Orange Chicken - Chen Pi Ji

If you are a regular reader you might know that my FIL comes to our home for lunch every day after MIL passed away.
Mom was not a adventures type when it came for making food, she always made traditional food from Belgium, sometimes I think she started trying newer things after I came here as she hears from me about this or that spices etc..... but still 99 % of food she made was belgian/eurpean food. ( I must say she could make really super delicious paela one of the best I have ever had)

My FIL ofcourse complains ( when mom was there) when ever she made rice, pasta etc.... even though he will polish his plate of rice or pasta he would still say is it rice/pasta today as he loves his potatoes . So in their place it will be mostly potatoes, meat and vegg in their place, there is always potato mash , fried potato, boiled potato most of the lunch time.

My father in law loves travelling and he has gone to most of the places in Europe, but he would have loved to still travel, but as he is 86 he is not allowed and now we have this joke, each time I  make a chinese dish I tell him Dad we are travelling to china today, or when i make pasta I will be like Dad we are travelling to Italy today.

Now to the recipe this is the recipe from Easy Chinese Recipe from Bee Yinn Low, I am sure most of you will know her from her delicious and beautiful blog Rasamalaysia.
I love this book, and I have made couple of dishes from the book and each time it turns our super yumm.
So even before I tasted the finsiehd dish I knew it will a a really yummy chicken and indeed i was not wrong it is so good.
Some of the dishes I ahve made from the book are Chicken With Garlic Sauce  , Kung Pao Chicken.

Bee had written if you want the dish to have more sauce then double the portion of the orange juice and as I like a bit of sauce i have trippled it.
I am giving the original recipe and I have  written in a another color in brackets what changes I have done.
So if you want the dish to be dry then do the exact as in the recipe and if you like it to be saucy then do my way which is written in another color.



Orange Chicken:

250 gm skinless ,boneless chicken meat cut into slices
2 tablespoon of corn starch
Oil for deep frying
1 tablespoon of oil
2 cloves garlic minced
5 dried red finger length chillies
2 green onions ( scallions) white parts ( I used the green part also)

Sauce

3 table spoon of fresh orange juice ( I used 9 tablespoon)
2 tablespoons of soysauce
1 tsp of chinese rice wine or sherry
1/4 tsp of seasame oil
2 1/2 tablespoons of sugar ( I only used 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1 tsp of corn starch ( I used a bit more than one tablespoon as i used more orange juice )
1 tablespoon of water ( I used 3 tablepoons of water)

1. Mix all the ingridients for the sauce in a small bowl. Toss the chicken witht eh cornstarch in a seperate bowl. Set aside.
2. Heat oil on a wok for deep frying and when the oil is hot , Gentley drop the chicken pieces into the oil and loosen them up immediately with the spatual to prevent the chicken from clumping together.
3. Deep fry the chicken to a light golden brown. Dish out with a striner or slotted spoon, draining the excess oil by laying the chicken on a dish lined with paper towels. Discard the oil.
4. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a wol over a high heat. Add the garlic stir quickly with teh spatual before adding the dry chillies, stir fry untill you smell the spicy aroma of the chillies.
5. Returnt eh fried chicken back into the wok and add the sauce. Stir continiously, untill the chicken is well coated witht eh sauce. Stir in the green onions and serve immediately with steamed rice.
Tip from me if you think you sauce us too watery then use a bit more corn flour mixed with bit of water to thiecken up the sauce. If you think there is less sauce and you want more saucy then add a bit more water . Just make sure if you add more water or orange juice then add a little bit more soysauce too.



Torcettini di Saint Vincent (Sugar Crusted Twisted Cookies from the Valle d’Aosta)

If you are a regular reader of my blog you know that I am in the Bread baking group started in Facbook by Aparna We Knead to Bake.
And actually this Torcettini di Saint Vincent (Sugar Crusted Twisted Cookies from the Valle d’Aosta)  but as unexpected things happen in ones life I coudn't make the bread in April.
So last week when I has time I made this yeasted cookies.
They are really so easy to make, and well less in calories than the other cookies I have made but delicious too.
And they do keep well in a airtight container, as even on the fourht day after making them they were good.
Torcettini are smaller versions of Torcetti (meaning small twists), and these pear/ teardrop shaped twists are made of a dough of flour, yeast and butter which are shaped and then rolled in sugar before being baked. These biscuits are synonymous with the town of Saint Vincent in Valle d'Aosta, a small mountainous region in North-Western Italy, even though they’re well known throughout the Piedmont region as well.

The origin of these biscuits is believed to be from Grissini (breadsticks) which were made from the leftover scraps of bread dough. According to one story, a Grissini baker had some leftover butter which he needed to use up. Inspiration struck and he decided to add the butter to the last batch of his Grissini dough for the day. To be able to differentiate this lot of “breadsticks”, he rolled them in sugar and shaped them into loops, and the Torcetti was born. Torcetti/ Torchettini taste even better when they’re flavoured with lime/ lemon zest or anise.

These biscuits are crunchy, not very sweet and pair very well with cold milk, hot chocolate, tea/ coffee or wine. They are delicious served warm and equally good cold, and keep very well if stored in airtight containers. Apparently, Queen Margaret, the wife of King Umberto I of Savoy loved these biscuits so much during her stay in Valle d'Aosta, that she gave her servants enough provisions to bake an abundant supply for her consumption.

Torcettini di Saint Vincent
(Adpated from A Baker’s Tour by Nick Malgieri)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup warm water, about 110F
1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 tsp instant yeast)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder (if making chocolate torcettini)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp lime/ lemon zest (replace with orange zest for the chocolate version)
40gm unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
about 1/3 cup sugar for rolling the cookies
Preparation:

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, in a small bowl and keep aside.
Put the flour and the salt in the food processor bowl (or a largish regular bowl if kneading by hand) and pulse a couple of times to mix. Add the butter pieces and pulse until the butter is well mixed and the flour-butter mixture looks powdery.
If making chocolate Torcetti, remove 2 tbsp all-purpose flour and add the 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder mentioned in the recipe. Don’t add the lemon zest/ anise. Use orange zest and maybe add 1/ 2 tsp instant coffee powder with the flour.
Add the yeast-water mixture and pulse till it all comes together as a ball. Do not over process or knead. Place the ball of dough in a oiled bowl, turning it so it is well coated with the oil. Cover the bowl, and let the dough rise quite a bit.
This dough does not really double in volume, but it should look “puffy” after about an hour or so. When you pinch off a bit from the top you can see the interior looking a bit like honeycomb. Press down the dough and deflate it, wrap it in cling warp and refrigerate it for at least one hour or up to 24 hours. (I did just for a hour)

When ready to make the cookies, take the dough out and lightly roll it out into an approximately 6” square. If the dough feels sticky, scatter a little sugar on it. Using a pizza wheel cut the dough into four strips of equal width. Cut each strip into 6 equal pieces, by cutting across, making a total of 24 pieces. The measurements are not very critical in this part because this just makes it easier to have 24 equal sized bits of dough, as compared to pinching of bits of the dough.
Roll each piece into a pencil thick “rope” about 5” long. Sprinkle a little sugar on your work surface and roll the “rope” in it so the sugar crusts the dough uniformly. Form the “rope” into a loop crossing it over before the ends.
Place the Torcettini on parchment lined baking sheets, leaving 1 1/2" between them. Leave them for about 20 minutes or so till they rise/ puff up slightly. Don’t worry, they will not “puff up” much.
Bake them at 160C (325F) for about 25 minutes till they’re a nice golden brown. Cool the cookies completely, on a rack. Store them in an air-tight container at room temperature.