Braised Chicken Wings

This is my own self created recipe. It's one of my favourite dishes whenever I have guests over for meals as it's very easy to cook. There were always requests for the recipe after the guests have tasted it, but I've never really sit down and write a proper recipe as I've always used my own estimation during cooking. Finally, today I managed to jot down the proportion of ingredients used when cooking this for lunch. For those who've requested it, here's the recipe for you.



Braised Chicken Wings

Ingredients
8-10 chicken wings
2 tbl light soya sauce
1 tbl dark soya sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp corriander powder
1 stick cinnamon (4 cm)
2 star anise
8-9 cloves of garlic, peeled
100ml water
1.5 tsp cornstarch mixed with a little water (to be used later)
spring onion for garnishing (optional)

Method
1. In a pot (I used a non-stick pot), mix all the seasoning, spices and water.
2. Add the chicken wings, one by one, into the mixture to ensure each is coated with the mixture.
3. Add in the garlic and bring everything to a boil.
4. When boiled, lower the heat and simmer for 30-45 minutes, turning the chicken wings every 15 minutes to ensure even coating and browning. The water level should only cover a little of the chicken wings.
5. When done, remove the chicken wings to a serving plate. Keeping the heat at low, add cornstarch to thicken the sauce.
6. Pour the sauce over the chicken wings and garnish with spring onion.


I also had my hands on the new sambar recipe learnt from Gina yesterday. I didn't use all the ingredients, only the marinating portion. Tried it on fish, tasted equally good though the 3 kids complained it's spicy (their spiciness tolerance is as good as zero!). I then realised that yesterday the dish didn't taste spicy at all because we've had lots of more spicy stuff before this dish. Out of a rating of 10, I would rate the spiciness as 3.




A last note on my baking today. Today is really not a day for me to do baking. None of my bakes turned out well. :( I did some baked mini doughnuts after dinner using the new doughnut pan I've bought yesterday. Not sure what went wrong, but the doughnut were not as soft as I wanted them to be. Maybe I've been baking too many breads and expected the doughnuts to turn out soft and fluffy like bread. The dough was not liquid at all, more like a wet bread dough and could not flow into the pan. I added more milk to my second batch of dough and piped them into the pan (thanks to a fellow forum mate who showed us how to get the dough neatly into the pan).



My doughnuts did not brown nicely. They were of pale yellow after the 12 minutes of baking. I did not dare continue baking them as the first batch of 12 ended up too hard after I tried to brown them by giving them some extra baking. I left them to cool and stored them into a box. Shall try to decorate a few tomorrow after the day has passed!

Mood: blank