What I cooked today (家常便饭系列）- 31-7-2013

On 31 July 2013, white rice served with

1	Indonesian Ginger Chicken	印尼姜鸡
2	Japanese Fried Ginger Chicken	日本炸姜鸡
3	Blanched White Stem Pak Choy with Japanese Salad Dressing	日式沙拉酱奶白
4	Bok Choy Meat and Fish Ball Soup	贸白菜肉丸鱼丸汤

Today, this menu was a rather unusual combination with two ginger chicken dishes called Indonesian Ginger Chicken and Japanese Fried Ginger Chicken. One of the my blogger friends from http://eatapieceofcake.blogspot.hk have posted this Indonesian Ginger Chicken Recipe into a Facebook Group that I have recently created called Food Bloggers and Foodies United.

The picture in her post looks really nice and she explicitly highlighted that only 4 ingredients were needed (ginger, garlic, honey and dark soya sauce). Based on these 4 ingredients, I have no doubt that it will taste nice because all the ingredients are common ingredients used in Chinese cooking and I am especially fond of ginger. I also noted that these ingredients were almost the same as Japanese style fried chicken where chicken were marinated in ginger juices. Therefore I have decided to marinate the chickens together using ginger juices. After one hour, I took some marinated chicken out for Japanese fried chicken whereas for the portion remaining, I added the required honey and dark soya sauce. I baked for about an hour. I did not let the juice dries up because I knew my kids would like to have some gravy to go with the rice which is sweet and aromatic. That was the reasons why what I cooked is different from the original blogger’s picture.

For the Japanese ginger chicken portion, instead of adding the dark soya sauce, I have added some Japanese light soya sauces and deep fried it. After I fried it, I drip soe honey on top of the fried chicken and served with shredded pineapple. Fried chicken is a bit oily and shredded pineapple will have the effects of negating the oiliness of the dish. Slice cucumber is another good way of garnishing.

The verdict of these two ginger chickens competition : the Indonesian Ginger Chicken dish won because it was softer and go with sweet sauce. This was expected because of the kids’ taste buds. However, they were complaining a bit spicy because of the ginger sauce.

For the blanched vegetables, i have resorted to the use of Japanese salad dressings and sprinkled with fried shallots. This whole bottle of dressing were given by my neighbour who complained that she don’t know how to use it after she brought it. It is a nice dressing in fact and goes relatively well with the white stem pak choi.