Orange Hoisin Chicken Bake

I remember my first taste of Hoisin Sauce like it was yesterday......


My Mum was taking a Chinese Microwave cooking class- this was back in the early eighties when microwaves were the New Big Thing and ruled the kitchen- and she showed me a jar with a funny illegible label, full of sticky red goop. Standing in the corner near the pantry, she opened the lid and I was hit with a pungent beany smell. A spoon was offered and as I licked it this amazing sensation spread over my tongue...

It was a revelation

Tasting the sweet, earthy paste was one of the defining moments of my culinary career. Such a punch of flavour and so unlike anything else I'd tried before- it's stuck with me forever


Maybe that's why I love this particular meal. It's a great family dinner, but it's easy to dress up for visitors as well. Sweetness from the orange, lovely warming spices, and the punch of hoisin all cooked in the one pot, it's definitely a recipe for a win indeed- yummo!
I so wish I could take credit for this recipe, but I clipped it from the Australian Good Taste magazine May 2012. It went into the file as a simple recipe for littlej to practice her cooking- I certainly never expected it to be one of my favourite dishes right now instead

HoiSin Chicken Bake
serves 4-6

6 Chicken thighs cutlets or chicken thighs- skin on
1 cup Chicken Stock
1/4 cup gf Hoisin Sauce (I like Changs)
2 tabs gf soy sauce
2 tabs brown sugar
1/2 tsp Chinese 5 Spice
1Orange- 4 strips of peel, and the segments
2 Star Anise
gf Cornflour for thickening if needed
Sesame seeds for garnish

* Some of the photos in this recipe are terrible. I try to use natural light, but this time of year it's dark in my kitchen by 4pm. The flash just makes it shiny and worse- sorry!*



Brown the chicken in a small amount of oil until the skin is nice and crispy

Drain off the oil, then in the same pot place the stock, hoisin, spices, orange rind and sugar and heat until the sugar and hoisin melts into the liquid

Place the chicken back into the pan and spoon some of the sauce over the top. Cover and bake for about an hour and fifteen minutes at 150*

Take the lid off the chicken, then let it crisp up a little and get a nice colour by baking for another fifteen minutes or so

If the sauce still seems a little thin, stir through a little cornflour slurry until it's juust right and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Stir though the orange segments and sprinkle the chicken pieces with sesame seeds for a bit of extra flavour and texture

For my family dinner I served up the chicken with a big wok full of crunchy stir fried veggies with a touch of garlic and chilli, and some perfect steamed rice. For guests, I would steam some bok choy and baby broccolini or other asian style greens- just to look a bit more elegant, and of course still a big pot of gorgeous steamed rice

You could use chicken thigh fillets for this dish if you like, but cooking on the bone adds so much flavour and helps hold the meat together during the long cooking process. Thigh pieces would work as well, but I think they're messy and not as nice to eat

So very yummy, slightly sweet but still OK. The punch from the hoisin is definitely there, though tempered a little in the braising process instead of being heavily caramelised or lacquered on. Make sure you spoon on plenty of the sauce for the rice to soak up and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy as much as I do!

So Dear Readers, is there one food memory that sticks with you or that has changed your culinary thinking?

Haute Chocolate for Mid Winter

With Mid Winter creeping up this weekend, and a forecast of minus 5 degrees for Friday night, it's definitely time to indulge in a few of the comforts that make Winter bearable here in Canberra



Wrapping your hands around a steaming, hot, fragrant, rich cup of Hot Chocolate isn't always easy with lactose InTolerance, but I don't understand why I should ever miss out on all the goodies available to the more mainstream menus. Instead of pouting and sulking, I just make one that works for me and that the family loves too. No problem!


Did you know that Lindt 70% and above dark chocolate is dairy free? Yes it is indeed, so is cocoa powder and they are both packed with mega chocolatey flavour without the yucky part that will make me sick. Now I can handle lactose free milk as the base of my hot chocolate, but feel free to use soy milk, nut milk, or whatever you need to create a lovely creamy cup of Yum

The best cup of Hot Chocolate is rich, thick and creamy. Instead of adding in heaps of extra calories with lactose free cream to help thicken it, I included some cornflour for just a little bit of texture- don't worry, it won't be like custard or anything. I've also added spices for complexity and some exotic hints of flavour, and some salt just to really sharpen up the rest of the flavours and stop them blending just that bit too much into a homogeneous chocolate mass

My magic ratio of ingredients for each mug (1 1/2 cups of liquid) of Hot Chocolate: 
1 tab Cocoa, 1 tsp Cornflour, extra big pinch Cardamom, big pinch Cinnamon, tiny pinch Salt

Little bits and pieces are all well and good, but making a whole jar at once is a lot less hassle and allows me to whip up a batch whenever the Winters Chill gets the better of me


So For 10 Big Mugs of Happiness:

10 tbsp Cocoa Powder
10 tsp Corn Flour
1/2 block of Lindt 70% Chocolate
2 1/2 tsp ground Cardamom
2 tsp ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt

Now I haven't added any sweetener to this mix as I really don't have much of a sweet tooth. You can either just sweeten it to taste at the end, or add in several tablespoons of gluten free icing sugar to the mix as it will blend in really well. It's up to you, but I like the slight grown up bitterness from the dark chocolate.

Place all the powders into a bowl for mixing

Finely grate in the chocolate
I used a microplane for lovely little chocolately curls that will dissolve easily

Mix it all together really well so there are no clumps or streaks

Now to Make the Magic Happen!
For each nice big mug allow 1 1/2 cups of milk or substitute. Pop in a saucepan

Then add a tablespoon of the mix per mug of the Chocolate mixture

Whisk the powder in until combined well with the milk

Stir or whisk the mixture until it just comes to the boil, then take it off the heat

Pour into your favourite mug, top with gluten free marshmallows and a final grate of chocolate, then wrap your hands around it and let it warm you up from the inside out!

Package up the rest of the Hot Chocolate mixture and place it in an airtight container or in a pretty little jar and give it away as a Winter Solstice gift. With the shortest day behind us, we have only another 3 months or so of frosts ahead of us, so Chocolate Cheer is definitely called for indeed!

So Dear Readers, how do you like your Hot Chocolate, and how do you like to spend a frosty cold weekend?