Steamed lemon chicken
This recipe owes a debt to several meals the boyfriend and I ate in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, and to the steamed chicken with mushrooms in Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice, which gave me a base technique to tinker from, and has been a dinner party staple since I found it.
The HK trip was when I realised just how subtle and delicious meat could be when steamed until barely-cooked in a gentle marinade that just thickens to coat it.
One place we went - unpromising from the outside and a short walk from our hotel down some even less promising Tin Hau side streets - served those wonderful bite-sized chunks of steamed pork rib. A texture challenge of meat, gristle and bone to be chewed around and self-consciously spat out, they were flavoured with black beans, pepper, and just a little rice wine, the meat barely cooked and juicy. Fantastic with a cold beer and sore tourist feet.
When we order Chinese at home, we tend to veer wildly between closest-approximation “authentic” and kitschy anglicisations in day-glo sauces. Fun and colourful though that lemon chicken is, I find it a bit heavy. Also, deep frying is a bit of a faff. So how about something lighter?
Here it is as a simple steamed dish, with handfuls of lemon zest to really bring up the aromatics.
Ingredients:
Chicken thighs, 400g (or a small-ish one each)
Lemon, 1 (juice and zest)
Clear honey, 2tbsp
Soy sauce, (light), 2tsp
Shaoxing, 1tsp
Ginger, about 2cm
Spring onions, 2 (or 1 big one)
Potato flour, 2tbsp
White pepper, a big pinch
This is the quantity I’d make for 4-6 people as part of a meal with multiple dishes, or cut down a little as a main for two with one larger thigh each, rice, and a vegetable dish.
Cornflour will do instead of potato flour. And dry sherry will kind of do instead of shaoxing. But come on, it’s 2020 and online shopping exists.
Instructions:
Zest and juice the lemon. Slice ginger and spring onions into slivers "on the bias" as recipe books like to say when they're too fancy for "diagonal". The ginger should be thin, the onion doesn't have to be. Use plenty of the green of the onions - we’re more interested in the green flavour here than the white, in fact.
Mix the lemon juice, lemon zest, honey, shaoxing, and soy together well. Stir in the potato flour and pepper.
If your chicken thighs have bones in, bone them. Cut the meat into thin strips, ideally not more than a centimetre thick, but this is no place for fussy.
Mix everything together and leave to marinade for at least half an hour.
Arrange the chicken, onions, and ginger on a plate or in a shallow bowl. You can just dollop it all in, but I like orderly rows as a little presentation nod.
Place the plate in a steamer and cook for about 20 minutes. The chicken should be just-cooked and incredibly fragrant.
If you want you can make a sauce by heating the left-over marinade with some chicken stock and a little more honey, but it doesn't really need it. If you’re doing that, maybe carefully pour off and collect a little of the liquid from the plate before serving.
Notes
One thing I find with making a Chinese-style meal is that when making multiple dishes I can get into a bit of a flap at the end. I'd plead its because my kitchen is too small, but the sheer force of side-eye from Hong Kong grandmas would knock me on my arse. I'm just a bit stressy and disorganised. Heck, there's a reason half these recipes are slow-cook stews.
Anyway, this is a good one to do at the start because it has at least half an hour's marinade, and the cooking is very hands off.
My tip for balancing Chinese meal prep if you're a shambolic white boy is to choose the dishes so you've only got one time-critical thing at the end, like a stir fry that really won't hold while you do another. I tend to go with:
One cold thing you can make ahead
One braise or "claypot" style oven dish
One thing that steams
A fried thing that will hold for a bit OR another steamed dish
A fried thing that will or won't hold for a bit
Yes, that's a lot but I am repeatedly told that four dishes would be unlucky and that no, the rice doesn't count. I guess I could do three, but sensible isn't quite my wheelhouse.
The other great tip I found useful is what Jeremy Pang calls the "wok clock" is his book Hong Kong Diner (it's pretty good!). Basically you arrange things on a plate, clockwise in the order you'll need them. It keeps the cognitive load down while you're doing stuff.
Oh, and if you don’t have one of those ratcheted lever-arm citrus juicers, get one. They’re just incredibly quick to use and easy to clean. Take it from me - I make a lot of daiquiris. I think Joseph Joseph used to make a good one but they’ve switched to a “helix” design I’ve not tried. Mine’s the one in the link, bought from John Lewis nearly a decade ago. Anyway, loads of people make them now, but get a robust one with the two points of articulation, so the plunger comes down a bit flatter - it’s less splashy,