Sunday, June 12, 2011

Five Spice Chicken

I love having a wide selection of spices at home... you never know what you want to cook for dinner.
In my opinion the best place to buy these, is a local Asian store of choice. Yes, the presentation may not be as neat as you're used to. But you will find that you are able to get two or three times the amount of the desired product for the same price. (At least this is true for Switzerland.)

If you are put off by the packaging, which in most cases will be little plastic bags, why not make the (modest) investment of buying smallish jam jars or something of the sort. They look good, you can easily see what spices are in them and you will be able to use them for years.

The traditional Chinese five spice powder combines cinnamon, Szechuan pepper, star anise, cloves and fennel seeds. Three of these are most often used in Western cooking for sweet concoctions around Christmas. But I was curious to experiment with it.

This dish came together after a short research on the internet.

Chinese five spice chicken for one

1 Tsp of five spice powder
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 piece of ginger (the size of your thumb), finely chopped
some finely chopped chili to taste
1 Tbsp or to taste of soy sauce
1/2 Tsp brown sugar
1 Tsp red wine vinegar
some olive oil
1 leg of chicken

1. Mix all of the ingredients from the five spice powder to the vinegar. Then add enough olive oil for it to form a loose paste, sort of like pesto. You should be able to spread it onto the chicken easily but it's not supposed to be too runny either.
2. Put it onto you chicken and let it marinate for at least twenty minutes.
3. Preheat your oven to 180-200° and roast your chicken for about an hour. I like to turn it over half way.

This was really serves simply with some plain rice and a good squeeze of lime juice.

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