It’s been awhile. My husband and I have been back east for two weeks visiting family and friends on a long overdue trip, and it was so great to see everyone.
With stops in PA, DC, VA, and MD it was quite a busy couple of weeks, and especially nice to be back in the northeast in the early spring when the trees are just beginning to leaf out or blossom, and the spring bulbs are popping up everywhere.
Now we are back and for some reason this is the first chance I’ve had to catch up on my blogging.
It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, but I haven’t been posting, so I hope to begin to remedy that by sharing this recipe for the Three-Cup Chicken I recently made. Here goes…
I discovered this recipe in the New York Times Cooking column I subscribe to online. If you have never heard of this Taiwanese dish here’s a brief description of it from columnist Sam Sifton…
Ask 30 people how to make this simple Taiwanese recipe, and you’ll receive 30 different responses. Some fry the chicken before braising it, use more oil, less wine, different blends of soy sauce. Debates rage over how thick the sauce should be, over which parts of the chicken to use. (Few follow the folk recipe that calls for making the sauce with a cup each of sesame oil, soy sauce and rice wine. “If you actually cook it that way,” says Eddie Huang, the Taiwanese-American chef who inspired the television program “Fresh Off the Boat,” “you’ll be in trouble.”) Our reporting and testing led us to the recipe below. Use it as a starting point, and then make it your own.
Here is the link to the complete article …
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/magazine/a-taste-of-taiwan.html
Now for the recipe which I followed…
Three-Cup Chicken (Sam Sifton, NYT Cooking)
(4 servings)
Ingredients
3 tablespoons sesame oil
1 2-to-3-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into coins, approximately 12
12 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 whole scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
3 dried red peppers or 1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
2 pounds chicken thighs, boneless or bone-in, cut into bite-size pieces
1 tablespoon unrefined or light brown sugar
½ cup rice wine (note: I used the Mirin I had left and added some rice vinegar to make the ½ cup, and it worked)
¼ cup light soy sauce (note: used regular soy sauce)
2 cups fresh Thai basil leaves or regular basil leaves (note: didn’t have Thai, but will try that next time)
Preparation
Step 1
Heat a wok over high heat and add 2 tablespoons sesame oil. When the oil shimmers, add the ginger, garlic, scallions and peppers, and cook until fragrant, approximately 2 minutes.
Step 2
Scrape the aromatics to the sides of the wok, add remaining oil and allow to heat through. Add the chicken, and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is browned and crisping at the edges, approximately 5 to 7 minutes.
Step 3
Add sugar and stir to combine, then add the rice wine and soy sauce, and bring just to a boil. Lower the heat, then simmer until the sauce has reduced and started to thicken, approximately 15 minutes.
Step 4
Turn off the heat, add the basil and stir to combine. Serve with white (or brown) rice.
Note: I also did a quick stir-fry of whatever veggies i had on-hand to serve alongside. Delicious!
