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Jul 10, 2013

Macanese Stir-Fried Chicken | Wok Wednesdays

Macanese Stir-Fried Chicken | Wok Wednesdays

According to Grace Young, the author of Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge, Macanese food is a fusion of southern Chinese, Portuguese, and Southeast Asian styles, as well as other European and Indian cultures.

This dish is super easy to prepare, even though it calls for 17 (se-ven-teen) ingredients. Not including the rice.

Macanese Stir-Fried Chicken | Wok Wednesdays

Amazingly, I had most of the ingredients on hand. The only two ingredients that gave me a challenge were Spanish Chorizo and canned coconut milk. Spanish chorizo, which is a cooked and cured meat, is not the same as Mexican chorizo (found everywhere here), which is uncooked. It's sort of less spicy and more smokey than pepperoni, and more spicy than smoked kielbasa. It's the sausage that is usually used in paella.

Seventeen ingredients you say? Try chicken, garlic, cornstarch, two kinds of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, coconut milk, chicken broth, vinegar, oil, shallots, the chorizo, turmeric, sweet paprika, tomatoes, and salt.

The orange "look" of this dish comes from the turmeric. My only hiccup on pulling this recipe together? The instructions say "sprinkle on the turmeric..." and I took that to mean that I should use my fingers to really "sprinkle" it. Turmeric is also used as a dye, a factoid I did not know. I now have orange fingernails. Oops.

The orange manicure not withstanding, we loved this dish. I texted my son that I was doing a stir fry and "feel free to stop by" and he did. He loved it too and took home all of the leftovers. (He also cracked up watching me take pictures of my bowl prior to dinner. My secret life exposed.)

I am participating in Wok Wednesdays, a group of individuals cooking their way through Grace Young's Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. We've all agreed not to publish the recipe in order to support book publishing. I encourage you to get the book and try this amazing, amazing dish. I've not been disappointed with any stir fry I have tried from the book. Join the group and wok along!

Would you like to comment?

  1. Ooh, never hear of this dish. Sounds delicious.

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  2. Karen - what camera do you use for your photos? They are gorgeous! I need to graduate from my iPhone :/

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    1. Thanks Matt. It's a Canon 60D with a 60 mm f2.8 macro lens. I'm really happy with it and have had it for quite a while.

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  3. Love the red background! Really makes the dish stand out. We really enjoyed this one as well. I did make the garnish! The "flower" is cut out of ribbons of carrot with an aspic mini cutter, and then threaded with sprouts. I just used a vegetable peeler and pressed firmly against the carrot to get a little thickness to the ribbon. Then you poke a hole with a skewer and use the skewer to help push the sprout end through the hole. Tie the "bouquet" with a thin strip of green onion that has been blanched. A bit time consuming, but fun. :)

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    1. Thanks Cathleen for the details! I love it! I will be trying this!

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  4. It is a fair few ingredients but you need that to get the depth of flavour and like you said not much that you don't already have in the cupboard and the results look delicious.

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    1. Thanks Laura. It turned out to be one of my favorite dishes from the book!

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