[Food][Cooking] Fried Chicken with Herb

This dish is a Taiwanese famous snack, and probably the easiest to re-create. Also it's just fried chicken with herb, western culture should have no problem accepting this to be sell at street vendors.
But you don't see it being sell at your street corners, hack, you almost don't get to see any street vendors these days in Toronto.

Since fried chicken are being sell at a ridiculous price (ie KFC popcorn chicken?), to make it at home you can eat till you drop and it's probably the same price or less. And it's always tastier and fresher to make fried chicken at home, right?



To make this fried chicken, first you have to marinate the small pieces of chicken leg meat overnight. (Well, you can just whip it up at anytime you feel like some fried chicken, but it will be much better in taste if you marinate it for a some time.) marinate the chicken meat with soy sauce, sugar, white pepper, cornstarch, sesame seed oil.

Before you fry the chicken, let it sit for half an hour in room temperature to make sure the meat get to cook more evenly.

For coating the chicken, we use sweet potato flour. The texture of the sweet potato flour is the key to this dish, when the lumps in the flour gets into the hot oil, it will turn into little crunch sticking to the meat. The flour makes a nice crunch on the surface of the meat, and the flour lumps sticking on top, the double crunch makes this dish stays crunchy even cooled. (yeah, right. like it can get a chance to cool down before it got into someone's mouth.)

Mix the sweet potato flour with salt and white pepper. Make sure the chicken gets coated on all sides, then set it aside on another plate to sit for a minute. This will ensure the flour sticks to the meat for good.

This dish should be made with Taiwanese Basil-like herb, since there isn't any available here in Toronto (at least I don't see them in supermarket), you can use Basil or Thai Basil instead. Coat the herb just the same as the chicken.

Heat the oil then turn it down to medium-heat, as the chicken has to well done, a medium-heat is a safe way to make sure the chicken is cooked through and avoid the coating gets burnt.

Fry the chicken for 3 to 5 minutes depend on size, then turn the heat up so that the oil drawn out of the chicken pieces. Also adding the herb to fry with the chicken for a minute, drain the oil and place them on some paper towel to remove any excess oil.

Sprinkle some salt and white pepper on the chicken while they are hot. Add some chili powder for an extra kick.




Chinese version posted at:
http://chichican.blogspot.com/2008/06/fried-chicken-with-herb.html

[Cooking] Beef Stir-fry with Oyster Sauce (Video)

Food related blog post not limited by words and pictures only.
Now we can have video too~

Wanted to make a "Beef stir-fry with Green Onion". But after missing lunch at work, all I can think of is to have a dish with lots of sauce, so I can mix it with the rice (and eat it mouthful after mouthful~).
Therefore, I made a "Beef stir-fry with Oyster Sauce".



Not alot of Ingredients, but it's better to have them all ready to go before cooking.

Main ingredients: sliced Beef (marinated with Soy sauce, Sesame seed oil, Cornstarch and Sugar), White Onion, Green Onion.

Sauce mixture: Soy sauce, Oyster sauce, Cornstarch and Water.


heat the pan, add sesame seed oil when it's hot.
put in White Onion when the oil is hot.
stir-fry the onion.


Keep on cooking the Onion until it's soft.


Add Beef to the pan, place them evenly on the pan to cook. cook it for a minute.


When the Beef is half cooked, toss it. Then add the sauce mixture.


When the sauce thicken, add Green Onion.


Toss it until the Green Onion are mixed with the sauce.


Ready to plate. Time to eat!


Let's take a closer look.

It's really easy to make, and it's really tasty! Best served with Steamed Rice.

This blog post entry was to test the flickr video in blogger. It would only work perfectly in FireFox or other browser, but in IE? Just like it's name, Internet Exploded!!

man, I hate IE7.

Chinese version posted at:
http://chichican.blogspot.com/2008/06/beef-stir-fry-with-oyster-sauce.html