On a chilly nighttime nothing heateds you up like blisteringly hot Chinese-style chicken, served with a cooling area of herby salad, says Nigel Slater
There was a bit of a spurt of aniseed, soy and ginger-scented prepare in the kitchen last week, as there often is when I have had one of my irregular expeditions to Chinatown. These are the journeys where I return home with armfuls of bottles and flasks, predominantly red.
I simply necessary, almost prayed, the smell of oyster sauce to warm up a kitchen turned ice-cold by a dodgy thermostat. Leafy light-greens, bok choy and mustard light-greens are regularly steamed and tossed with thick-skulled, glossy oyster sauce at home, but meat and fish rather less so.
I convulsed fatty, free-range chicken thighs with crushed garlic, sugar, chilli and oyster sauce and baked them on a frost darknes when merely something blisteringly, eye-wateringly hot would hit the spot. It wasnt something who are able to sunbathe under the label of legitimacy it was just what I needed at that moment. The chicken developed glistening, lightly crisp and really hot. It sizzled as we snack, becoming our cheeks tingle. We employed the fervor out with a sour citrus salad.
There was a big pudding, more, the sort of roasted butterscotch sponge circumstance, with cream, butter and carbohydrate, that merely ever come off in the extremely depths of winter. Emergency cooking for the cold and hungry.
Oyster sauce chicken with citrus plenty salad
Check the chicken regularly, dealing it with foil if “its by” browning too much.
Serves 3
chicken thighs 6
For the marinade:
garlic 3 large-scale cloves
onion 1, medium sized
oyster sauce 100 ml
illuminated soy sauce 4 tbsp
sugar 3 tbsp
chilli sauce 3 tbsp
For the salad:
fish sauce 2 tsp
caster sugar 1 tbsp
lime juice 2 tbsp
spate leaves 10
coriander leaves a large handful
chilli 1, medium-sized
pink grapefruit 1
cashews 2 handful, cooked and salted
To realize the marinade peel the garlic then subdues the cleaves to a glue exploiting a pestle and mortar and a pinch of salt. Make the paste into a large mixing bowl. Peel the onion, cut it in half and chop it very finely. Compound with the garlic.
Put the oyster and soy sauces, the honey and the chilli sauce into the mixing bowl and stir exhaustively. Push the chicken pieces into the marinade, turn them over and leave in a cool lieu for the purposes of an hour or two.
Set the oven at 180 C/ gas mark 4. Place the chicken pieces into a nonstick cook tin, spoon over half the marinade and target in the preheated oven. Roast for 45 hours, basting once or twice with the remaining marinade, and regularly checking their advance. Comprise the ribbing tin with foil if necessary.
To do the salad, combine the fisheries industry sauce, caster carbohydrate and lime juice in a small bowl. Roughly chop or weeping the plenty buds and add to the bowl, together with the coriander leaves. Finely chop the chilli and add to the dressing.
Slice the ends from the grapefruit, place it flat on the chopping board then slice away the peel and white pith a sharp kitchen spear. Remove the segments of tissue from the surface. Put the grapefruit into the garment and leave for 10 instants before contributing the cashew nuts and serving.
Cranberry pudding with butterscotch sauce
Once out of the oven, leave the dessert for a few minutes to settle. And, despite the butterscotch sauce, Id be invited to furnish cream, too.
You will also need a deep baking recipe or pudding container appraising approximately 18 cm x 15 cm.
Serves 4-6
dehydrated apricots 180 g
cranberries 50 g, fresh or frozen
simmering ocean 200 ml
butter 100 g
ignited muscovado carbohydrate 100 g
egg 1
plain flour 150 g
roasting pulverize 1.5 tsp
For the sauce:
illuminated muscovado carbohydrate 100 g
double cream 125 ml
butter 70 g
maple syrup 1 tbsp
cranberries 100 g, fresh or frozen
Cut the apricots into small-minded articles and place them in a heatproof mixing container. Contribute the 50 g of cranberries and swarm the roasting water over. Set aside while you become the pudding.
Butter the dessert container with a small grip of butter. Sieve together the flour and baking pulverize. Apply the rest of the butter into the bowl of a food mixer fitted with a flat beater. Add the carbohydrate and beat for 4-5 minutes till soft, pale and peaches-and-cream, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
Make the sauce by putting the carbohydrate, cream, butter and maple syrup in a saucepan and wreaking to the steam. Give it stew for two minutes, roughly chop the 100 g of cranberries( if using frozen fruit, this is easier in a food processor) then add to the sauce.
Break the egg into a container, vanquish softly, just enough to mix white-hot and yolk, then add, with the beater still turning, to the butter and sugar.
When the egg is fully incorporated, incite in the flour and broiling powder smorgasbord, turning slowly until there is no visible mark of flour left. Fold in the apricots and cranberries, and the liquid they find themselves in. Carry the combination to the buttered container, smooth the surface thinly then roast for 30 hours until pale amber and lightly conglomerate. Remove from the oven, pour over half of the cranberry butterscotch sauce and return to the oven for a further 10 times. Serve hot together with the remaining sauce.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater @observer. co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater