Xinjiang chicken stew 新疆大盤雞

Xinjiang da pun ji 新疆大盤雞, translated as Xinjiang big plate/bowlful of chicken.

Xinjiang is the North West part of China, Muslims majority. I found this chicken stew recipe a while ago, very similar to Sichuan spicy flavour which I like a lot. What special is no water is needed just plenty of beer to stew the chicken. I just got to try this recipe.

Here is a big wokful of this stew, colourful and spicy, nicely flavoured too.

This stew is eaten with flat noodles not rice. I like it.

Recipe for the stew:

Ingredients:

1 - 1.25kg of chicken with bone, cut/chop into chunks Chinese style with a cleaver or cut with pair of scissors. I used half a large chicken. You can also use drumsticks or chicken legs.

about 400g potatoes, cut into chunks

big handful of mild large green chillies (similar to this), I could not find this so I sub with 1 small green pepper and one small orange pepper, cut into chunks

3 - 4 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped

thumb size chunk of ginger, sliced

2 star anise

1.5 tsp cumin seeds

l medium-large onion cut into bitesize

2 - 4 tbsp chilli bean sauce ( I used Pixian douban 郫县豆瓣 better flavour), more chilli bean added hotter and redder the stew sauce, also can be salty too, adjust to your taste

1.5 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

some dried chillies, remove stalks and seeds, cut into small chunks then rinse. I used 6 large dried chillies medium hot, can use small dried chillies usually much hotter

about 4 - 5 tbsp cooking oil

some light soy to taste

about 1 tbsp sugar, more or less to taste

about 500ml light flavoured beer, any type

about 1 heap tbsp cornflour mix with a little water for thickening

few stalks of spring onion (scallion), cut into 2 - 3 cm long


Method:

• Put oil in wok, fry the Sichuan peppercorns for a little while till fragrant. (You can remove Sichuan peppercorns if you hate biting into them, crush some with pestle and mortar and add to the stew later) Now add cumin, star anise and dried chillies. Stir till you get a pungent scent and before chilli burnt.
• Add garlic, ginger and onion, stir for a little while.
• Add chilli bean sauce, stir till oil turning red.
  
• Add chicken and stir fry for about 5 minutes.
  
• Add potato, stir.
  
• Add beer. Cover and let the liquid come to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 20 - 30 minutes till chicken and potatoes are tender.
  
• Season with enough light soy and sugar. Taste before adding light soy, chilli bean sauce can be salty.
• Add green chilli or sweet pepper. Continue simmer for another couple of minutes.
  
• Thicken with slackened cornflour. Not too thick.
• Finally add spring onion. Ready to eat

For the noodles: (can sub with tagliatelle )

I used pasta machine to make the noodles

about 300g white bread flour
1 large egg + water to make up to 125ml
1 tsp salt

Mix above together to form a dough. If dough is very dry add a bit more water. Dough should be firm. Leave to rest for about 20 minutes, knead till smooth.

Cut dough into 3 pieces. Dust with plenty of dry flour then roll out thin with pasta machine.

Then hand cut with knife into thick flat noodles.

Boil and serve with chicken stew.


*The flavour of the stew sauce was bitter (due to the beer) at first but did mellow down to a nice rich flavour with all the other ingredients.