What’s the secret to super crispy General Tso’s chicken? I’ll show you in this recipe.
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Have you ever had Vietnamese chicken curry, or cà ri gà? It's hard not to love a dish that's a natural amalgam of 3 distinct cultures.
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In this recipe that's a favorite of home cooks in China, Cola-Cola and soy sauce meld to form a great sweet and savory glaze for the chicken.
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This version of cashew chicken is for the spicy food lovers out there.
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This spicy orange chicken with tomatoes is a healthier take on takeout orange chicken.
Read MoreWhen it comes to dinner on a weeknight, I often have about 10 different ideas in my head at a given time. Should I roast a chicken or make a quick pasta? A tried-and-true recipe like fried rice or go for something I just bookmarked on Pinterest? Vegetarian or an all-out pork fest? Usually my choices are so wildly different, and all over the place, that even I baffle myself.
Cursed with the paradox of choice, I'd sometimes take so long to make a decision about what to cook that I'm too hungry to start cooking. Or the supermarkets are close by the time I finally settle on something to make. So I just end up ordering takeout. (Yes, cookbook authors do resort to takeout semi-regularly. At least this one does.)
Fortunately, a few months ago I started a partnership with Soy Vay® and currently have a pantry stocked full of their sauces, so this weeknight dilemma has been occurring less and less. After I made this Garlic Beef and Asparagus Stir-fry last month, their Hoisin Garlic Sauce and Marinade has been on heavy rotation in my kitchen. I'd use it for stir-frying tofu, noodles, shrimp, and chicken. Especially chicken.
Read MoreHave you ever had Chinese-style baked stuffed mushrooms? When I was growing up, it was a popular appetizer at Chinese and tiki restaurants my family frequented. Usually filled with a sesame-accented pork filling that became caramelized in the oven, these bite-sized morsels were hard to resist.
With February designated as National Snack Food month, I decided to create a similar dish using Soy Vay® Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce, a thick flavorful sauce with plenty of sesame oil and sesame seeds. (I started my partnership with Soy Vay last month and have been experimenting with a few of their sauces.) Instead of pork, I decided to use ground chicken as a mushroom filling. For the flavoring, I just added minced ginger, scallions, and the Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce. You simply mix together the filling, fill up the mushroom caps, brush on a little olive oil, and sprinkle extra sesame seeds on top. Then the stuffed mushrooms bake in the oven for just 20 minutes.
The mushrooms make for tasty hor d’oeuvres for parties or just a side dish at dinner. You can also mix the filling and stuff the mushrooms ahead of time, and just pop them in the oven before serving. To test the seasoning of the meat mixture, just sauté a small bit of the filling in a skillet, and adjust accordingly with salt and pepper.
Read MoreHappy Chinese New Year!
The holiday has sort of snuck up on me, actually. I've spent the past two months in such a whirlwind of book promotion and other events, including speaking on a panel at the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference this past weekend, that February 10th was here before I knew it. Other than planning the Chinese New Year Virtual Potluck on this blog (which all you food bloggers should join!), I hadn't had a chance to plan ahead for the first few days of the New Year.
Luckily, there are still 12 days left to plan a big dim sum outing or dinner. In the mean time, I still like to cook Chinese as much as possible, though leaning toward the simpler dishes.
Like this Chinese Walnut Chicken. There are two versions of walnut chicken you might be familiar with, a stir-fry with a very light but flavorful sauce and one with a white creamy sauce made out of mayonnaise or sweetened condensed milk. This is the former, which I actually prefer, because you can actually taste the chicken and the sauce doesn't make you feel weighed down.
Read MoreRegular readers of this blog may know that I make braised chicken as often as I can. Fortunately most cuisines around the world — including some of my favorites like Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino — have at least one or two braised chicken dishes that have starring roles.
Today we'll look at Country Captain, a southern braised chicken dish that may or may not have had Indian origins.
As one story goes, this dish of chicken slow-cooked in tomato sauce and curry came from Savannah, Georgia, a major shipping port for the spice trade. It was rumored that a British sea captain who arrived from Bengal, India, introduced it around Savannah. The spiced tender chicken, with some almonds for crunch and currants for sweetness, became a dish synonymous with the Lowcountry cooking of Georgia.
Then there are others who vehemently argue that it actually originated in Charleston, South Carolina, another spice trade port.
However, according to the New York Times, long-time food columnist Molly O'Neill had actually traced the dish back to the mid-1800s Philadelphia. How it migrated south and stayed there is anyone's guess.
Read MoreHappy 2013!
I just came back from a nice long trip to Boston to visit family for the holidays. I have to admit: it's been very nice to take a break from blogging for a short while. Having been a blogger for so long (5 years!), I sometimes have a lot of trouble separating it from daily life. It's not like having a 9-5 job, where you can mostly leave your work at the office. Weeknights? Why not stay up until midnight working on a post? Weekends? Perfect time for recipe-testing!
In the past year or so I've gotten much better about setting aside time just for relaxation. I now leave at least an hour before bed for reading or something similarly relaxing, instead of just going straight for editing photos to hitting the pillow. Saturdays have become unplug days (well, mostly...checking email on the phone doesn't count, right?)
Needless to say, my habits could get better. And that's one resolution for 2013, to be more efficient with work so that I have enough leisure time to recharge my batteries.
