Slow-cooked Old-Style Mustard Chicken

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp Olive oil
• 1.5kg Chicken (chopped into chunky pieces)
• 2 large Onions (cut into wedges)
• 3 Carrots (cut into chunky pieces)
• 5 cloves Garlic (minced)
• 20g Fresh tarragon
• 3 cups White wine
• 3 cups Chicken stock
• 4 tbsp Old-style mustard (the type with mustard seeds in it)
• 5 tbsp Creme fraiche
• 1 tbsp Corn flour (mixed with 6 tbsp water)
• 3 tbsp Caster sugar
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Lemon (cut into wedges for garnishing)

Method

1. Marinate chicken in white wine, caster sugar, salt and pepper for about an hour.
2. Heat pot with olive oil. Add garlic and fry till slightly brown.
3. Add onions and fry till brown, then add carrots and continue frying.
4. Add chicken and fry for 3 minutes, then add white wine and fry for 5 minutes. 
5. Add chicken stock, old-style mustard, tarragon and turn chicken several times until chicken is cooked.
6. Add caster sugar, salt and pepper to taste.
7. Transfer everything into a slow cooker and cook for 5 hours on high heat.
8. Drain and remove chicken and the vegetables from slow cooker and arrange on  a large serving dish.
9. Transfer the remaining stock from the slow cooker to a pan.
10. Add creme fraiche and stir well, then add cornflour and stir until stock thickens. Pour thickened stock onto the chicken and vegetables on serving dish.
11. Garnish with lemon wedges and a few sprigs of tarragon.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice is one of my favourite. When home in Penang, it serves as an afternoon lunch. I always return to the same favourite stalls for chicken rice. It's always the soft chicken meat, and springy chicken skin with the flavourful chicken rice topped with appetising dipping sauce that makes one return for more.

Living in London, it's not easy to find this dish. A friend made it one day and shared her tips on cooking. After tasting it, it's made me look up some recipes online for inspiration.

The recipe captured below might look lengthy and challenging, however it's rather easy once you get the procedure right. I'd definitely recommend an attempt as you can achieve a wholesome meal derived from one whole chicken!

Chicken

Ingredients:
• 1 whole corn fed chicken - given good scrub with generous amount of sea salt
• 1 inch ginger sliced into thins
3-4 springs of spring onion chopped into 3 or 4 sections
• Salt for seasoning
• 1 full stock pot of water
• 1 stock pot of ice bath

Method:
• Bring the full stock pot of water to boil.
• Prepare chicken by giving it a good spa treatment of rigorous salt scrubbing. If required, scrub several times, rinse away peeling skin and scrub again to achieve taut gleaming skin.
• Season chicken inside out and stuff it with ginger and spring onions.
• Slowly immerse whole chicken in boiling water, let it bring to boil again then immediately turn heat low enough to simmer throughout cooking time (approximately 2hours).
• As the chicken simmers in the stock pot, gradually sift / ladle out the scummy residue that surface.
• There are two ways one could use to determine when the chicken is done - a) use a cooking termometer to measure the temperature is 76 degree celsius (170 farenheit) at the thickest part of the chicken (in between the thighs not touching bones); b) reaching 2hours cooking time and a little beyond making sure it's at such a slow simmer that bubbles merely break through the surface.
• Carefully bring chicken out from stock pot, immerse fully into ice bath to stop cooking process and tightens chicken skin. This is key to getting the best skin texture for Hainanese Chicken Rice!
• Bring chicken out from ice bath, set aside.
• Keep remainder chicken stock in stock pot for use in making the rice, beansprouts, and soup for serving with the dish.
• When all other preparation is complete, just before serving, start chopping up or boning the chicken into nicely proportioned bite size slices onto serving dish.

Rice

Ingredients:
• 3 cups rice, washed and drained, set aside
• 2 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1 teaspoon sesame seed oil
• Chicken stock from poaching chicken
• 3-4 Pandan leaves, washed, divided and knotted
• Garlic minced - approximate amount based on cups of rice to cook
• Ginger minced - approximate amount based on cups of rice to cook

Method - with rice cooker:
• Heat up cooking oil in wok at medium-high heat, gently fry ginger and garlic until fragrant, but not burning it.
• Add rice, stir to mix thoroughly, cook for 2 mins.
• Ladle chicken stock into rice cooker, scoop up rice from wok, add sesame seed oil and pandan leaves then turn rice cooker on to cook.
• The frying step is meant to bring more flavour to the rice. It is also fine to skip the frying step if time is limited.

