Dragon Chicken

 One of those days that takes a toll on you both emotionally and physically...that's what preventing me from jotting down these much promised recipes the past couple of days. I do feel like kicking myself from this lethargy...It should be the weather-the heat often plays the villain in my kitchen these days.

It's great for Mr. Yeast though, nice and frothy to go into breads. Anyway, was wondering what I should do for the kids that night when I prepared this dish as dinner and that's when I thought I would tackle one of their favourites being Dragon Chicken. I seriously don't know if it is technically any name for a Chinese dish but it definitely is an Indo-Chinese version and we Indians love 'em!!!

Hey come on... even the beer came out of the fridge to amp the mood and dampen the heat. This really went well as a starter for more starters...all I know is that this disappeared in no time and I was besides prepping with mushrooms (in the same recipe) and boneless chicken, warning the guys at home not to finish it as this was for dinner as well!!! SIGH!!!

Boneless chicken was cleaned and diced into fine pieces.

I had dry roasted two tbsps. of sesame seeds with three dry red chillies a day back and ground it coarsely to go with a veggie dish (chow chow-pic below) the previous day so this was also taken and set aside.

Picture taken from the net for reference for Chow Chow/Chayote

I took half  a cup of flour/Maida/All purpose flour and added a quarter cup of corn starch to it which helps in the thickening of the final dish and in deep frying. To this mix, I whisked in an egg, adequate salt and pepper, dark soy sauce and dry chilli paste. Whisked the entire contents and made this as my gooey marinade. I coated the cleaned and diced chicken in this and set aside. Later I deep fried these and set it aside on kitchen absorbent paper to go into the other sauces in the wok.

 I diced a few green bell peppers to go with the final dish and to also give a crunch. I also fried a few cashews and broken dry chillies and set that aside to go in later on in the final dish.

In a  tbsp. of oil, sautéed a finely chopped onion and as it browned, added in the ginger garlic paste, a tsp. of dark soya sauce, red chilly paste, a bit of green chilly vinegar and salt keeping in mind that the gooey flour mix had salt in it. Once this sort of comes together I added in that ground sesame-dry red chilly powder a tbsp. of more (this is my tweak to the usual recipe found) and tossed it about, then threw in the cashews and the dry red chillies that were fried earlier on and once this all comes together they sort of breathe life into the usual run of the mill boneless chicken dish. Add the fried chicken.

Check the seasoning. Add a tbsp. of honey or ketchup to your desire to add to the sweetness and stir it all about till they had this sort of caramelized appearance. I added a tbsp. of ketchup. Threw in some roughly chopped spring onions which is typical of the Indo-Chinese dishes that we get here. Garnish with a few more snipped dry red chillies.

To be had with noodles or as an accompaniment with fried rice straight from the wok.

Once it is cold, the deep fried chicken doesn't taste that good.