Chicken & Poultry

A traditional Taiwanese dish, the three main ingredients (other than the chicken) are sesame oil, soy sauce and rice wine. The name "Three Cup" suggests that you should use one cup of each of these ingredients. But in my version (for 2-3 lbs. of chicken) I actually use 1/4 cup regular soy, 1/4 cup dark soy, 1/4 cup rice wine, and 1/4 cup of sesame oil. IMHO, one cup of any of these in this recipe maybe too much of a good thing...To die for served over steamed white rice! Pre-

This Cantonese-style/Southern Chinese dish is either ingeniously delicious in its simplicity, deliciously simple in its ingenuity, or just plain simple and delicious (I opt for the latter). It's essentially a poached wine, salt, sesame oil-rubbed whole chicken that's sliced or perhaps hacked is a better term (I'll explain later) and served with a ginger-scallion-oil dipping sauce. Yup. That's it. No more, no less. The typical way of serving this dish is to literally hack the

My maternal Grandpa (Ah-kung) used to make this dish to perfection. I can't quite replicate it, but here's my best rendition. Ah-kung was originally from Fujian province in China, and tended to use a liberal amount of vinegar, soy and sugar in his cuisine (spice was not part of the regimen). I have such fond memories of his perpetually happy countenance and super cool laid-back personality. I miss him dearly.

When I think of orange chicken, it's usually of the Chinese fast food variety with way too much flour/cornstarch coating and a cloyingly sweet sauce. Therefore, it's not exactly a dish I crave for. However, I recently came across a recipe in Bee Yin Low's Easy Chinese Recipes  that looked lightly crisp and was not overly dressed with sauce. In fact, she uses fresh orange juice and omits the dried orange peel, which is hard to come by unless you have an Asian market in your ho

Kung Pao anything is going to be spicy. I've had Kung Pao chicken in some restaurants where there were more chilies than chicken - now that's overkill! My version has some kick to it but is probably more on the medium scale of spicy and is extra saucy. I also like adding sliced fresh jalapenos and button mushrooms, not traditional ingredients, but I think they work really well in this dish. Gil loves the sauce and thinks it tastes even better the next day.