Crispy Chicken with Chili Sauce

by Liv | Oct 28, 2010

Crispy Chicken with Chili Sauce

Crispy chicken with chili sauce, known in Chinese as 椒麻雞 is a dish that my grandpa cooked for me often when I was young. I always helped grandpa to grind the Sichuan peppers for this dish with a mortar and pestle. This dish always brings back my earliest kitchen memories. Grandpa used to pan fry the Sichuan peppers first and then give to me to grind. He always told me this method of preparing Sichuan peppers will make the flavour of the pepper stronger and taste much better.

Even now, mortars and pestles still play a very important part in my cooking. It’s a versatile tool and is much cheaper than a hand grinder. You can buy it in a lot of shop.

As you can imagine with the Sichuan peppers, this dish tastes a little bit spicy. You can adjust the percentage of Sichuan peppers and chilis if you can’t eat food that’s too spicy. Here is my little suggestion before you start grinding the Sichuan pepper. Heat up a frying pan or wok without oil and stir-fry the Sichuan pepper at the lowest heat first. Once you start to smell the fragrance then turn off the gas and start grinding it. Don’t burn the Sichuan pepper or the sauce will taste bitter and damage the whole dish.

People boil the chicken for this dish in real Sichuan cuisine but grandpa knew I loved fried chicken (You know, kids love fried chicken. I’m not exceptional lol) so he always fried the chicken for me. This dish works both ways, but I chose fried chicken today because my husband loves it too.

Credits: Photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com

Crispy Chicken with Chili Sauce

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 40 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Total Time 55 minutes

Servings 3 people

Ingredients

2 chicken legs de-bone them
2 spring onions chop finely
1 fresh chili remove seeds then chop finely
2 cloves garlic grate finely
1-2 fresh coriander bunches including leaves and stalk. Chop finely
2 tbsp sweet potato starch or potato starch and 2 tbsp flour. Your choice

Seasonings and ingredients for chicken marinade

1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1/4 tsp pepper powder
1 spring onion chop finely
2 thin slices ginger chop finely
1/2 tsp sugar

Seasonings for chili sauce

2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp Sichuan pepper powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp rice vinegar add 1/4 tsp more sugar if you use white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp water

Instructions

De-bone chicken leg and marinade with the seasonings and ingredients for 30 minutes.
Mix all the seasonings for spicy sauce with spring onion, chilli, garlic, coriander. Mix them evenly and leave for at least 15 minutes.
Coat the chicken with sweet potato powder. Heat up a wok with 2~3 cups of oil. The oil temperature should be around 150℃ and deep fry the chicken at a low heat for 5 minutes. Take out the chicken and heat up the oil again with full gas power. Deep fry the chicken until it’s crispy with a slightly golden colour.
Place the chicken on a plate and pour the dressing on the top to serve.

Holiday in Granada

by Liv | Oct 22, 2010

I brought back a lot of photos from Spain as I promised before I went to Spain. In total I took 575 photos but as you can imagine it’s taken me some time to sort and edit everything. In this blog post there are some of the photos we took in Granada, Spain, but in the next blog I will share photos we took in Madrid.

This was my first time been to Spain and we absolutely loved Granada. The weather there is awesome and the tapas are amazing, especially as they are free! I read Granada is not famous for food but it’s the only city in Spain that still serves tapas for free. Most of the tapas bar sell small size beers for 1 to 2 euros but the bar man will service tapas and each round of tapas is different. But it’s all tasty. You can use a little bit of money to plan a “tapas trip” in Granada. Try every tapas bar and decide which one is the best tapas bar to you.

This is my favorite tapas bar in Granada, “Cerveceria La Boveda”. The bar man who serviced us was really nice but the food was really really tasty.

Except the tapas bars, Arabic style tea houses are another cool and chic choice for your holiday. We went to this Arabic tea house to have afternoon tea to refresh and avoid the high temperatures outside. The temperature in the afternoons often approached 30 degrees, which doesn’t sound hot but we live in Edinburgh which although beautiful is often cold, windy and/or wet. I ordered a liquorice tea which cost 3 euro and Chris ordered a Vanilla smoothie for 2.5 euro.

These photos are about local Spanish people who live in Granada. I feel life in Granada is so relaxing. Every shop and restaurant close at 4 pm and city is empty at 4pm.

This is the best kebab I had in my life. I bought it from a random kebab shop on the street in Granada. It cost me 3 euro but it’s so so so tasty. I’ve never been Turkey, Egypt or Greece that part of world so I only can compare with the kebabs one can buy in the UK. Maybe because Granada was the last city to be occupied by the Arabs but the Arabian culture and architecture is quite prominent in Granada so we were treated to great middle eastern kebabs as well as teas.

This is “Basilica De Ntra Sra De Las Angustias”. A very beautiful church in the city centre of Granada. The outside of this church looks very ordinary. But the inside of the church looks amazing. The decorations are gorgeous, it’s not hard to tell that Spanish people are very religious from the gorgeous decorations of the church. This church is very popular and it’s always full of people.

I think this church open at morning and close around 1:00 afternoon and reopen again after 6 pm. I can’t tell you if this information is right because this church didn’t have any English information about opening times and I asked random local Spanish people when the church will open again today. A lady used her fingers to indicate “6” to me. Then she just talked a lot of Spanish to me but I only can understand uno, dos in Spanish…lol This is another big problem about travel in Spain. It’s not very easy to travel in Spain if you don’t understand Spainish. A lot of Spanish people can’t speak English or they don’t want to help you if you speak English. But what’s the point for a tourist like me who only go to Spain for 1 week to learn a lot of Spanish? I probably won’t use it again in the future. (Come on Spani