Mandarin orange chicken stir-fry

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It's not tangerine chicken, but it's pretty close. We'll save all of the remaining peels from that box to dry and use in future dishes.

You may notice that it's been quite a while since I've posted any new recipes here. Life has been pretty busy, and I've mostly used this recipe blog as a quick resource for myself instead of adding new dishes. If I have a ton of time one of these days, I'll get a few new winners up, though truth be told many of them are very minor tweaks to existing recipes, so they're just a standard repost like most of the internet has these days.

However, I just made a dish that was NOT a repost of any particular recipe, instead being a mix of a few different versions of a popular dish, and wanted to get it posted here, both for myself in the future and for others. Plus, it's a "Costco hack" that uses their frozen chicken bites, which is a great time-saver and somewhat of a compromise between a heavy, deep fried coating (fast-food style) and not being breaded at all (authentic Hunan-style preparation).

The reason I'm making this at all is that we went to Trader Joe's today to try to find a pack of their Mandarin Chicken, which is surprisingly good, but they were out. This ended up being an opportunity instead of a burden, because they had decent fresh mandarin oranges, so we gave ourselves a challenge and tried to make something better. I had recently been researching to try to figure out what this dish originally would have been inspired by, since most Chinese-American food is not authentic - orange chicken in particular, as it was invented by the founder of Panda Express some 30-ish years ago. I love the backstory on this, as I do for other fun facts on "Chinese food" after watching The Search for General Tso (which is really good and very short, highly recommend). With a bit of digging, I found that the actual dish that Mandarin chicken comes from is tangerine peel chicken (which I believe is chen pi ji if an internet search is accurate), and it isn't terribly hard to reproduce with the right ingredients. The dish doesn't use breaded chicken, and it includes prickly ash (sichuan peppercorn), which we like enough to grow in our yard and harvest for use in Sichuan dishes. So we made a kind of mash-up of different cultures and produced a dish that was somewhere in between the American and the Chinese dish from Hunan province. And, naturally, we used lightly breaded chicken, because we had it and it's delicious, and spared us the trouble of firing up the wok this time. I can't rightfully call this tangerine chicken because we couldn't find tangerines, but we did use real California mandarin oranges, both peel and juice, and those seem to be a close second on many websites. Also, mandarins are genetically one of the parent citrus fruits, so I'm going to just claim that this substitution isn't as blasphemous as, say, using pasteurized orange juice.

One point of note, as referenced above - we used Costco's Just Bare lightly breaded chicken, which is routinely cited as a knock-off of Chick-fil-A nuggets, but it also makes a fantastic base for coating in a glaze, be it teriyaki, pineapple, or this mandarin orange sauce. I highly recommend this substitution, which we cooked in our air fryer before tossing in the sauce.

I ended up using a whole bunch of kitchen electrics, as shown in this photo of my kitchen chaos, but you could probably get by with the basics if you have an oven and a clean coffee grinder.

Lots of gadgets involved that helped - air fryer (left), spice grinder (left of oranges), and rice cooker (right)

We'll probably adjust this dish quite a bit, since I plan to make it regularly in both breaded and unbreaded forms. I'll update to the best version we come up with, which may end up including black vinegar and Shaoxing wine in some form, which would be a bit more faithful to the real recipe. And we will try dehydrating mandarin peels instead of using them fresh, to see if this concentrates the flavor further (which I suspect it will).

Mandarin Orange Chicken (with Broccoli)

Created after modifying highly from Woks of Life version and reviewing historical recipes on chen pi ji

• 1 lb lightly breaded chicken bites (we used Just Bare brand, but you could do a cornstarch-battered and fried breast chunk, or just use unbreaded chicken thighs stir fried with a bit of ginger and garlic, which would also be excellent)
• 1 tsp sichuan peppercorns
• 6 dried red chili peppers, whole
• 4 mandarin oranges
• 1 tbsp canola or peanut oil
• 1/4 cup chicken broth
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in a small bowl with 1 tbsp water
• 1 scallion
• 1/2 lb broccoli florets

First, get all of the pieces ready. Steam the broccoli until par-cooked. Wash and peel the mandarins, reserving the peel of at least 2 (you only need 2 for the peels, possibly 4 to get enough juice). Try to get the peel off in large pieces. Scrape the white pith off of the inside of the peel with a serrated knife to reduce bitterness, and cut the two peels into long strips. Juice enough of the peeled mandarins to gather 1/4 cup of juice. In a large measuring cup, assemble the sauce liquids - the mandarin orange juice, chicken broth, vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce.