Learn how to cook rice over the stove here.


Whilst the rice is cooking, start preparing the dipping sauces, blanch beansprouts, and carve the chicken.

Dipping Sauces

Penang Inspired Chilli Sauce - Ingredients:
• 1 inch ginger roughly chopped up
• 3-4 cloves garlic peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 lemon grass, cut into small sections
• 1 red chilli, desseeded and roughly chopped
• 2-3 birds eye chilli, roughly chopped
• 2-3 lime juice (1 whole lemon juice can be used as a substitute if desperate)
• Sugar and salt to season

Method:
• Put ginger, garlic, lemon grass, chillies, lime juice all into a blender. Give it a quick blend once or twice, just enough to shred up the ingredients, but not overly processed.
• Pour chilli mix out into sauce dipping bowl, add sugar and salt to season.

Dark Soya Sauce Dip - Ingredients:
• 2-3 birds eye chilli, roughly chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic peeled and minced
• Desired amount of sweet dark soya sauce or just enough to cover the chilli and garlic mix

Method:
• Add chillies and garlic into sauce dipping bowl, top it up with sweet dark soya sauce.

Blanched Beansprouts

Ingredients:
• 1 packet of beansprouts, washed and drained
• 2-3 sprigs spring onion chopped into small chunks
• 1-2 ladles of stock from poaching chicken
• Medium pot of water bring to boil
• A few dashes of soya sauce and sesame seed oil to season

Method:
• Gauging when rice is just about ready, in a medium pot bring water to the boil.
• Add beansprouts into water and bring to the boil again.
• Cook for 2-3 minutes, or until beansprouts turn slightly translucent, yet still crunchy to the bite.
• Turn off the heat and dish out beansprouts into serving dish.
• Ladle over the chicken stock, season with soya sauce and sesame oil.
• Garnish with spring onion and serve.

If served as a buffet style dish, you can very well have all chicken in one big dish. If serving individually, below is a suggested method. Hope you have fun with this!

Cardamom Honey Chicken

I chanced upon this Cardamom Honey Chicken recipe one day whilst browsing for inspiring cooking ideas using ginger, honey and cardamom. You just have to try it to tell how delicious it can be.

Ingredients:

Marinade
1. 4 tbsp honey
2. 2 tbsp sherry
3. 1 tsp cardamom seeds, ground
4. 1 tsp peppercorns, ground

Chicken
1. 6 chicken breasts, or one whole chicken, cut into parts
2. 2 tbsp Olive oil
3. 1 lemon, thinly sliced
4. Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Warm the honey, stir in the sherry, cardamom and peppercorns. Place marinade and chicken in a large container, coat chicken with marinade. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. You could also prepare this in the late afternoon and keep it in the fridge for roasting later in the evening.
2. Preheat oven to 200°. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan at medium high heat. Sear the chicken, skin side down, until golden.
3. Place lemon slices in a roasting pan. Lay the chicken pieces on top. Brush with the marinade. Season generously with salt and pepper.
4. Place in the oven and bake until done, approximately 15 minutes for breasts, 20 minutes for thighs, wings, and drumsticks.
5. Remove from oven and serve with your choice of side dishes. Pour out drippings from the pan into a gravy boat for gravy.

Simply Recipes website suggests serving with rice, mash or couscous. For a lazy approach, I've tried throwing in sliced potatoes or sweet potatoes for roasting with the chicken, and toss up a green salad to go with the roast. If your family loves gravy, you could pour the remainder of the marinade over the potatoes or sweet potatoes for roasting, this will give you a really delicious gravy.

Ayam Sioh (Sioh Chicken)

This is a Nyonya style chicken that makes a very appetising main dish served with white rice. It has been adapted from the Nyonya Flavours cook book.

Ingredients:

1. 6 medium chicken drumsticks
2. 5 shallots - thinly sliced & pounded into pulp
3. 1 tbsp yellow bean paste
4. 1/2 tbsp dark soya sauce
5. 1 tbsp toasted coriander seed - ground
6. 1 tbsp tamarind pulp - strained with 1 cup water
7. 1 tbsp cooking oil
8. salt & sugar for seasoning

Method:

1. Heat up cooking oil in a deep pot, then sauté shallot pulp until golden brown.
2. Add bean paste and chicken and stir to ensure they mix well.
3. Add in dark soya sauce and ground coriander, stir again to make them blend well with the chicken.
4. Add tamarind water (leaving the pulp), season with sugar and salt then bring to a boil.
5. Add a little water and let simmer for about 10-15mins until the gravy is thick and chicken tender.
6. Adjust the amount of water to obtain the desired amount of gravy.
7. Serve hot with white rice & vegetable side dishes.

