Huazhou Fragrant-Oil Chicken 化州香油鸡

Ingredients

The bird has to be a free-range capon raised in rural hill pens; Maoming Daily says such chickens grow up on wild food from the hills, which gives the meat its texture. The fragrant oil starts with peanut oil and is flavoured with garlic, dried tangerine peel, star anise, chuanxiong (川芎, Sichuan lovage root), baizhi (白芷, Dahurian angelica root), cassia, cloves, coriander roots and sand ginger (沙姜), finished with light soy sauce and sesame oil. Maoming Daily singles out the sand ginger of Nansheng (南盛) in Huazhou as a local speciality that is hard to get outside the province.

How it is made

There are two ways to cook the chicken: steaming it over water, which gives a smooth, springy texture and a concentrated, natural flavour, or poaching it in hot liquid, which makes it smooth, tender and lightly fragrant. For poaching, salt goes into the water first so the skin sets quickly and holds the juices in. The bird is lifted out every five minutes and the water drained from its cavity, twice over, and is taken out at about nine-tenths done: a skewer in the leg should draw no blood, yet the meat next to the bone should still show a trace of red. After resting for ten minutes it is brushed all over with a thin coat of the fragrant oil, chopped and laid out again in the shape of a chicken.

For the dressing, about a third of a bowl of peanut oil is heated over a low flame until it bubbles, the aromatics are fried in it until strongly fragrant, and the soy sauce and sesame oil go in for about a minute's boil. The oil is left to cool to room temperature and then poured over the chicken, which is garnished with coriander.

Flavour and texture

Maoming Daily describes the fragrant oil as aromatic without being harsh, with a scent that lingers after each bite. Timing matters with either cooking method: too little or too much time and heat, and both the flavour and the texture of the chicken suffer.