Cook the chicken using an appropriate method (for us, this was air-frying the breaded chunks) until done. Once the chicken has about 5 minutes remaining, heat a large frying pan (NOT nonstick, you need it ripping hot) and toast the sichuan peppercorns over high heat for 30 seconds or less, until it begins to release fragrance, and place in a spice grinder to cool for a minute before grinding to a powder. Slice the scallions on an angle, separating the pale white part from the green part.

Back in the empty and hot pan, add the chili peppers and mandarin peel strips for about 15 seconds. Then add the canola oil and the white part of the scallions, and toss all to coat for another 15 seconds. Now carefully add the juice mixture from the measuring cup - this will splatter, so be careful. Cook until this darkens and thickens, at least a minute, possibly more. You want to caramelize the flavor a bit, but not reduce this until it's a syrup.

Now, all within about 10 seconds of each other, add just enough of the cornstarch/water mix to thicken the sauce to a glaze (less is better here, and don't use all of this unless you really need to or else you'll make a paste), then add the cooked chicken and the par-cooked broccoli and toss all to coat. Throw in the green onion tops, toss again, and serve over rice.

Pasta Con Le Sarde (Sicilian Pasta with Sardines)

*Updated cooking method (again) 3/30/2020

Sicily, where my family is from, is a land of conquests. The Moors, the Romans, Berbers, Arabs, Persians, Byzantines - pretty much everybody has tromped through Sicily at some point in time, and has left some kind of mark on the people and the food. I believe that pasta con le sarde, a traditional Sicilian dish featuring sardines and pasta tossed with unheard-of flavor combinations, is one such example of what happens when you get such a diverse international palate influencing a cuisine. In this case, it's a Mediterranean cuisine, meaning you get to take fish and try to mix a bunch of flavors together. If you've ever experimented with cooking fish, you know that random flavors can often ruin a fish dish. I couldn't name any other dish that would combine raisins, saffron, fennel, and two kinds of salty preserved fish, but somehow this mix creates an incredible burst of salty and sweet, lightly perfumed, slightly floral, bizarrely colorful, and both crunchy and velvety from the mix of fried bread crumbs and silky pasta that's tossed quickly with its own cooking liquid. The closest thing I can think of to this dish would be a massaman curry, drawing again from influences of the Muslim / western world to work this into the existing (Thai) culture. But in many ways, this dish stands completely alone, and for that I have deep respect in a sea of pasta dishes that is Italian food.

Drawing from a rich supply of fresh fish, this recipe is probably spectacular with fresh sardines caught that day. But since most of us can't get that, I recommend that you invest in a couple of tins of very high quality sardines packed in olive oil. Tonight we used some from Portugal, and at $4-5 per box, it was totally worth it. Even if you don't splurge, at least be sure to get fish in pure olive oil, not a tomato sauce or water.

The dish traditionally calls for bucatini - a thin tube-like pasta - but we've done it both with this and with pappardelle. Both versions are shown in the photographs. I would strongly recommend a bronze die-cut bucatini as the pasta of choice, though, which will hold the sauce best.

Jungle Curry (Kaeng Pa) // The virtues of obscure ingredients

When we went to Thailand, our travels through the northern part of the country landed us at a great cooking school in Chiang Mai. Here, we learned about the difference between northern Thai food, influenced heavily by other cultures and their significant distance from the coast, and southern Thai food, flavored heavily with coconut, fiery chiles, and plenty of fish. In the north, pork reigns supreme, and an interesting curry dish has emerged - jungle curry, known most notably for its absence of coconut milk from the sauce. Drawing on the other flavors of the countryside - fermented fish sauce, lime leaves, palm sugar, and a pungent red curry paste - mixed with chicken broth, it is a very enticing, filling, and yet surprisingly healthy alternative to the usual cholesterol-laden curry dishes from Bangkok and parts south. We cooked a decent version that day, which we carried home with us.

Fate being the cruel mistress that it is, we tried to replicate this dish following that recipe multiple times, to no avail. I tried making my own curry paste, finding different vegetable mixes to add, making Thai-infused chicken stock, buying a can of green peppercorns, and even growing my own kaffir lime tree to get things right. Nothing worked. Disgusted, embarrassed from one too many hosted dinner party failures, and on the verge of a breakdown, we tried one last time last night, with a careful eye on the exact ingredients called for.

The results were astounding. Somehow this dish rocketed from the bottom of our Thai repertoire to near the top, for a few reasons - it's healthy, it's easy, it's delicious, and it's exotic. This is the only dish I now make that has two very specific ingredients, which we had to learn (painfully) not to substitute for others. We didn't even have to make our own curry paste for this, just used the cans and it came out great. Still in shock, we may make it again tonight just to confirm that we have this one in the bag.

