黄酒鸡

I like this wonderful ginger and wine chicken. In Chinese, it is known as 黄酒鸡 - translated as yellow wine chicken. I have tasted it in many Chinese makan places in the Klang Valley and decided to try my hand to cook it up. It turned out pretty good.

The ingredients are:

1. Chicken. For my small family, I used half an ayam kampung (free range chicken or 菜园鸡). The chicken was chopped to bite size.

2. About 100 gms of ginger, skinned and cut into strips. Do not cut too fine. I prefer thick strips.

3. Wood fungus (木耳) - also cut into sizable strips.

4. About 400 cc of glutinous rice wine (糯米酒). Getting the wine was rather tricky for me. I couldn't find it in any shop in PJ and Subang Jaya. I finally got it from a Chinese mini market in Taman Megah, PJ. It was "home brewed", unbranded and apparently illicit. The mini market fellow was rather cautious when he sold me the bottle. It came wrapped in a newspaper. I could not find any branded glutinous rice wine beside this.

5. Sesame oil. 

5. Sugar and salt

A clay pot is preferred to cook the wine chicken. You can serve the chicken directly from the clay pot. It keeps the chicken and soup hot for a long time.

The next few pictures are rather yellowish due to the lights above my stove.

I heated 4 tablespoons of sesame oil in the clay pot and threw in the ginger. I fried the ginger in the sesame oil for awhile.

When the ginger was aromatic, I put in the chicken.

I stir fried the chicken and then added in the wood fungus.

I stir fried it further and progressively added in about a cup of water.

I added in one tablespoon of sugar and some salt to taste. I then covered the chicken and allowed it to boil over a small flame for a few minutes until the chicken is fully cooked.

Just before serving, I added in the glutinous rice wine, allowing it to come to a boil and then immediately cut off the fire. Do not over boil the wine. I used 400 cc of the wine. The quantity really depends on you. If you like it stronger, you could use more. To me 400 cc was just nice.

The wine chicken is best eaten directly from the pot. To show you how it looks like, I scooped out a bowl for this picture.

It was delicious. The soup was somewhat sweet with a superb aroma of the combined wine, sesame oil and ginger. The flavor of the chicken was very pleasant. Yum.