Chinese Style Roast Chicken

New year, new roast chicken version!! Anyone who knows me, know that I'm obsessed with Roast Chicken and I roast a large (free range) chicken every single Sunday. Not only does it cover Sunday supper, but it provides for lunch and dinner the following day also.

Over Christmas I saw Gordon Ramsey do a 5 spice duck, and it inspired me to try a different take on my roast chicken. The result was a very flavorful bird and I added a glaze at the end, which gave it a wonderful bronzed glow and deliciously sticky skin!

Ingredients

• 1 large free range chicken
• 1 thumb size piece of ginger
• 1 red chili, kept whole
• 1 satsuma, pricked with a fork
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 lemongrass bulb, bruised
• 3 tbsp of Chinese 5 spice
• 2 tbsp of honey
• 2 tbsp of soy sauce

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
2. Stuff the chicken cavity with the chilli, ginger, garlic, satsuma and lemongrass.
3. Rub the chicken generously with the 5 spice.
4. Leave to marinate for 30 minutes.
5. Roast in the oven for 1 hour.
6. After 1 hour, turn the chicken upside down and roast for a further 30 minutes.
7. Turn the chicken back over and roast for another 10 minutes.
8. Whisk the honey and soy sauce together.
9. Turn the oven up to 200 degrees.
10. Pour over the honey and soy glaze and return to the oven, glazing the chicken every 5 minutes for 20 minutes.
11. Take out of the oven and allow to rest for 15 minutes before carving.
12. Serve with steamed greens and brown rice for a healthy roast chicken dinner.

Super Quick Roast Chicken Fried Rice

The arrival of my baby daughter two weeks ago, means that the blog hasn't been updated in a while, and posts will probably be less frequent in the immediate future as me and my little angel find our feet. She fell into a deep sleep this evening, so I grabbed the opportunity to pull together a quick dinner and photograph it also for the blog. Result! She's such a good little girl!
This recipe is a simple throw-together quick supper for leftover chicken, packed full of spice and flavour! I'm  forever trying to come up with new ways with my leftover roast chicken; and this simple chicken fried rice ticks all the boxes. It's easy, quick, and satisfying. The perfect supper to eat in a bowl curled up on the sofa watching TV after work.

By using the egg as a basket or base to the the dish is a nice twist, instead of breaking the eggs directly into the fried rice dish, sometimes I find that method a results in a 'mushy' rice.

Serves 2 (and allows for seconds)

Ingredients

• Leftover roast chicken pieces
• 2 Carrots, peeled and diced
• 100g of frozen peas
• 8 mushrooms diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 garlic clove, diced
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and diced
• 1 cup of basmati rice
• 2 cups of tap water
• 4 eggs (2 per person)
• 3 tbsp Stir fry oil
• 1 tbsp Sesame oil
• Soy sauce, as preferred, (I like a lot)
• 1/4 tsp Chilli Paste
• Sweet chilli sauce to serve

Method

1. Cook the rice in a pan with the water over a medium heat for 10 minutes. (Its best to cook the rice a little while before the rest of the dish to allow the rice to cool)
2. Add 1 tbsp of stir fry oil to a hot wok. Add the garlic, chilli paste, and ginger and stir.
3. Add in the peas, carrots, mushrooms and pepper and stir fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Add the chicken to warm through. Stir through the sesame oil and season with the soy sauce.
5. Add the rice and thoroughly combine.
6. In a frying pan, add another tbsp of stir fry oil.
7. Break 2 eggs into a cup and whisk quickly with a fork.
8. Add the eggs to the hot pan and swirl around so the base of the pan is evenly coated with the eggs.
9. Allow to cook for a couple of minutes and turn over for a final 30 seconds. (should resemble a pancake)
10. Remove from the pan and keep warm, and repeat the process with the remaining 2 eggs, for the second portion.
11. To serve, place the warm fried egg into a bowl, and top with the fried rice.
12. Serve with extra soy and sweet chilli sauce.

Leftover Lamb Fried Rice

I may have mentioned cooking a big butterflied leg of lamb over the weekend….Well I have lots of meat leftover as I seemed to have cooked a ginormous leg, enough to feed 10 people, not the six that I was cooking for! This resulted in lots of leftovers for lamb pitta pockets for lunch all week. To make a dent in the leftover mound of tasty meat and because time was not on my side, I decided to make really quick leftover fried rice for the husband for dinner. He may actually turn into a sheep after the lamb over load!!!!!!

