Slow-cooked Chinese Chicken "Cure a Cold" Soup