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- Cuisine: Modern Asian
- Serves 8 as part of a shared meal
Featured as part of our Cooks and their Books series, this recipe comes courtesy of Martin Boetz, head chef and co-owner of Longrain restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne, and author of Longrain: Modern Thai Food.
Click here for a selection of recipes from Martin Boetz's Longrain: Modern Thai Food
Ingredients
4 star anise
2 sticks cassia bark
1 cup Sichuan peppercorns
4 small dried red chillies
1⁄2 cup sea salt
1 x no. 16 Barossa chicken
4 litres (31⁄4 quarts) vegetable oil
1 quantity salt & pepper mix
Lemon wedges
Plum Sauce
500 g (1 lb) palm sugar, crushed
100 ml (31⁄2 fl oz) water
100 ml (31⁄2 fl oz) fish sauce
100 ml (31⁄2 fl oz) tamarind
10 blood plums
100 ml (31⁄2 fl oz) hoisin sauce
Preparation
Use free-range chickens or you’ll be disappointed with the result.
Dry-roast the star anise, cassia bark, Sichuan peppercorns and chillies in a heavy-based pan until fragrant. Mix with the salt and grind to a fine powder in a spice or coffee grinder.
Dry the chicken with a kitchen towel, and coat thoroughly with the ground spices.
Set a steamer large enough to hold the chicken over boiling water. Place the bird in the steamer and steam, covered, for 50 minutes on a gentle simmer. When done, remove the chicken and allow to cool to room temperature. You’ll notice the spice coating dry and harden, which is essential before it is fried. This can be done in advance.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large wok. Cut the bird in half and fry in the hot oil until the skin is crisp. Drain on absorbent paper.
To make the plum sauce
Melt the sugar in a heavy-based pot with the water. Let sugar caramelise slightly, then add the fish sauce and tamarind. Add the plums and hoisin sauce, and cook until they release their juices. Keep cooking until you get a honey-like consistency again. The mixture should taste sweet, slightly sour and salty. Pass the sauce through a wire mesh strainer to make a rich, red sauce. When reheating, add a few slices of fresh plum to the sauce if desired.
To serve, cut the chicken into 6 pieces and place on a serving platter. Spoon over the sauce. Serve the Salt & Pepper Mix on the side. Garnish with lemon wedges.
If you enjoyed this Spiced Barossa chicken with plum sauce recipe then browse more Thai recipes, Modern Asian recipes, meat recipes, cooks and their books recipes, martin boetz recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.
Modern Asian Restaurants
Displaying 10 of 378 Modern Asian Restaurants.
| Restaurant | Book Online | Suburb | |
| 1. | Harry's Singapore Chilli Crab | Sydney | |
| 2. | The Chairman and Yip | City | |
| 3. | Timmy's Kitchen | Manuka | |
| 4. | Taste of Asia | North Hobart | |
| 5. | Viet Hoa | Perth | |
| 6. | Petaluma's Bridgewater Mill | Bridgewater | |
| 7. | House of Chow | Adelaide | |
| 8. | Imperial Peking | St Peters | |
| 9. | Indochina Thai Restaurant | Unley | |
| 10. | Phuket | Glenelg |
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Hot Tips
Tamarind
Tamarind is available in pods, blocks, or as a concentrate. To extract the most flavour, break off a piece of tamarind, wrap in foil and roast in the oven for a few minutes.
Glossary
Flat Wok Shovel
Called a 'chan'. A versatile tool used to flip and toss ingredients when stir-frying, also used to measure sauces and remove cooked food from the wok to a serving plate.
