La Zi Ji (Chicken with Chiles)

Chicken with Chiles

300 gram chickenbreast
cut into 2 cm cubes.

Marinate for 30 minutes in mixture of:
2 t shaoxing ricewine
1 t light soysauce
1 t dark soysauce
¼ t salt

Deepfry in very hot peanutoil for about 4-5 minutes until cooked through, golden brown and a little crispy on the outside. Drain well and set aside.

Heat 3 T oil (I used sichuanpepper oil) in wok over a moderate flame and add
2 cloves garlic, sliced
4 cm ginger, sliced

Stirfry until fragrant and just taking color. Then add
50 gr dried chiles
1 T sichuan peppercorns

And stirfry for 10-20 seconds until the oil is spicy and fragrant.
Take grate care not to burn the chiles.

Add the fried chicken and
2 spring onions, cut into 4 cm pieces
2 t sugar
1 t salt

Stirl well so that the chicken is coated with the fragrand oil.
Finally, remove from the heat and add
2 t sesame oil.

This was the first time I tried to recreate this dish.
It's been 6 years since I had it. And actually, I didn't eat it very often then, as in China they use chopped chicken. So you have little pieces of chicken with bones, fat and skin. And that's too much for me.
Although there was this little restaurant where they made it with chickenbreast. And so does Fuchsia Dunlop.

The recipe tells you to deepfry the chicken and I did. But I wasn't too happy with that. I think the chicken was overdone and I don't think I have the skills to prevent that in future. So next time I will just stirfry the chicken. Maybe even add some cornstarch or eggwhite for the velvety texture.
Come to think of it, the deepfrying is probably necessary when you do use the pieces of chicken including bones, fat and skin. But when you use chickenbreast, there is no need.

And maybe, just maybe, I will leave out all the chillies. I know this is so very typical for this dish, but the purpose it to flavour the oil. So I can just as well use the sichuan-chili-oil for this..... Which I already did this time. I only added the extra chiles and sichuanpeppercorns for decoration, hihi. And extra flavour, of course.
It was hot.

What I did eat a lot, while I was in Beijing, was this dish, but with fried green beans instead of chicken. That was brilliant too.

From : Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

Update! My third attempt was much better. See the result and recipe here: www.flickr.com/photos/fotoosvanrobin/2866923293/