For Oriental/Asian cooking ingredients, terms and explanations, check the below URLs:

Food Subs

Asia Food

Most ingredients listed above can be found at Oriental grocery shops like See Woo or New Loon Moon in London's China Town.

Chicken and Mushroom Steamed Rice 有味饭

I remember my mum gave me this recipe when I went to college. It's easy to make and tastes good. Yes, mum knew I was a lazy person who likes easy 'all in one pot' (一窝熟)cooking.

Please note that this recipe requires the use of an electric rice cooker - available from most Chinese grocery stores or Argos. If rice cooker is not available, you can attempt steaming instead.

*Serves 4 persons*
Ingredients:

1. 2 cups rice
   
2. 2 whole chicken thighs (chopped into 5parts or deboned & sliced into bite size)
   
3. Desired amount of dried Shiitake mushrooms (re-hydrated & halved or diced into cubes)
   
4. 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
   
5. 2 clove buds
   
6. 1 tbsp dark soya sauce
   
7. 1 tbsp soya sauce
   
8. 1 & 1/2 tsp oyster sauce
   
9. 3/4 - 1 tsp sesame seed oil
   
10. pinch of salt

Method:

1. Pre-soak mushrooms & slice them up as desired.
   
2. Marinate chopped chicken with garlic, soya sauce, dark soya sauce, oyster sauce & sesame seed oil for 20-30minutes.
   
3. When the mushrooms are softened, pour away the water and mix together with the chicken marinade.
   
4. Cook rice in rice cooker. While half cooked, add a pinch of salt, then pour in all marinated ingredients and cloves.
   
5. Stir well and let it cook thoroughly.
   
6. When the rice is cooked, lift the lid & give it a quick thorough mix then put the lid back for few minutes for the moisture and steam to settle.
   
   
7. Serve while it's hot.

Rosemary Chicken

*Serves 4 person*
This is a very simple yet delicious dish suitable for dinner. Best served with seasonal green vegetables.

Ingredients:

1. 4 cloves garlic
2. 450g large new potatoes
3. 4 chicken legs
4. 1 lemon (halved)
5. Few sprigs of fresh rosemary
6. 2 tbsp olive oil

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 celsuis. Lightly bruise the garlic cloves under the blade of a knife, but don't remove their skins.
2. Halve any extra large potatoes so they are all roughly the same size, then put them in a roasting pan with the chicken, garlic and rosemary. Squeeze over the juice from the lemon halves and add the shells to the pan. Sprinkle with olive oil and season generously.
3. Cook for 40 to 45 minutes, tossing the potatoes occassionally, until the chicken is cooked through and the potatoes are crisp, and golden brown.

Coq Au Vin

This recipe is useful if you have leftover red wine from a party and don't know what to do with it.

Ingredients

• 8 pcs chicken
• 250 ml red wine
• 5 tbsp vinegar [balsamic or apple cider]
• 40 grams raisins
• 8 pcs mushrooms [soaked and sliced]
• 2 sticks carrots [diced]
• 2 shallots [finely chopped]
• 2 large onions [thinly sliced]
• 10 cloves garlic [2 cloves to be finely chopped]
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• Dash of salt
• Dash of pepper
• Dash of sugar

Method

Wash & drain the chicken.	Chop the shallots into fine pieces.
Soak the mushrooms and slice when the mushrooms are soft.	Smash the garlic cloves using a large cleaver to remove the skin.
Finely chop 2 of the cloves and leave the rest of the 8 cloves as they are.	Using a large bowl, mix the chicken pieces with the red wine, sliced onions & the 8 cloves of unchopped garlic. Leave to marinate for at least 1 hour.
Heat the cooking oil in a large pot or deep pan. Then brown the 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic.	Next, add in the chopped shallots and fry until brown.
Add in the mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes.	Drain the marinated chicken but save the wine marinade for use later. Add the drained chicken together with the onions and garlic into the pot and fry for about 10 minutes.
Add in the raisins and carrots.	Stir and then cover pot with lid and leave to simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove lid and pour in the wine marinade from earlier. Cover pot again and leave to simmer for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.	Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste. Here's the finished dish - Coq Au Vin.

Serves 6 - 8 persons