Read MoreIf you're a big fan of tangy chicken, give this vinegar-glazed chicken a try. I first made this Hunan dish about a year ago from Grace Young's Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge and found it positively addictive. I still come back to it again and again for its wonderful combination of smoky, tart, and spicy flavors.
There's a big bottle of Chinese black vinegar on my counter that I've had for well over a year, surviving at least two apartment moves. I use it every week, from making dumpling dipping sauces to stir-frying dishes like kung pao chicken, but in a year (through intensive recipe testing, no less) it's only about two-thirds done. Bottles of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, and other pantry staples have been replaced, but somehow this bottle of black vinegar seems bottomless.
I realized the other day that I haven't talk too much on this blog about Chinese black vinegar and its uses. If you've never had the chance to try it, and live near a big Chinese supermarket, I highly recommend you go to the vinegar aisle and buy yourself a bottle. The one to look for is called Chinkiang Black Vinegar from the Gold Plum brand label, and it looks like this is what it looks like:
Read MoreMy cookbook is officially released next week! And it makes me wonder: where did the time go?
It seems like just yesterday I handed in my final manuscript, and now all of a sudden December 11th is just around the corner. There are still interviews to schedule, books to ship off, and a book launch party to plan. It's equal amounts exciting and nerve-racking. Sometimes I just want to take a deep breath and pour myself a large glass of wine. Other times I just want to escape to the kitchen and de-stress by cooking.
So it's ironic that the dish I chose to cook today is also a Chinese-American comfort food classic, like the dishes in The Chinese Takeout Cookbook (which does have a recipe for sweet and sour pork). I hadn't made crispy chicken in months, but just felt like doing it again today on a whim.
The process for making the chicken is very similar to the process for General Tso's Chicken, which is still the most popular recipe on this site. You coat the chicken with salt, cornstarch, and egg whites, then carefully fry the chicken for 3 to 4 minutes, with an optional 2nd frying to get the meat extra-crispy. The tangy and sweet sauce with pineapple chunks takes only 2 minutes to cook down before it coats the chicken. It's like the best sweet and sour sauce you can get at a restaurant, except now you know the exact ingredients that go into it (no gluey preservatives here!)
Read MoreThis beer-braised chicken with Sriracha is my Asian take on a French classic, coq à la bière. In Alsace, chicken and onions gets braised in a nutty brown ale until meltingly tender; I decided to apply the same cooking methods for this dish. Adding Sriracha hot sauce, hoisin sauce, and sesame oil enhances the mild sweetness and nuttiness of the braising liquid. This is perfect hearty dish for cold winter nights!
One of the first dinners I made in my first Park Slope apartment two years ago was this beer-braised chicken. It was November, and unseasonably frigid weather and cold gusts of wind outside made I crave something meaty, hearty, and comforting. Spiciness was a bonus.
Inspired both by coq à la bière and a Martin Yan recipe for beer-braised duck, I wanted to make a braised chicken with brown ale and Sriracha. I needed a robust sort of beer to withstand the Sriracha that will go in my sauce, so I stopped in Biercraft on 5th Ave., a little wonderland of craft beers. The guy behind the counter recommended Avery Brewing Co.'s Ellie's Brown Ale, which has a lot of nuttiness, sweetness, and chocolate malt character. And, he added, it won't become bitter when boiled down like some other brown ales. Turns out, it's also great for sipping while you prepare the chicken.
Read MoreI first made this Vietnamese Clay Pot chicken during my first winter in Beijing in 2008. The temperatures were consistently brutally low (think Northern Vermont in January) and the heating in my rental apartment was way less than adequate. I wanted a hearty meaty dish that would also warm up the apartment while it cooked on the stove.
This Vietnamese Clay Pot Chicken, or Vietnamese Caramelized Chicken, was the perfect thing to make. Despite the name, you don't actually need a traditional clay pot; it cooks very well in a Dutch oven or straight-sided skillet as well. This week I revisited and revised the recipe, making it more streamlined ; hopefully you'll like it even better than before!
Cold weather makes me long for piping hot dishes, like clay pot braises. Last night I decided to make clay pot caramelized chicken, and adapted a Vietnamese-style braise from Chef Charles Phan of San Francisco's The Slanted Door. One of the major changes I made was the amount of fish sauce. The original recipe called for 3 tablespoons, which I would not recommend to anyone hoping to keep a decent-smelling kitchen. (See Vietnamese Caramelized Pork.) I reduced the amount to 1 tablespoon, which is plenty for enhancing the flavors of the dish.
Read MoreWhat a crazy two weeks. Here in the Northeast, many areas are still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. and now we've been hit with a Nor'easter. Right now it's snowing and raining at the same time, which makes me want to just stay inside and make something extra-comforting, like chicken noodle soup.
I first experimented with making Sichuan-style chicken noodle soup 3 years ago. And it's no less of a favorite comfort food dish now.
Rather than the American version flavored with bay leaf and thyme, I decided to make a Sichuan-style broth with star anise, cinnamon, tangerine peel, and Sichuan pepper. (There will be a mild tingle from the peppercorn, to jazz things up.) The best part: you can shred leftover roast chicken, itself a cost-saver, and add it to the soup at the last minute. The simmering anise and cinnamon will make your kitchen smell wondering. And slurping the steamy chicken noodle soup will get you through these chilly wintry days.