Fried Chicken with Watercress Apple Salad in Ginger Miso Dressing

 

Lately, I've been rediscovering the simplicity and beauty of flavoring meats by placing them in brine.  I remember my grandma never breaded her fried chicken.  She would brine chicken thighs for 2 hours then rinse them briefly.  After patting them dry, she fried the chicken in a skillet till they were golden brown and cooked through. They don't become soggy even a day later.  I tried her method but I let the chicken sit in the fridge overnight instead of 2 hours. When my son had a taste of the fried chicken, he declared that it was one of  the best fried chicken he's had! It was a first time for him-- fried chicken without any breading!  Paired with watercress apple salad, it's a keeper.

Here is grandma's easy fried chicken that I served with watercress salad with ginger miso dressing:

4 chicken thighs
1/3 cup kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/3 cup water
canola oil for frying
1 bunch of watercress
1 apple, cut into wedges
1 tsp ginger (you can add more if you wish)
2-3 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
3 Tbsp miso
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup chicken stock
soy sauce

Combine the salt, water, pepper and chicken in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge overnight. Next day, rinse the chicken pieces briefly and pat dry.   Place canola oil in a cast iron skillet and set over medium heat.  When the oil is hot enough, add the chicken and cover the skillet.  Fry the chicken till cooked through.  Serve with watercress apple salad with ginger miso dressing and soy sauce on the side if you wish.

To prepare ginger miso dressing, combine ginger, miso, rice vinegar, sugar, and chicken stock. You can adjust the ratio of sugar to vinegar to suit your taste. Combine watercress and apple wedges and drizzle dressing over it.

Singaporean Hainanese Chicken

 

Hainanese Chicken is a Singapore classic made with fresh/ chilled whole chicken.  Copious amounts of salt is rubbed into the skin and in the body cavity to remove impurities.  It is then rinsed in water and the salting- rinsing process is repeated to ensure that the chicken is very clean. The chicken is blotted dry then gently poached several times in chicken stock to infuse the delicate ginger-scallion-sesame flavor.  The resulting poached chicken is very tender and delicate. It is served with three dipping sauces to complement the flavor of the chicken.  Often jasmine rice is added to the stock used for poaching then served as Chicken Rice.

For this dish, I adapted the Hainanese Chicken Rice recipe from The Food Of Singapore.  Since I did not prepare the Chinese chicken stock myself, I added ginger, sesame oil, scallions and salt to enhance the flavor. 

Here's the modified recipe:
1 fresh chicken/ 4 chicken breasts or thighs (deboned but skin on)
4 cups chicken stock
1 tsp sesame oil 
3 slices of ginger
2 scallions
1-2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

For the Chicken Rice:
2 cups jasmine rice
2 cups chicken stock used to poach chicken
salt and white pepper to taste

Three kinds of dipping sauces:

Kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)

Sambal olek

Ginger scallion sauce (made by mixing finely minced ginger, scallions, salt, sesame oil, canola oil and chicken broth)

Clean and dry the chicken.  Boil chicken stock, sesame oil, ginger, scallions, salt then put in the chicken.  Cover the pot, let the stock come to a boil again for 1 minute then turn off the heat and let the chicken steep for 15 minutes. Remove chicken from the pot, plunge in iced water and drain.

Bring the stock back to a boil, add the chicken and repeat the steeping process.  Plunge chicken in iced water and drain.  Repeat the whole process twice so that the chicken has steeped in the chicken stock for a total of 60 minutes.  The chicken will be lightly cooked, not at all dried out and with no traces of blood.  Cut into serving pieces, sprinkle with soy sauce and sesame oil, and set aside. Make sure you adjust the amount of seasoning depending on the size of chicken you use.

Wash jasmine rice and cook it in a rice cooker.  Place the dipping sauce in separate dishes.  Serve Hainanese Chicken with hot Chicken Rice and the three dipping sauces. Enjoy!

Hibachi Style/ Teppanyaki Dinner at Tokyo Garden

After church we decided to go out with friends to Tokyo Garden for a hibachi style (grilled)/ teppanyaki dinner. We go there at least once a year. This time there were 17 of us. Entertainment is part of the dinner so it's a fun experience specially if there are kids around. When we got settled, the waitress took our orders for drinks and entrees then passed around hot, steaming white towels using a pair of tongs. We used this to clean and refresh our hands. In Japan, some guests would use the towels to refresh their faces as well after an exhausting day at work.

We were served a dark, rich onion soup along with cold lettuce salad topped with a ginger-mayo dressing. The soup was delicious, the salad was amazingly refreshing and the dressing was spot on! The dressing is supposed to be a secret recipe...maybe someone out there can show me how to make that dressing...



Our chef then rolled his cart full of sauces and ingredients for our dinner. First, chef made sure he got all our entree orders right. He asked us to choose our dipping sauces--garlic butter, mustard or ginger. But of course, I asked for two portions of garlic butter!! The food performance began with chef displaying his juggling skills with cooking utensils. The fun part was about to come.... before each teppanyaki dinner ("teppan" refers to the griddle or hot plate; "yaki" means to grill), the chef would typically flame up the table-sized aluminum hotplate. Chef squirted clear liquid (probably vodka or some kind of alcohol) on the teppan/ hotplate and lit it...bursting into a spectacular flame! I believe the flame adds not only drama but also "wok hai" flavor to teppanyaki cooking. It was so hot, sometimes I wonder if chef's eyebrows sometimes get singed at least once each evening!!

"Japanese spaghetti" was the first thing chef prepared on the teppan. Butter was slathered on cooked spaghetti then "Japanese ketchup" (soy sauce) and "Japanese tinker bell" (pepper) were added. It was served to everyone with a liberal sprinkling of sesame seeds. Then, it was time for egg acrobatics-- egg was rolled on the teppan, flipped several times into the air with a metal spatula and finally a whack in midair to break it. Broken egg shells were pushed to the side and chef added butter to cook the egg for the Japanese fried rice.

For individual entrees, chef laid out meats on the teppan to cook - chicken, then salmon and steaks. Entertainment came in the form of an erupting onion volcano. Onion rings were stacked in the middle of the teppan to resemble Mt. Fuji. After a generous squirt of alcohol, chef lit it and doused ketchup, teriyaki sauce and pepper for the bubbling lava and fireworks effect---very exciting and a hit even for us grown-up kids!! I strongly suspect one of the first criteria to become a teppanyaki chef is to be a pyromaniac! Our fire bug chef later cut up the onion volcano for the veggie stir-fry and served it with meat entrees.


Finally, I must say my salmon and steak combo was excellent-- succulent and perfectly cooked!!



Everyone was completely satisfied and enjoyed the dinner....that is.... until the bill came!!!