On a chilly nighttime good-for-nothing warms you up like blisteringly red-hot Chinese-style chicken, served with a cooling back of herby salad, says 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 excursions to Chinatown. These are the excursions where I return home with armfuls of bottles and cups, mostly red.
I merely necessitated, virtually craved, the smell of oyster sauce to warm up a kitchen turned ice-cold by a dodgy thermostat. Leafy parks, bok choy and mustard light-greens are regularly steamed and threshed with thick-witted, glossy oyster sauce at home, but meat and fish rather less so.
I convulsed paunch, free-range chicken thighs with crushed garlic, honey, chilli and oyster sauce and roasted them on a ice nighttime when merely something blisteringly, eye-wateringly hot would hit the spot. It wasnt something who are able to sunbathe under the label of accuracy it was just what I needed at that moment. The chicken rose shiny, softly crispy and very hot. It sizzled as we ate, manufacturing our cheeks tingle. We set the shoot out with a sour citrus salad.
There was a big pudding, extremely, these kinds of baked butterscotch sponge occasion, with cream, butter and sugar, that merely ever comes out in the very depths of wintertime. Disaster cooking for the cold and hungry.
Oyster sauce chicken with citrus pile salad
Check the chicken regularly, dealing it with foil if it is browning too much.
Serves 3
chicken thighs 6
For the marinade:
garlic 3 huge 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
batch leaves 10
coriander leaves a large handful
chilli 1, medium-sized
pink grapefruit 1
cashews 2 few, cooked and salted
To oblige the marinade peel the garlic then suppresses the cleaves to a glue employing a pestle and mortar and a pinch of salt. Employ the paste into a large mixing container. Peel the onion, cut it in half and chop it very finely. Combine with the garlic.
Put the oyster and soy sauces, the sugar and the chilli sauce into the mixing bowl and incite exhaustively. Push the chicken pieces into the marinade, turn them over and leave in a cool place for an hour or two.
Set the oven at 180 C/ gas mark 4. Place the chicken pieces into a nonstick cook tin, spoonful over half the marinade and situate in the preheated oven. Roast for 45 minutes, basting once or twice with the remaining marinade, and regularly checking their advancement. Cross the ribbing tin with foil if necessary.
To clear the salad, combine the fisheries industry sauce, caster carbohydrate and lime juice in a small container. Roughly chop or snap the plenty 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, plaza it flat on the chopping board then slice away the peel and white pith a sharp kitchen bayonet. Remove the some part of anatomy from the skin. Make the grapefruit into the cover and leave for 10 hours before contributing the cashew nuts and serving.
Cranberry pudding with butterscotch sauce
Once out of the oven, leave the pudding for a few minutes to settle. And, despite the butterscotch sauce, Id be allured to offer cream, too.
You will also need a deep baking bowl or pudding container appraising approximately 18 cm x 15 cm.
Serves 4-6
dried apricots 180 g
cranberries 50 g, fresh or frozen
boiling ocean 200 ml
butter 100 g
illuminated muscovado sugar 100 g
egg 1
plain flour 150 g
baking pulverization 1.5 tsp
For the sauce:
illuminated muscovado sugar 100 g
doubled cream 125 ml
butter 70 g
maple syrup 1 tbsp
cranberries 100 g, fresh or frozen
Cut the apricots into small-time slice and make them in a heatproof mingling bowl. Include the 50 g of cranberries and move the simmer liquid over. Set aside while you represent the pudding.
Butter the dessert container with a small grip of butter. Sieve together the flour and cooking pulverization. Give the rest of the butter into the container of a food mixer fitted with a flat beater. Contribute the sugar and defeat for 4-5 minutes till soft, pale and peaches-and-cream, rarely 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 delivering to the boil. Give it simmer for 2 minutes, roughly chop the 100 g of cranberries( if utilizing frozen fruit, this is easier in a food processor) then add to the sauce.
Break the egg into a bowl, trounce softly, just enough to mix grey and yolk, then include, with the beater still turning, to the butter and sugar.
When the egg is fully incorporated, budge in the flour and broiling powder smorgasbord, turning gradually until “there dont” visible draw of flour left. Fold in the apricots and cranberries, and the water they are in. Convey the concoction to the buttered bowl, smooth the surface lightly then cook for 30 minutes until pale amber and thinly conglomerate. Remove from the oven, pour over half of the cranberry butterscotch sauce and return to the oven for a further 10 instants. Serve red-hot along with the remaining sauce.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater @observer. co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater