The story
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I have good memories of this. It was a treat I would ask of my parents, when I was young and “western” food was regarded as special.
I suppose, you have to be live in my country, or the region, to understand this : Hainanese style “Western Food”. It’s “western food”, cooked by Hainanese chefs in Singapore, before the age of globalisation and fancy air-flown ingredients. “Western food” in this context, is a piece of seared or fried meat, veggies and potatoes, served on a plate and eaten with a knife and fork. Like early versions of “Chinese Food” in America, it’s a limited and loop-sided representation of a complex and varied cuisine, cherry picking on what had wide appeal and was easy to adapt. We are not talking Bresse Chicken and Truffles.
Of these early “Western” dishes, a pan fried chicken fillet, served with a black pepper sauce, is iconic. Even as Singapore has progressed to Michelin starred French restaurants, this dish is still firmly lodged on our menus, served in a variety of everyday places. Its a relatively inexpensive dish, but fancy enough to satisfy a special need and fill a specific corner of our tummies.
Recipe
Overview
For me a good version of this dish is a marinated, well seared boneless chicken leg (crispy skin!), with a good pepper sauce. The pepper sauce should have sharpness and heat from coarse ground black pepper, but also a rich umami.
I did this as a one-pan recipe, where the sauce is made in the same pan as the chicken is fried. This enriches the sauce, allowing me to scrap up all the wonderful chicken flavours in the pan.
Ingredients, prep and mise
For this, you need chicken leg, boneless and skin-on. Nope, it cannot be skinless chicken breast, it cannot be skinless leg. It cannot be bone-in leg.
The ingredients are very much here (for one) :
- Boneless, skin-on chicken leg, marinated with light soya sauce and fine ground white pepper
- Chicken stock (I am using a stock cube)
- Fresh, coarse-ground black pepper (about a tablespoon)
- All purpose flour
- A little butter
- A little oyster and dark soya sauce
It really helps to marinate the chicken. I use a little light soya and fine ground white pepper, and let it sit for a while .
Cook
Its not complicated. You will be eating in 15 mins!
Heat a fry pan with a little oil till hot, and slap the chicken on, skin side down
Allow the chicken to sit, skin side down for a bit, Most of the cooking will be done on the skin side. You should be able to see the chicken get cooked as the whiteness moves up the chicken, like so :
Check how the skin is doing occasionally, and adjust heat as needed. The chicken is about half way cooked, turn. You should see glorious, crispy brown skin.
Allow the chicken to cook fully, then remove and set aside. The pan is now full of chicken oil and wonderful nuggets of chicken flavour. You will need to fry the pepper in the oil a bit, as the flavour of the pepper will develop under the heat.
Allow the pepper to fry a bit, a wonderful, peppery aroma will develop, Next, you need something to thicken the sauce, for this, I use flour and make a roux. A roux is a paste made by cooking flour in fat and is the best way to thicken this sauce, but there are alternatives.
Sprinkle in about a tablespoon of flour into the pan
Allow the flour to fry a bit and brown, adding more butter if needed. It should look something like this :
Finally, you need to finish the sauce. I am using chicken stock made from a Knorr cube here, because I was in a hurry. Add the stock bit by bit, stirring each time and allowing it to bubble to integrate the flour. Add stock till the sauce has the desired thickness.
The sauce will be quite delicious now, and will have all the right flavours but might be a little pale. I adjusted the colour and flavour with a dark soya to give the right look. And you are done!
Plate up!
Many places drizzle the sauce over the chicken, I lay the chicken on the sauce to preserve the crispy skin!
Eat!
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Alternatives to roux
For a western sauce, I tend to use a roux – this integrates the fat into the sauce and thickens the sauce into a opaque gravy that will hold its texture even when cool. If you are not comfortable with this technique, simply make the sauce without roux (fry black pepper, add stock and seasoning) and thicken with corn flour slurry. The sauce will not look quite the same – it will be more translucent, but it will work.