This was the first official weekend spent at Ray's new house. We haven't really cooked in awhile but with the new kitchen fully stocked with all our gadgets and gizmos, there will be alot of recipe-testing going on. Yay for dinner parties!
Caramelized Chicken
adapted from Ravenous Couple
4-5 pieces of chicken legs with thighs attached
Marinade
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
Caramel Sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup fish sauce
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup water
4 cloves of minced garlic
2 tbsp minced lemongrass
2 shallots minced
2 chili peppers
2 green onions, sliced about 1/2 inch
fresh cracked pepper
roasted sesame
2 tbs cooking oil
Directions
Marinade the chicken with 2 tbsp of fish sauce and 1 tbsp brown sugar for about 30 minutes.
While the chicken marinates, prepare the caramel sauce by combining the brown sugar, water, rice vinegar, and fish sauce and mix until dissolved. Add the ginger, shallots, chili and garlic. We also added some sliced onions since we love caramelized onions.
Heat a large pan on high with cooking oil and add the chicken. Sear until a nice brown color develops and then add in half the sauce.
Let the chicken cook without moving, allowing the sauce to thicken. Check to see if it's nicely caramelized, then turn the pieces of chicken over and pour in the rest of the sauce.
Continue to cook until sauce is reduced to a nice thick consistency and toss in the green onions.
We also made a fried shallot chow mein along with the chicken. We bought fresh chow mein from the asian supermarket and boiled it in hot water for 5 minutes. We then sliced some shallots and fried it in hot canola oil for about 10 minutes until crisp. We used some of the caramel sauce left over from the chicken to toss with the noodles along with some of the fried shallots and shallot-infused oil.
This was one of the most tasty dishes we've made to date and it will definitely be on the menu for future dinner parties. One complaint would be that the sauce was a tad too sweet and watery - when we make this again, we will reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup and the water to 1/4 cup. Excess water resulted in a longer-than-expected cooking time - reducing the amount of water will help with this. Regardless, the chicken and chow mein were ridiculously easy to make and delicious - a keeper!