On a chilly darknes good-for-nothing warms 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 fix in the kitchen last week, as there often is when I have had one of my irregular excursions to Chinatown. These are the expeditions where I return home with armfuls of bottles and cups, principally red.
I merely requirement, virtually implored, the smell of oyster sauce to warm up a kitchen became ice-cold by a dodgy thermostat. Leafy greens, bok choy and mustard commons are regularly steamed and pitched with thick, glossy oyster sauce at home, but flesh and fish rather less so.
I convulsed flab, free-range chicken thighs with crushed garlic, honey, chilli and oyster sauce and broiled them on a freezing nighttime when exclusively something blisteringly, eye-wateringly red-hot would hit the spot. It wasnt something that could lie under the label of accuracy it was just what I needed at that moment. The chicken emerged lustrous, delicately crispy and very hot. It sizzled as we ate, stimulating our cheeks tingle. We introduced the volley out with a sour citrus salad.
There was a big pudding, very, the sort of cooked butterscotch sponge occasion, with cream, butter and carbohydrate, that simply ever comes out in the exceedingly depths of wintertime. Disaster cooking for the coldnes and hungry.
Oyster sauce chicken with citrus spate salad
Check the chicken regularly, handling it with foil if “its by” browning too much.
Serves 3
chicken thighs 6
For the marinade:
garlic 3 huge cloves
onion 1, medium sized
oyster sauce 100 ml
light soy sauce 4 tbsp
sugar 3 tbsp
chilli sauce 3 tbsp
For the salad:
fish sauce 2 tsp
caster carbohydrate 1 tbsp
lime juice 2 tbsp
pile leaves 10
coriander leaves a large handful
chilli 1, medium-sized
pink grapefruit 1
cashews 2 handful, ribbed and salted
To constitute the marinade peel the garlic then subdues the cleaves to a paste expending a pestle and mortar and a pinch of salt. Introduce the paste into a large desegregating bowl. Peel the onion, cut it in half and chopper it very finely. Mix with the garlic.
Put the oyster and soy sauces, the honey and the chilli sauce into the mixing container and budge thoroughly. Push the chicken pieces into the marinade, alter them over and leave in a cool target for the purposes of an hour or two.
Set the oven at 180 C/ gas mark 4. Place the chicken pieces into a nonstick roast tin, spoon over half the marinade and neighbourhood in the preheated oven. Roast for 45 instants, basting once or twice with the remaining marinade, and regularly checking their develop. Deal the ribbing tin with foil if necessary.
To stir the salad, combine the fish sauce, caster sugar and lime juice in a small bowl. Roughly chop or tear the slew buds and add to the container, together with the coriander leaves. Finely chop the chilli and add to the dressing.
Slice the ends from the grapefruit, target it flat on the chopping board then slice away the peel and lily-white pith a sharp-worded kitchen knife. Remove the segments of chassis from the scalp. Give the grapefruit into the dres and leave for 10 times before contributing the cashew seeds 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 seduced to volunteer ointment, too.
You will also need a deep baking food or pudding bowl quantifying approximately 18 cm x 15 cm.
Serves 4-6
dehydrated apricots 180 g
cranberries 50 g, fresh or frozen
steaming sea 200 ml
butter 100 g
ignited muscovado sugar 100 g
egg 1
plain flour 150 g
roasting pulverization 1.5 tsp
For the sauce:
illuminated muscovado carbohydrate 100 g
doubled ointment 125 ml
butter 70 g
maple syrup 1 tbsp
cranberries 100 g, fresh or frozen
Cut the apricots into tiny segments and introduce them in a heatproof mixing container. Add the 50 g of cranberries and pour the boiling ocean over. Set aside while you attain the pudding.
Butter the pudding bowl with a small grip of butter. Sieve together the flour and cooking pulverization. Introduce the rest of the butter into the container of a food mixer fitted with a flat beater. Include the sugar and outstrip for 4-5 minutes till soft, pale and milky, occasionally raking down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
Make the sauce by putting the sugar, cream, butter and maple syrup in a saucepan and bringing to the steam. Make it stew for two minutes, roughly chop the 100 g of cranberries( if expending frozen fruit, this is easier in a food processor) then add to the sauce.
Break the egg into a container, overcome thinly, just enough to mix grey and yolk, then contribute, with the beater still turning, to the butter and sugar.
When the egg is fully incorporated, incite in the flour and baking pulverization smorgasbord, swerving slowly until “were not receiving” visible detect of flour left. Fold in the apricots and cranberries, and the water they find themselves in. Give the combination to the buttered container, smooth the surface thinly then roast for 30 instants until pallid amber and gently house. Remove from the oven, pour over half of the cranberry butterscotch sauce and return to the oven for a further 10 instants. Serve hot together with the remaining sauce.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater @observer. co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater