Spicy Roast Chicken Stuffed with Sticky Rice

I've been eying this recipe for some time, ever since i saw it on Pig Pig's Corner, which made it look utterly delicious. Despite some westerners (my mum!) not liking the sound of 'glutinous rice' this dish was one of the best i have made in a long time. Tender, spicy morsels of chicken with a sweet sticky rice stuffing, drawing in so many oriental flavors. I had yumcha for lunch today and even then i was still eager to eat this dish for dinner! I think I've found a new Pot Luck staple....

You will need to start this recipe the day before! 

'Streetcart' Chicken & Rice

So, shame though it may be, I've never actually been to New York. This dish, however, gets its name from the New York street carts that reputedly serve up this delicious dish to hungry fans on NYC sidewalks.

I'm glad to see the Food Truck concept finally making it's way to Melbourne. Melbourne streets have been devoid of food stalls for years now, after the last of the late night hot dog stands was sent packing. But now i believe food trucks creep around, particularly the Collingwood areas. I can only hope they'll come to Hawthorn one day!

Anyways, this recipe which i found from here,  is a deliciously fragrant, garlicky and spiced mixture of slightly smokey meat and soft, fluffy rice. The original recipe for the sauce was too sweet for me, so i omitted the sugar.

Grilled Chilli Chicken on Mango Salad and Coconut Rice

Happy holidays everyone! Christmas is only three days away, which means i have to get my fill of non-christmassy foods on my own before I'm drowning in pork, turkey and that general sense of lethargy that a full tummy brings! So here i present: Grilled chilli chicken on mango salad and coconut rice! A winning combination of sweetness, creaminess and spice.

Green Mango Salad with Chargrilled Chicken

 Finally! Just over 12 months ago today i arrived back in Melbourne from my first trip to Thailand. I arrived rested, exciting, and... craving! My trip to Thailand consisted of binge consumption of four things: Red pork curry (made...tick!), pad thai (made...tick!), mango and sticky rice (made...tick!), cocktails (made....tick!) and papaya salad (not yet made!). It's soooo hard to find green papayas here in Australia, but this week as i was walking through Coles i noticed green mangos! With no hesitation i piled three into my basket and trundled for the cashier, eager to race home and make this salad.

 If you have not had green mango or green papaya before you might feel put off by the thought, but don't. There is no strong sourness or bitterness imparted by the unripe fruit. Instead, it's more about the texture. Crisp and fresh like cucumber but firmer and less watery. With the combination of the refreshing mango sticks and the salty/sour/spicy dressing, this dish is a killer summer salad which i will continue to make so long as i can get my hands on green mangoes and papayas. 

Korean Fried Chicken

Holy frijoles how has nobody ever dragged me out for Korean Fried Chicken before?? This is really a piglet's delight. Succulent pieces of crisp fried chicken tossed in a spicy Korean sauce. The ultimate in finger licking indulgence, i could have polished off the whole lot myself (and almost did!).

Seriously though, this dish is too good not to try. I'm not a big deep frying person as apart from the health considerations there' the hassle with all the oil and the draining and getting it to the right temperature and whatnot. But i can guarantee you that, even if you are a low-use deep fryer like me, these wings will convert you! So long as you don't mind (a lot) of spice!

A note here: traditionally, this recipe calls for gojuchang, which is a Korean chili paste. Unfortunately i couldn't get my hands on any so i substituted with Sichuan Chili Bean Paste and tweaked the sauce to get the right flavour.

Chicken, Tofu & Shiitake Mushrooms with Ginger Sauce, garnished with water chestnut and macadamia

I've always been a fan of dishes like Hainanese chicken which contain the most simple, mild flavours but allow the devourer to tweak to their tastes with a variety of garnishes.

I've also been a fan of dishes which focus on creating a variety of textures and flavours.

And in this dish, i am attempting to accomplish both! This dish is all about subtle ingredients, from the whisper of ginger in the mild sauce, to the hint of garlicky heat in the stems. The chicken is mild and succulent and the mushrooms provide a hint of earthiness. But when you add the chilli sauce, or soy, it brings the flavours to an even higher level.

This dish is not so much about cooking expertise as combining lots of ingredients i love into one dish

Although i'm not normally an advocate of heating things in cling film due to possible chemical leeching, the method did work as the chicken was both succulent and flavorful. 

Ginger Scallion Noodles with Grilled Chicken

I have great respect for the work of David Chang. I don't really want to write too much about him, lest i become another blogger who rants about the great respect they have for the work of David Chang. Whoops...

Anyway, one of my favorite cookbooks is the Momofuku cookbook. The story it tells, the detail it goes into, is just phenomenal. I really feel that if i go to the effort and obey his directions in the recipe, the dish will definitely turn out amazingly. Unfortunately those directions are often quite laborious and involve difficult-to-find ingredients!

This second dish that i have made from his cookbook is much simpler than the pork belly buns. Really, it's just the sauce for the noodles, and then you layer what you like ontop. My mum normally doesn't like egg noodles like this, but because the sauce does not weigh down the dish, and is quite light, she was converted.

Sticky BBQ Wings

This weekend a group of friends came over for a Bogan BBQ in the 'burbs. On the menu: baby back ribs, chicken wings and snags on the barbie of course! I've always had a soft spot (literally) for honey soy BBQ wings, sticky and blackened! These ones keep true to the basic flavours but add a little more depth with the addition of the scallions, ginger and sesame oil. And the chilli sauce gives them just a bit of kick! If it were just me eating them, i'd up the chilli sauce a bit more.

The cooking time might seem excessive but a person in the know (thanks mum!) let me in on a good secret: there's nothing worse than wings where the fat in the skin has not melted, so it's a bit rubbery. The long cooking time ensure that the fat melts through the meat, keeping it tender and crisping the skin! Good basting and turning will ensure the wings don't burn. 

Caramelized Ginger Chicken

It can be so painful navigating a good cookbook when you're allergic to fish. All of my favorite cookbooks, Movida, Momofuku and Red Lantern all have these absolutely delicious seafood dishes, many of which form the centrepieces of the books. Alas i have to flick past those pages to the meat, poultry and vegetarian but i always do feel a little bit cheated.

Thankfully, every dish that i DO cook from these books fills any void i may have felt previously, and i am once content with the food that i CAN eat. This is one of those dishes.

Deliciously sweet, gingery and sticky, i have again molested one of the Red Lantern recipes to suit it to my tastes: namely, cooking down the cooking liquid into a decadently sticky sauce to pour over the chicken at the end. My dad tends to omit the fresh coriander and parsley from the garnishes on my meals, but i feel they are integral to reinvigorating all of the cooked ingredients.

Hainanese Chicken

In the days when i lived in a shared house, i shared what was possibly the least inspiring kitchen ever. An old oven, electric stovetop, and a lack of my own cooking equipment led to a proliferation of burrito packets, quick pastas and frozen meals. The few dishes that i did cook were distinctly... awful. But the biggest kitchen sin i committed was palming off chicken boiled chicken thighs with rice and soy sauce as as quick 'Hainanese Chicken'. I did this dish a great disservice because what i cooked was not even a slight homage to the real deal.

Hainanese Chicken is prevalent at Hawker stands in Singapore, where people line up for miles to savor the delicately poached (never, ever boiled) chicken, served with the broth in which it was cooked and delicious rice cooked with fat from the chicken. Every Singaporean and Malaysian i meet seems to be a connoiseur of chicken and rice, so it is with a sigh of relief that i cooked this dish for unsuspecting caucasian folk. Surprisingly though, my dish came out equal to any i have had in Melbourne. Normally when i've had it in Melbourne, it has been served with soy sauce and sometimes chilli, but after making it i've become a devotee of the deliciously fresh and zingy ginger dipping sauce.

Portugese Chicken with Peri Peri Sauce & Red Onion Salsa

Through what must be a subconscious longing for the long sunny nights of summer, i've been hankering for barbecue more and more in the past few weeks. The delicious crunch of slightly charred meat, succulent on the inside, is, to me, unmimicable in the modern kitchen, even with grills, broilers and countless other gadgets.

To be honest, before this recipe i had never actually cooked a whole chicken, nor had i butterflied one for that matter. I found a great video on Youtube detailing how to butterfly one here. It was surprisingly easy! In fact this entire dish is very simple and speaks of very core flavoring.


I don't pretend that this peri peri sauce is close to authentic: a true peri peri sauce would obviously be made with the African birds eye chilli, also known as peri peri.

Raat Nar Gai - Charred Rice Noodles and Chicken with Thickened 'Gravy'

One thing that really surprised me on my trip to Thailand was that despite trying it 5 or 6 times, i never did find a Pad Thai as good as the really good ones you can find here, or indeed even as good as my own! Maybe it was my own personal tastes but i found most of them too gluggy, too sweet and too saucy. I didn't try any other noodle dishes, but i wish i tried this one over there.

The key to making this dish stand out is the charring of the noodles. I learned after making this that you really need to make sure you don't overload the wok with noodles, and really don't be afraid to leave them to the point of almost burning. The small amounts of charred noodles that i DID manage to make had a wonderfully smokey flavour that was sadly absent from most of the noodles. Next time!

Moroccan Chicken & Couscous Soup

My father actually made a Moroccan soup last week, a lamb and couscous one. It was delicious, with a flavour that reminded me of goulash but much lighter and i loved how the couscous filled out the soup. To change it up a bit, i've used chicken this time, with lighter spicing to accompany the meat. It works well and makes a delicious spring soup. 

Roasted Chicken Thighs with Garlic & Tarragon

Roast chicken: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good- you really have to ask? It's roast chicken! Succulent, juicy flesh surrounded in crisp skin, permeated with the flavors of marinade. The bad- 40 minutes of cooking plus learning how to truss it (tie it up), risking food poisoning from underheated stuffing, figuring out how to carve it attractively, wasting half of it because you're only cooking for two. The ugly- sticking your hand in a chicken's bum, and pulling out the fat surrounding the cavity. Yuk!

Sometimes though, it has to be done. A roast chook is a roast chook and you can't replicate the experience. Or can you? Whilst maybe not so impressive as presenting the table with a beautifully golden trussed bird, this recipe for roasted chicken thighs with garlic and tarragon maintains the essence of roast chicken but is easier and faster to prepare, whilst allowing you to easily cater to just one or for 200 people.

Miso Soup with Tofu, Chicken &Udon

Somehow or another i seem to be getting blamed for my family's burgeoning waistlines and creeping cholesterol levels. Could they be referring to my deep fried rolls of pork, cheese and ham?? Or is it that cake made from cream, condensed milk and evaporated milk they are so disgruntled with? Either way there's no denying that we've been putting on a little bit in the winter months. And so, i turned to the cuisine many of us turn to when looking for something low in fat but high in yum- Japanese.

This is a cheats version of Miso soup where i just use the instant sachets, though true miso soup using miso paste is hardly much more complex. Feel free to change around anything you put in the dish, it's really a free for all. Prawns, pork, beans, sprouts. It's all destined for the pot.

Chong Qing Lazi Ji (Sichuan Chilli Chicken)

On a cool winter evening, late in 2008, and upon returning from a chilly viewing of the penguins at Phillip Island, myself and a few friends decided to venture to a quaint little chinese restaurant in the heart of Melbourne, called Dainty Sichuan. Being the only one who hadn't been to Dainty before, i let me friends order, blissfully unaware of the experience that awaited me. The plastic red chillis hanging from the walls were too-subtle clues for me in my hungry state.

So the first dish came out: semi dried slithers of beef, served cold, with a sharp chilli hit in every bite. Then some chilli eggplant, searing my nostrils with each bite. And a chilli fish stew permeated my senses as i watched my friends devour, wipe their brow, devour.

And then it came out. The signature dish: Chong Qing Lazi Ji. Crisp little morsels of heaven and hell in one bite, burrowed like nuggets of gold in a field of chillis and peppercorns. Moist and tender, the first bite bursts with flavour, before you pause, wavering, then lunge for the bottle of milk at the table only to cry out in anguish to find it's soy milk and does nothing to bathe your withering tastebuds! There is only one thing left to do- continue!! Continue until it's all gone and rush like hell to the nearest gelataria.

Please, please note: Unless you have a death with, eat the chicken but NOT the chillis. 

Luke Nguyen's Lemongrass Chilli Chicken - Ga Xao Xa Ot

Luke Nguyen seems to be a bit of a cultural sensation in Australia at the moment. On the back of a SBS television series and co-authoring the cookbook Secrets of the Red Lantern, Luke has also recently appeared twice on the Master Chef series.

I'd always been interested in his recipes when flicking through the beautiful Red Lantern cookbook but it wasn't until he made a chilli crab variant on Master Chef that i started actively hunting down his recipes. Luckily many can be found on the SBS website for his televsion show Luke Nguyen's Vietnam.

This is probably one of the simpler dishes that i have seen from Luke's repertoire to date. Juicy bites of chicken saturated in the pungeant aromas and balanced tastes of fish sauce, sugar, lemon grass, chilli and garlic. Rather than adding chicken stock to make the sauce, Luke used young coconut juice which keeps the dish tasting quite clean: unfortunately i had to use the canned variety of coconut juice.

Please note that i have not stayed completely faithful to the original recipe. 

Murg Makhani - Butter Chicken

I used to love Indian cuisine. I still do, but once upon a time it was miles ahead of any other food as my favorite food to eat. But there was one dish i wasn't a fan of: butter chicken. It was the dish for fussy people, chunks of chicken in what tasted like spiced tomato soup (in fact, some recipes call for tomato soup as the core ingredient). Since then, i have found places that do a good butter chicken. Though it's still not my favorite curry, the recipe below is delicious!

Sundried Tomato & Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast with Basil Sauce, Kipfler Potatoes and Asparagus

Not really much of a story today unfortunately. The tummy is getting better, and i had some feta that i originally brought for the salad the other day but didn't end up using. Along with a leftover chicken fillet, i thought I'd make a stuffed chicken recipe.

Saffron Chicken Leg with Salsa Verde, Pumpkin Puree and Fennel Salad

Happy Easter everyone! This year's Easter celebration was held at my family's house, and i was asked to make an entree. So after scouring the internet for hours, i found a dish that was intricate, unusual and maybe a little more than i could chew. Bringing a broad spectrum of flavours to the table, this dish has a beautiful aroma of saffron in the chicken marinade, a decadently rich buttery pumpkin puree, contrasting with the aniseed notes of the fennel salad and the sharp, herby twang of the salsa verde. This is definitely a dish for cooking for a lot of people as the work that goes into it is considerable.