Steamed Chicken with Snowpea Leaves and Green Garlic Ginger Relish

From Spice by Christine Manfield page 162

This dish had its roots firmly set in hainanese chicken rice, with additional flair provided by Christine Manfield.

However - my first confession - I didn't use snowpea leaves. I served the dish with snowpeas on the side, but no snowpea leaves were found in sight.

My second confession - the final result didn't look like the picture from the book.
(that goes with all my recipe cooking though...)

But it tasted great!

It's a simple dish to prep, with those core steamed Chinese chicken flavours.

(you'll notice the 'what it should have looked like' picture in the top-left of the pic below)

The recipe said to steam for 50 minutes, but my chooks needed more like 90 before they were cooked through. Possibly because they were bigger, or because they were still cold out of the fridge, or due to covering them with a pot lid rather than the prescribed baking paper and foil.

The end result was great. The green garlic ginger relish was the perfect accompaniment, as any fan of hainanese chicken rice would know. Rather than slicing neatly I jointed the chicken, then served with the relish, rice, and a second dish - san choy bau - based on a recipe from Kylie Kwong.

Home made Chinese banquet!

Retro Party Food

Friends recently had a Retro Party - and requested all to bring some retro party food to match the occasion. Cue the coconut ice:

And the lemon meringue pies:

The coconut ice is easy to make and brings back memories of childhood. Think of it as a two-toned slab of sugary condensed-milky coconut. Tastes as good as it sounds.

Then chop into convenient bite-sized pieces.

For the mini lemon meringue pies, I cheated on the tart cases and used bought ones. There's only so much cooking one can do, one must save energy for partying as well.

I made the lemon curd using variations on various recipes (I used Dr. Google and then made it up). A cheap piping bag became invaluable for getting it easily into the tart cases.

Then the meringue on top - with assistance from my Sous Chef.

I used the oven on the fan-forced-grill setting, and put the tarts about halfway down, to try and strike a balance between enough heat to cook the meringue overall, with the right level of heat from above to crisp up the top. That as the theory anyway. It seemed to work!

Now for the taste test.

...and the critics approved.

And voila - party food!

There may have also been an afro wig and a pair of flares involved, but no-one's got photos, so you can't prove anything.