Gan Xiang Ji

This Gan Xiang Ji 干香鸡 recipe was taken from Sunday Times. I only cooked 800g of chicken instead of 1kg as stated in the recipe, hence, I reduced the main ingredients and the seasoning ingredients proportionately. As for the sauce ingredients, I followed the recipe but omitted torch ginger flower because I could not find it that day.

As the note in the recipe states that "the secret to making a tasty Gan Xiang Ji is in frying the ginger and garlic till they are dry and brown", I fried the garlic and ginger till they were almost brown before adding the curry leaves and chilli. Then I fried the ingredients till fragrant, followed by the sauce and finally the cooked chicken. The smell of the curry leaves was wonderful and we enjoyed eating this. Yum!

Gan Xiang Ji 干香鸡 is briefly translated as Dry Fragrant Chicken in English.



Gan Xiang Ji
干香鸡

Serves 5

Ingredients:
800g chicken (cut into medium-sized pieces)
24g curry leaves
40g garlic (whole, remove skin and fry till dark brown)
40g ginger (retain skin and sliced)
2 fresh chilli, sliced

Seasoning:
4ml salt
4ml sugar
40ml ginger juice
1 egg
60ml water
40g potato starch
40g plain flour

Sauce:
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp Thai Chilli sauce
1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp light soya sauce
some dark soya sauce (just to make chicken look slightly darker)
one-fifth torch ginger flower (finely sliced)


Method:

Marinate chicken with seasoning ingredients for one to two hours.

Heat oil to about 80 per cent hot (when you see small bubbles emerging from base of wok), put chicken pieces in and fry till golden brown. Remove from wok. Don’t use boiling-hot oil as the meat will end up burnt.

Heat some oil in the wok and quickly fry garlic, ginger, curry leaves and chilli over high heat.

Pour the sauce in, put fried chicken pieces in, mix well and serve.

Note: The secret to making a tasty Gan Xiang Ji is in frying the ginger and garlic till they are dry and brown.