This is what the dish should look like

A prior attempt included making curry paste from scratch

I have no idea what I was thinking

Prep for the older version - too many substitutions, way too much effort, and an unbelievably disappointing meal. We will refer to this image shortly

So read on to learn about why this last photo is completely wrong, and how you can do this right.

Lasagna-stuffed spaghetti squash: a fun alternative

If you're looking for a way to take something totally unhealthy and turn it into something only mildly unhealthy, then look no further! This recipe converts the standard lasagna into one that uses spaghetti squash, a fun winter squash that pulls apart into threads (not unlike spaghetti) once sufficiently cooked. It may leave you wanting a bit, given the lower calorie count, but at least you won't hate yourself as much later that night. Plus, it's incredibly fun to eat.

Matsaman Curry // Fresh coconut milk beats homemade curry paste any day

On our trip to Thailand a few years ago, I was captivated by the freshness of the ingredients. The Thai markets are filled with fresh produce and all manner of slaughtered animal parts, which is impressive enough, but then there are the prepared foods - the curry pastes, the sausages, the shrimp chips, and of course, the coconut milk. I had no idea that this was made on a small scale, but after seeing the operation, it made sense - coconut flesh could be shredded quickly, and then a small hydraulic press can crank out a few quarts of fragrant coconut milk every few minutes. We had multiple occasions to taste this fresh coconut milk (and coconut cream, will explain later), and it was starkly different from the thick, somewhat savory canned coconut milk we commonly get in the U.S. Most notably, when you smell homemade coconut milk, it smells like... coconuts! There's no plastic, fatty smell from the preservation of the liquid necessary to get it into cans and across the ocean. The freshly made milk makes no mistake in letting you know what it is, and, as I would soon learn, offers exactly the same unapologetic, coconutty brashness when made back at home with a questionably old coconut. So I watched this process, enthralled by the heavy machinery nestled within the small farmer's market, bound and determined to try replicating this at home with hand tools.

The story wasn't actually that simple. I started out thinking that the magic was all in the paste, with no appreciation for the coconut milk. Coming home armed with curry paste recipes, and having sat on the floor smashing herbs in a mortar and pestle for a few hours, I assumed I was an expert in paste making. But more than a few failed attempts back home led me to realize that those little old Thai ladies sitting around smashing up garlic all day really know what they're doing. Homemade curry paste is truly an art, and I do not have the magic just yet. Maybe it's the freshness of the ingredients, I don't know. All I know is that my pastes are too coarse and lack the depth of the ones made fresh in Thailand, or even the ones from a can here. So after one too many mediocre curries, I broke down conceded defeat, requiring much more practice to this day. Instead, I dug into the process of making homemade coconut milk. Thankfully, the gear required isn't too extensive, but it is somewhat challenging to actually do this, if you use the method I used.

We decided to use the coconut milk as part of a matsaman curry, which we really liked when we made it in Chiang Mai. Matsaman, also written massaman, means "muslim", and isn't actually a Thai word at all - it's a Thai interpretation of the Persian dish, referred to in the 19th century as "mussulman" curry, which is a dated term for Muslim. The analog of this dish is American tex-mex food: it's the native culture's interpretation of what an international dish tastes like, adapted somewhat to the local methods. In this case, the dish borrowed the spices brought to Asia by the Muslim spice traders, including cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, cumin, and star anise, but mixed into a paste and then fried with coconut milk, like so many other Thai dishes. It's said to be favored by westerners because of its more familiar spice palette, but honesty I don't like it any more than a good red (kaeng phet) or green (kaeng khiao wan) curry.

This recipe explores a big hack in the process - how much does homemade curry paste matter? And which is more important, high quality coconut milk, or high quality curry paste. The short answer is both, but the longer answer is that you can get a good curry paste from a pouch, but there is no substitute for homemade coconut milk. Using a commercial paste I brought back with me, the finished dish was so spectacular that I have to question if a mediocre homemade paste is in any way a substitute for a reputable packaged paste. What's more, the fresh coconut milk elevates the dish to a floral, magical level, with the subtle fruity perfume that really takes your mind to the tropics. This doesn't happen with a great curry paste and mediocre coconut milk, by converse. Given this and the other curious additions that make up matsaman curry, I'm going to advocate for skipping the paste pounding step in lieu of making your own coconut milk from now on, so long as you agree to use a decent quality paste. Agreed? Okay, let's move on.