We don't eat out often, and rarely order take out either, clearly I wouldn't have a food blog if I didn't cook enough to populate it, but recently I have been craving Chinese: sesame chicken...I love this dish, I know it is horribly unhealthy and I probably do not want to know what is in it, but in the world of take out it is one of my faves.
Let me save you the trouble of searching for a good sesame chicken recipe online. Truly, it does not exist (if you have found otherwise, please enlighten me!). I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a restaurant-style Chinese sesame chicken recipe, to no avail. Determined not to completely give up and attempt to satiate my sesame chicken craving, I found a couple of recipes online, tinkered with them a bit and came up with what I am now calling Chinese Five Spice Chicken. Turns out it tasted really good, just not like sesame chicken. If I were to make it again, I think I would make the sauce differently, as noted...
Chinese Five Spice Chicken
4, 4-oz. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
2 T soy sauce
2 T pure maple syrup
2 T cooking sherry
1 tsp fresh ginger root, grated
1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
1/3 cup all purpose flour
salt and pepper to season
sesame oil
sesame sauce (recipe follows)
2 cups cooked rice (I used wild rice, but any rice could be used with this dish)
Combine the first six ingredients in a large zip top plastic bag, mix well and marinate in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in another large zip top plastic bag, add the flour and season with salt and pepper. Make the sesame sauce while the chicken marinates as well (see below).
Once the chicken is marinated, transfer each piece from the marinating bag to the flour bag, shaking any excess liquid off. Discard marinating bag. Toss chicken pieces in the flour until well coated. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and just cover the bottom in sesame oil. Add the breaded chicken pieces one by one, shaking off excess flour (I used tongs). Pan fry, turning each piece once, until both sides are crispy and the chicken is cooked through.
Reduce the heat to low, add the sesame sauce and toss to coat and heat through. Serve over rice.
Sesame Sauce (how I made it) Sesame Sauce (how I would change it)
1 cup sugar 3/4 c sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch 3 T cornstarch
1 1/2 c water 1 1/2 c water (plus more to thin out)
1/8 c rice wine vinegar 1/8 c rice wine vinegar
3 T soy sauce 3 T soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil 1 tsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, minced 1 garlic clove, minced
In a sauce pan, whisk together the sugar and cornstarch until well combined. Turn the heat to medium and add the remaining ingredients, whisking well to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer five minutes. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a few teaspoons of water at a time and whisk. Remove from heat and set aside until ready to toss with chicken. (this will probably make more sauce than is needed to cover the chicken, so add as much or as little as you want to your cooked chicken and reserve the rest for another time).
Another note, if you do not have Chinese five spice powder, you can make it. I actually had run out, so I made some for this dish. I'm afraid I didn't measure the exact amounts of each spice that goes into it, I just put all of them in a spice grinder and kept smelling and adding until I achieved an acceptable form. This is roughly what goes into five spice powder:
Chinese Five Spice Powder
4 full pieces star anise
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground cloves
Grind well in a spice grinder (which for me is an old coffee bean grinder that I re-purposed for spices). Play with the amounts to your personal taste! Freshly made spices always taste better than the bottled concoction, so you can hardly go wrong. Just remember that star anise is pretty potent, so go easy on that one to start.
No comments:
Post a Comment