Sunday, September 14, 2008

Mandarin Chicken : Dinner last night


Success! One of our favorite dishes at Wild Ginger is their Mandarin Chicken!  I've been trying to replicate this dish for the past few years, but failed miserably - the coating was either too soggy or tough and the sauce was too tangy or sweet.  I came across this batter recipe on Chow Times online and it was near perfect! The recipe called for 2 pounds of pork, but I used chicken and halved the recipe. I also decided not to use the pineapple and green peppers.


Marinate the chicken for about 30min.
2 T soy sauce
1.5 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp sesame oil
1.5 tsp cornstarch
dash of white pepper


Batter (I used the full recipe) Look how golden and puffy!
12 T flour + 1 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp baking soda
3 T rice flour
dash of salt
water (you will want the consistency of thin pancake batter)

Dip the chicken in batter and deep fry at 375F. 
(drain on paper towels and then deep fry a second time for an extra crispy crust)

Sauce it up!
The recipe on Chow Times didn't have and exact recipe for the sauce, so I decided to wing it as well! 
I used the juice from a large can of mandarin oranges, a good squirt of ketchup, a splash of rice wine, a spoonful of sugar and rice vinegar.  I ended up thickening it up with just a trace amount of slurry made of cornstarch - I didn't want the sauce to be thick. 

An Improvement I'll make next time. 
*I should've waited to do the second frying of the chicken pieces minutes before serving. It would've been hotter and the coating would've been crispier I think. It was still good though!

Another dish Dev and I love is Sichuan Green Beans
I am still searching for a good recipe, so in the meantime, I blanched the green beans, stir fried them with some minced garlic and a spoonful of each: chili oil, sugar and soy sauce. Not bad...

Wine Pairing
I usually prefer red over white wines but this one was recommended to go well with Asian dishes, in particular spicy and sweet. I'm not a huge fan of sparkling wines, but this one was quite nice.

4 comments:

Joe Kresoja said...

oh man this looks good.

Gonzalo said...

Wow how you do that? Its really its is impressive, it looks really tasty, delicious :). I will try to follow your recipe word by word. But theres something that i cant understand... whats the "Sauce", i really need to know what is it pleasee :)

Marinate the chicken for about 30min.
2 T sauce <----------i mean this

Thanks :) reaaally thanks

KYMadan said...

Hi Gonzalo! Thank you for your comment and catching my typo/mistake!
I meant to type Soy Sauce! :-)

Gonzalo said...

Thank You So Much :D ! It was delicious!