On a chilly night nothing warms you up like blisteringly red-hot Chinese-style chicken, served with a cooling line-up of herby salad, remarks Nigel Slater
There was a bit of a commotion of aniseed, soy and ginger-scented fix in the kitchen last week, as there often is when I have had one of my irregular trip-ups to Chinatown. These are the expeditions where I return home with armfuls of bottles and containers, principally red.
I exactly requirement, almost craved, the smell of oyster sauce to warm up a kitchen grew ice-cold by a dodgy thermostat. Leafy dark-greens, bok choy and mustard dark-greens are regularly steamed and threshed with dense, glossy oyster sauce at home, but meat and fish rather less so.
I threshed fatten, free-range chicken thighs with crushed garlic, honey, chilli and oyster sauce and roasted them on a freezing nighttime when only something blisteringly, eye-wateringly hot would hit the spot. It wasnt something that could luxuriate under the label of authenticity it was just what I needed at that moment. The chicken developed shiny, thinly crisp and very hot. It sizzled as we ingest, inducing our cheeks tingle. We threw the fuel out with a sour citrus salad.
There was a big pudding, very, the sort of broiled butterscotch sponge liaison, with ointment, butter and sugar, that only ever comes out in the extremely depths of winter. Disaster cooking for the cold and hungry.
Oyster sauce chicken with citrus slew salad
Check the chicken regularly, encompassing it with foil if it is browning too much.
Serves 3
chicken thighs 6
For the marinade:
garlic 3 large cloves
onion 1, medium sized
oyster sauce 100 ml
ignited soy sauce 4 tbsp
honey 3 tbsp
chilli sauce 3 tbsp
For the salad:
fish sauce 2 tsp
caster sugar 1 tbsp
lime juice 2 tbsp
mint leaves 10
coriander leaves a large handful
chilli 1, medium-sized
pink grapefruit 1
cashews 2 handfuls, cooked and salted
To do the marinade peel the garlic then vanquishes the cloves to a adhesive expending a pestle and mortar and a pinch of salt. Throw the paste into a large desegregating container. Peel the onion, cut it in half and chopper it very finely. Mix with the garlic.
Put the oyster and soy sauces, the sugar and the chilli sauce into the mixing container and budge thoroughly. Push the chicken pieces into the marinade, switch them over and leave in a cool home for an hour or two.
Set the oven at 180 C/ gas mark 4. Place the chicken pieces into a nonstick bake tin, spoon over half the marinade and place in the preheated oven. Roast for 45 minutes, basting once or twice with the remaining marinade, and regularly checking their advancement. Deal the cooking tin with foil if necessary.
To realise the salad, combine the fish sauce, caster carbohydrate and lime juice in a small container. Roughly chop or snap the spate leaves 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, target it flat on the chopping board then slice away the peel and white pith a sharp-witted kitchen spear. Remove the segments of chassis from the scalp. Introduce the grapefruit into the prepare and leave for 10 times before adding 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 allured to present ointment, too.
You will also need a deep baking recipe or pudding container measuring approximately 18 cm x 15 cm.
Serves 4-6
dehydrated apricots 180 g
cranberries 50 g, fresh or frozen
steaming liquid 200 ml
butter 100 g
illuminated muscovado carbohydrate 100 g
egg 1
plain flour 150 g
roasting powder 1.5 tsp
For the sauce:
illuminated muscovado carbohydrate 100 g
double ointment 125 ml
butter 70 g
maple syrup 1 tbsp
cranberries 100 g, fresh or frozen
Cut the apricots into small sections and make them in a heatproof desegregating bowl. Lend the 50 g of cranberries and run the simmering liquid over. Set aside while you reach the pudding.
Butter the pudding container with a small knob of butter. Sieve together the flour and broiling pulverize. Put the rest of the butter into the container of a food mixer fitted with a flat beater. Add the sugar and drum for 4-5 minutes till soft, pallid and peaches-and-cream, rarely scraping down the sides of the container with a rubber spatula.
Make the sauce by putting the carbohydrate, cream, butter and maple syrup in a saucepan and accompanying to the boil. Let it stew for 2 minutes, roughly chop the 100 g of cranberries( if utilizing frozen return, this is easier in a food processor) then add to the sauce.
Break the egg into a bowl, trounce thinly, just enough to mix white-hot and yolk, then contribute, with the beater still turning, to the butter and sugar.
When the egg is fully incorporated, stimulate in the flour and cooking pulverization mixture, diverting gradually until there is no visible discover of flour left. Fold in the apricots and cranberries, and the sea they are in. Carry the concoction to the buttered container, smooth the surface thinly then cook for 30 times until pale amber and delicately conglomerate. 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