I would use any leftover meat for this recipe, be it chicken, boiled bacon or pork!!!! It would all taste equally delicious. In this instance the lamb still had the smoky BBQ flavour on it, which made the fried rice extremely tasty.

Serves 2

Ingredients

·         Leftover meat, diced

·         2 carrots diced

·         6 mushrooms, diced

·         2 spring onions, diced

·         120g of rice, cooked according to packet (to speed things up further microwave pouch rice is good)

·         1 egg

·         1 garlic clove, diced

·         ½ a red chilli, deseeded and diced

·         2 tbsp of soy sauce

·         1 tbsp of oyster sauce

·         1 tbsp of hoisin sauce

·         1 tbsp of oil

·         1 tbsp of chopped coriander

Method

1.       Make sure you have all your ingredients prepared, as once you start cooking, it all comes together really fast!

2.       Get your wok on a high heat with the oil and add the garlic and chilli, stir fry for a moment

3.       Add the carrots and mushrooms and fry for 4 minutes.

4.       Remove from the wok to a plate.

5.       Add the rice and fry with the diced meat.

6.       Add the 3 sauces and mix through the meat.

7.       Break the egg directly into the wok and stir vigorously to cook the egg.

8.       Return the veg to the wok and stir to combine all the ingredients together.

9.       Add the chopped coriander to finish it off.

10.   Serve with some sweet chilli sauce on the side

Last Minute Chinese New Year Prawn Stir Fry

I visited China in 2006 as part of my world travels, with my now husband. We arrived to China on a train from Russia, and we had no idea of what to expect in China, from a cultural and food point of view. Having spent the previous 10 days expeiencing culture shock after culture shock, from Russia through to Mongolia, we figured we have adjusted to seeing new things on a daily basis!!

China was like no country we'd ever visited. As I said we arrived via train into Bejing from Ulanbataar in Mongolia. Crossing the border from Mongolia into China was really surreal. Our train came into the border crossing station in the middle of the night and the station was all lit up with Christmas Music playing on loud speakers!! (It was September). When all the paper work was completed, our train began its final journey towards Bejing, passing THE Great Wall!!! We thought 'what an introduction to China, this is going to be a great trip'!!

Out of all the countries we have visited, China is probably the strangest to us, but exciting to discover. The Temple of Heaven in Beijing was breathtaking, the wall was challenging to climb, the acrobatic show, mind boggling. The food was not what we expected. We were thinking about food from our local Chinese take aways at home. How wrong we were.

Our first meal in Beijing was a bit scary. Our guide brought us to off the beaten track traditional hot pot restaurant. This is were big pots of boiling stock on gas portable hobsare placed at in the centre of your table and the raw ingredients then selected by you, and cooked at the table by you, using only chopsticks. Thank goodness our guide selected an array of meats and vegetables for us. Looking at the English translation on the menu, we read all sorts of meats, dog and horse included, and literally every single part of the animal was on offer. Our guide assured us we were eating beef and pork!! But that saying that Chinese eat everything with legs on it, except a table, was beinging to ring truer and truer!

Peking Duck night was another highlight of our dining experience in China. Really authentic and really delicious and succulent. I will probably never taste another Peking Duck like it. In China there's no such thing as starters, everything is brought to the table as its cooked and rice is brought to the table towards the end of the meal, so it really is a different experience from ordering your prawn toast and wontons and then sweet and sour chicken with fried rice from your local take away.

I almost forgot about the Chinese New Year today. I had planned on doing a elaborate Chinese buffet meal for my family!!! But between this and that I totally forgot, so in a last minute dash, I whipped up a quick Chinese prawn with spring onion and chilli stir fry with rice noodles.

2012 Year of the Dragon (Source: friendfortheride.wordpress.com)

It's ready in less than 10 minutes, so for those of you who wanted to salute the Chinese New Year and don't really have the time, take a look at this last minute Chinese Prawns Stir Fry

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 16 king prawns, uncooked
• 1/2 a red chilli, sliced
• 4 spring onions, chopped finely
• 1 thumb size piece of peeled chopped ginger
• 1 garlic clove, finely diced
• 3 tbp of light coconut milk
• 100g of rice noodles

Method

1. Put a saucepan of water on the boil and reduce to a simmer.
2. Get a wok smoking hot.
3. Add the noodles to the water and simmer for 2-3 minutes
4. Add the chilli, ginger, and garlic to the wok and stir fry vigorously for 1 minute.
5. Add the prawns and stir fry until pink, and add the spring onions.
6. Drain the noddles and return to the pan and sitr in the coconut milk.
7. To plate up, place the noddles in a shallow plate, and top with the stir fried prawns.