Chinese white cut chicken (bái qie ji) is a classic New Year's dish and an everyday comfort item for most Chinese home cooks. It's just a poached chicken served with a scallion-ginger sauce. While it may seem plain and simple, it takes some practice to master the cooking method and produce a juicy and flavorful chicken.

Hungry Bear turned to a recipe from The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen for directions. The end result was a white cut chicken that was moist and delicious. I loved dipping the chicken into the scallion-ginger sauce and spooning the sauce over steamed rice. Who knew a poached chicken could be so good!?!

Update August 13, 2008: The first picture in this post won the DMBLGIT July 2008 aesthetics category! We are very psyched and honored to receive the recognition.

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Over the last few months, we've been cooking a lot of Vietnamese food. And the word, "vietnamese", in the tag/ingredient cloud (below on the right side) has grown larger, dwarfing the "chinese" tag. That's fine with me, but Hungry Bear wants to end this trend and make sure her peeps' food is more represented on SND. So yesterday, she made beef and broccoli chow fun (chao fen).

We both love chow fun, but rarely order it at restaurants because it's just too damn oily. If you have access to a good Chinese/Asian supermarket and can get your hands on fresh rice noodles (he fen or haw fun), beef chow fun is best made at home. Prepared with fresh ingredients, minimal oil and Chinese broccoli, dare I say chow fun can be a healthy, balanced meal. It's sad Chinese food prepared in most restaurants is greasy, salty and generally bad for you, whereas traditional Chinese cooking can be healthy and flavorful.

To prepare the chow fun, Hungry Bear referenced two Grace Young cookbooks. We love Grace Young's recipes, but our biggest pet peeve is that her recipes are always proportioned to serve 4 to 6 as part of a multi-course meal. Hey, that's great if you have time to cook multi-course meals, but it's no good for people like us who cook in mass quantities. So, we always end up doubling or quadrupling her recipes, hoping it's enough as the main entrée.

This time Hungry Bear only doubled the recipe, reduced the oil and added Chinese broccoli to the beef chow fun recipe found in The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. With fresh ingredients and perfectly cooked flank steak, this was no doubt the best chow fun I've ever had. After adding a dash of chili garlic sauce, I was one happy, chow-fun-eating camper. Now I'm looking forward to the next Chinese dish, as Hungry Bear attempts to restore the Chinese/Vietnamese balance on SND.

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I have a lot of friends who love Vietnamese dipping sauce (nuoc cham). When they ask me for the recipe, I tell them it's a closely guarded family secret. However, I have finally received permission from my parents to disclose the formula. It took a lot of groveling on my part and even a few tears were shed, but I got their blessing.

Okay, I made the last part up, but wouldn't it be more special if it really was a secret? Anyway, every Vietnamese family has a dipping sauce recipe. The ingredients in nuoc cham are generally the same, but the proportions vary based on personal tastes and regions in Vietnam. According to Vietnamese cookbook author, Andrea Nguyen, "as you move south the sauce gets sweeter, hotter, and more garlicky."

This may explain why I don't like the nuoc cham made in San Francisco restaurants, which are generally too sweet for my tastes. My family is from the middle part of the country and I was born in Da Nang. It all makes sense now.

As you gain experience with this dipping sauce, adjust it to suit your preferences. There's no secret formula. It's just a simple sauce with a great blend of salty, sour, sweet and spicy. For some meals, I like adding or substituting ginger for the garlic (nuoc cham gung). The ginger dipping sauce is great with a meal of roasted duck and sticky rice.

I'm going to post the recipe for my mom's crab and shrimp egg roll (cha gio) shortly, which requires nuoc cham. To whet your appetite, I leave you with this picture.

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After last month's declaration that my mom's spicy lemongrass chicken was the dish I would eat for the rest of my life if I had to choose one item, Hungry Bear was a little sad. I had told her previously that her Hawaiian marinated seared chicken was my favorite chicken dish. Doh, how do you choose between your mom's cooking and your girlfriend's? It's a no win situation.

Despite my faux pas, Hungry Bear still made her Hawaiian chicken this past week. We hadn't seen some SNDsters for awhile and had a midweek "Sunday night dinner." We served the chicken over rice with a side of stir-fried vegetables. For dessert, we made a fantastic blueberry kuchen.

The chicken is very flavorful and tender, because it's marinated overnight in a citrus marinade. The marinade is a blend of strong flavors, particularly the Chinese five spice, fresh mint and mustard. I think the best part is the sauce created by deglazing the frying pan with some reserved marinade. The sauce contains all the caramelized bits left in the pan, and it's wonderful on the chicken and rice.

We have prepared the chicken two other ways — pan seared then finished in the oven, and barbecued on the grill. Both methods worked out fine and I really liked grilling the chicken, but Hungry Bear determined the best approach is just to pan fry the chicken thighs until they are done. The benefit is extra caramelized bits for deglazing!

The chicken was absolutely delicious. I just want to state for the record that my mom's spicy lemongrass chicken is my favorite Vietnamese chicken and Hungry Bear's Hawaiian chicken is my favorite non-Vietnamese chicken dish. I hope this latest declaration makes everyone happy and keeps me out of potential trouble.

SNDsters: Howie, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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