Hong Kong Chicken - Braai Style

Everything tasted better when I was younger.  Or so it seemed,  nothing beat egg and bacon sandwiches on the beach under the umbrella if it was raining.  Crispy fish and chips with vinegar.  Spur burgers with unlimited salad and BBQ sauce.  Hong Kong chicken at the local Chinese with sweet sticky sauce.  And nothing makes me miss something more than not being able to get it anymore which applies to HK chicken.  Damn that redevelopment on those awful row of shops in central Cape Town.

Or so I thought until, I saw Hollow Leg's Blog (www.lizzieeatslondon.blogspot.co.uk) and the following recipe (so happy so very happy) so here is my version of the recipe which I use as unusual Canapes!

• 800g chicken wings
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 3 – 5 slices of ginger root (peeled)
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2 – 3 star anise
• 1 can of coke (full fat not diet or flavoured pls)
• 2bsp of veggie oil (sunflower for me)
• Spring onions

Cut the chicken wings into two pieces (leaving a drumstick and the other triangle shaped piece) and marinade in the dark soy sauce for up to 24 hours. 

Crush the garlic, chop the ginger root into small pieces and remove the whites from spring onions (chopping finely)

Pop the marinated chicken into a hot wok filled with the veggie oil and brown

Remove the chicken, add the garlic etc. and the star anise.  Gently fry until golden.

Then add the chicken, any soy sauce mixture left as well as the can of coke.

Cook for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked and the sauce is glossy.

If the sauce is too thin, remove the chicken towards the end of the cooking process and allow to boil down

Serve the chicken covered with the glossy sauce and with a garnish of spring onion greens.

courtesy of chinesefoodrecipes.org

Now, as a South African I love my Braai (BBQ) so I also tried the following................... 

• Leave the chicken wings whole but stretch them out and use a wooden skewer (soaked in water for about 20 minutes) to fix them in place if this doesn’t happen naturally
• Marinate the chicken in the dark soy sauce but add a little more to compensate for anything that the skewers soak up.
• Now create the sauce as above excluding the chicken but pouring the marinade into the wok.
• Cook the chicken in the oven at the same time until cooked through.  It should not be too crispy so the heat should not be too high.  Remove the chicken and set aside.
• Boil the sauce down over a medium heat until it becomes glossy and coat the chicken wings with resulting sauce.
• Then pop on a hot BBQ/braai for about 5 minutes to crisp up, heat through and even catch slightly.
• You can prepare this up until the final stage ahead of time and then serve as a tasty canapé around the braai.

So very yummy

L xxx

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @littleofwhatyouwant

I'm just not a Macaron type of girl

It is interesting to realise what type of cook you are.  This is a topic I have covered before but I have never so completely realised it that when I learnt to make French macarons.  For those of you who don’t know, these are meringues made with almonds and then stuck together with butter icing, ganache or some other sweet treat.

I arrived at the class (held in a café in East London by Old Street) on time(ish) and met the lovely, bubbly instructress.  She has a passion for macarons and doesn’t have a problem pronouncing them sexy.  I had substantially less of a passion but hell, I was prepared to give it a go.

First, sieve 80g of ground almonds and 120 g of icing sugar.  This takes longer than you think and personally involved a little bit of swearing – my friend was also not hugely keen on the process.

Then take a baking sheet and cover it with baking parchment.  Find a suitable circle (smaller than the standard tin lid but larger than a drink bottle lid – think red bull can size) and trace as many circles as you can onto the paper.   Try to keep them straight – ours looked like we had been drinking heavily, sadly we hadn’t.

Then separate 2 eggs and pop the whites into a bowl.  Whisk with an electric beater until it forms soft peaks and then add 70g of granulated sugar gradually until it is completely mixed and forms solid peaks. 

Add flavour – this could be rose (although too much makes it taste soapy), hazelnut syrup, chilli with a little cocoa powder or anything you desire.  Then add colour which you can buy in most big supermarkets.   Remember the colour deepens and changes when cooked – mine came out looking like they had spent time with a pigeon with intestinal issues – not an ideal look.

Fold in the almond mixture and then put into the piping bag.  While that sentence is short, the process isn’t and to be honest if I was at home, the wine would have come out.    Pipe onto the circles on the baking tray.  This requires a technique, I still haven’t mastered.  You need to put the head of the bad against the parchment in the centre of your circles and squeeze until the mixture reaches the outer edges.

Then let them rest for half an hour.  This is when you create your filling which for us was butter icing so more elbow grease needed.  Take 140g of softened butter and add up to 280g icing sugar.  Keep mixing until you cry or it becomes icing.  The former is more likely but the latter is probably a better idea.

Do not lose your temper, the end is almost in sight.  Check the macarons and gently push in any nipples (yes, I did a double take too but this is techy baking talk for the drip left by taking the piping bag off when the circle was full)

Pop the tray in the oven for 10 – 15 minutes at 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3 until the macarons are completely dry.  I poked mine to check but you can see if you open the oven to check.  This has no impact on any rising or falling so don’t worry.

Let them cool (tried to ice a hot cake with butter icing before so I know that is a bad idea so feel smug) and then pipe a little icing onto the bottom of one macaron and secure the other macaron.

Not much for my blood,sweat and tears

At this point at home, I would collapse weeping into a ball clutching a bottle of wine but instead, I manned up and shared my macarons.   Will I be making them again?  Nope, I have better ways to test my patience and the edges of my sanity so while it was a good experience, I will not be making them for a party or trying to test loads of flavours as my instructor suggested.

Life is just too short

Lx

Follow me on twitter@alittleofwhat

Lazy Olive and Sundried Tomato Pasta

While some people loath Sunday evenings, I quite like them.    Admittedly, you are staring down the barrel of a full week but if you’ve had fun over the weekend and even managed to get a few jobs sorted then, life doesn’t seem quite so bad.

That said, food on Sundays can be difficult.  If you’ve had a roast for lunch then you don’t want anything heavy and if you’ve just had a lazy day, it can be difficult to remove yourself from the sofa (or bed if you’ve slipped off for a nap), disentangle the cats and be creative.

Loki -  the evil Creature which makes it very hard to get up

However, (wo)manfully struggling against adversity I wandered into the kitchen and popped a pot of gluten free spaghetti on.  None of the sauces I normally would make appealed and I decided to produce my own version of Puttanesca so here goes:

Add sufficient pasta to serve the number of guests to boiling water

Find your food processor and then spend 10 minutes swearing as you attempt to assemble 

it and find the chopping attachment.  Wine and tears are allowed if you are alone.

For 2 people, add

4 anchovy filets with a little of the oil

2 sun dried tomatoe

A roughly chopped small red onion

Half a white onion

Teaspoon of dried chilies (I like it hot and this is to taste)

Handful of pit less olives (I used green but your choice)

Teaspoon of garlic paste or 2 cloves (again depends on your taste)

Remember to screw the top on tightly and then blitz until fine.  Forget and you will (as I 

say or may not have in the past) be picking your dinner off your kitchen cupboards. Don't 

worry if it doesn't look pretty, sometimes ugly tastes better. 

Ugly can end up beautiful

Add the blitzed ingredients to a pan with a little oil and fry lightly for about a minute or 

two before adding the drained pasta and mixing well to coat.

Squeeze half a lemon over each portion – this is to taste and should lift the dish rather 

than dominate it.

The resulting dish has a lovely hit of olives and lemon with a kick of chilli and a hit of 

something else (anchovy but you don’t have to tell anyone if they don’t like fish).

Really easy, really lovely and perfect for a lazy Sunday night.

Lxx


Don’t forget to follow me on @littleofwhatyou