Big Cooking Project #4 - Yellow Wine Chicken


Holidays seem to be the only time I can experiment with cooking. Today's special dish is Yellow Wine Chicken or (Wong Jau Kai).

This is a regular dish cooked by Oka-san, having learnt from my paternal grandmother who is a Hakka. The wine is made by my grandmother herself, and I'm glad I finally going to attempt this dish on my own :)

Ingredients (for 2 pax)
1 chicken thigh & drumstick or chicken breast meat
1 piece of ginger, smashed or sliced into pieces
1 piece of black fungus ( ), pre-soaked and sliced
2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 bowl chicken stock
Yellow wine
Salt to taste

Marinade (for the chicken)
1/2 piece of ginger, smashed and sliced into pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sesame oil
5 tablespoon yellow wine

Method
1. Wash chicken and marinade for 3 hours or more.

2. Soak black fungus for 2 hours until soft. Slice into thin strips.

3. Smash the ginger into thick chunks. If you have mortar and pestle (lesung batu), that would do the trick. I don't have so I cut into big pieces and use the cleaver to smash it. Reason why I smash instead of slice it is that the chunkier bits of ginger supposedly gives more aroma to the dish (according to my aunt). I do agree it doesn't look so nice as the sliced version but it's the taste we are after.

4. Heat the wok with sesame oil.

5. First, fry the ginger until fragrant. Then add the black fungus, followed by chicken.

6. Continue to stir fry until the chicken meat turns white colour.

7. Immediately add in the bowl of chicken stock. I prefer chicken stock as it gives more flavour as compared to water. Cover with lid and allow to simmer.

8. Add yellow wine according to preference, depending on how strong you like the taste of the wine. I added 1/3 of the bottle. To me was just nice, but hubby wanted it stronger. So maybe next time need to add close to half a bottle! Continue to let it simmer for 1 more minute.

9. Add salt to taste.

10. Serve hot with rice.


Hubby gave me an 8 for this dish! Sweet indeed :)

Comments

chris federick said…
heya there, looks like u're a good cook. And nice blog u have here.

dropping by,
chris