Today I thought I would do a different type of post and change things up a bit by inviting you all into my kitchen. Those that know me know I do quite a bit of cooking and have taken over this duty to some extent at home. I do love my food and with food in my blood with my dad being a chef having worked in the top hotels around the world. As a youngster I was introduced to different foods and spent quite a bit of time growing up in professional kitchens.
The other week I was watching the Ashes cricket test between Australia and England when the commentators mentioned they were looking forwards to lunch. Melbourne Cricket Ground is famously known for it's Plum Chicken and is a player favorite. The back ground behind this dish is ex Aussie captain Steve Waugh requested this dish and it has stayed on the menu ever since. The kitchen was told they could provide the meal once per week due to calories and sugar content ,but have it on the menu twice weekly now. The talk of this dish got me wanting to try it out and hence today it was on the menu and thought I would share it with you. Plums are in season here so this is the right time to experiment and see if it is a great tasting dish or not.
First up you have to make the sauce which consists of the following.
1 table spoon of Chinese Rice Vinegar which gives the sour to the sauce.
180 ml of Pineapple juice which also helps to boos the sweet and sour content.
3 table spoons of brown sugar helping to balance the sauce and add the sweet part.
2 table spoons of dark soya sauce
2 table spoons of tomato puree
Sprinkle some chili flakes to give it some added flavor and a small bite. if you prefer it to have a bigger bite then obviously add more. This was also going to be serve to my grand kids so I skipped the chili flakes, but personally would have liked the heat and it would improve the dish.
Stir it all together and you will end up with a bowl of sauce looking like this. I made extra sauce as I had a shed load of chicken fillets and basically doubled the quantities.
Next step is to cut up the chicken pieces to the size you would like and the recipe for those wondering called for 3 chicken breasts and I had 15 fillets instead. You then place the chicken into a bowl and add corn flour. I used corn flour quite a bit in my cooking these days and the last time was a few days ago when I cooked beef peppers.
The next step asked for 3 eggs to be mixed in and I forgot to take a photo of this part. If there is any egg left at the bottom of the bowl afterwards you discard this.
The next step is the seasoning of the chicken when you add salt and pepper to taste which is roughly 1/2 a table spoon of each, but I did 3 times that due to the extra chicken being cooked. 1 Cup of flour, fresh crushed garlic and 2 table spoons of paprika.
The next step is to heat up a pan or wok with cooking oil and fry the chicken until golden brown. This is actually a quick dish and the preparation takes longer than the cooking part.
The chicken once cooked should be placed on a paper towel to remove any excess oil. Once that has been done I placed all the chicken into an oven tray and needed to now concentrate on putting the sauce together. As you can see there were far more than 3 chicken breasts and why the recipe had to be altered with extra ingredients.
Time for the sauce and prepping the plums as this is Plum Chicken and we have seen no plums yet. I used 8 plims which I removed the stone and roughly cut up. 2 red peppers, 2 yellow peppers and 1 green pepper needed to be cut up and added to the pan.
The sauce you made previously needs to now ne poured over the the prepped vegetables and plums in the pan. This you let cook away and should take 5-6 minutes. The sauce does thicken and it should reduce by around 40-50%.
There are many ways one could serve this and because I was feeding 8 people I decided to pour the sauce directly over the chicken. This dish was served with rice and could be topped off with extra chili flakes.
Again I did not take a photo directly afterwards and this is after serving 8 people so there is enough for possible another 3 or 4 portions.
I would definitely cook this again and make a few tweaks by adding some honey as it was more sour than sweet which was still a great taste. So much of the food today is more sweet than sour and the plums definitely added to the sour taste which I had not banked on.
From start to finish this took roughly 45 minutes to prepare and cook and any dish that takes less than 60 minutes is one worth having. I have another recipe which I will do later this week and is one of my favorites which also involves fruit and is a dessert which includes stewing, nectarines, plums and peaches in Jamieson's whisky. This is a must even if you do not like whisky as the fruit flavors are intense balanced by the subtleness of the whisky.