Fuego, Kuala Lumpur

Tags

bar, chicken, churros, diablo, guacamole, Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur restaurants, restaurant review, salted caramel, south american restaurant

Kuala Lumpur is in dire need of good restaurants. With the fantastic array of restaurants that grace the streets of our Asian neighbours in Singapore, Hong Kong and as far away as Japan, it is frustrating that there is much to be desired in terms of quality in our city. These days it is so difficult to find even moderate decent ones, most being sub par. That being said, Fuego has been and still is a favourite go-to as far as decent restaurants go in scarcity. A place with a view (or now, disappointingly, just half a view) of the twin towers and outdoors. Having gone multiple times since its opening several years ago, I can safely vouch for its consistency in good food (bar the one time they accidentally charred my churros).

The Fuego guacamole is a perfect tango of tangy, creamy and savoury, with a zing of freshness lent by a squeeze of lime and final smattering of coriander leaves. If only the portion were more generous! I love the assorted fried chips that are served alongside. Although some of the selections are a tad hard, the variety is pleasing. The dish could be improved by offering thinner, more crisp vegetable chips. The yam chip and lotus root chip are adequate while the plantain chips could do with a bit of work.

Soft shell crab served with a creamy avocado sauce. Another good dish, fried to a thinly crisp exterior and soft and moreish on the inside.

This Chermoula chicken is a stunner. Enough to feed 3-4 people, although we usually order it for 2. The chicken is brined for 24 hours, then marinated in a tantalising mixture of lime juice, paprika, cayenne pepper, coriander and olive oil for another 24 hours before taking a dip in a sous vide bath. Both the brining and the sous vide does wonders for the absolute succulence and juiciness of the final product. After which the chicken is butterflied, smothered in another layer of the chermoula spice marinade and then charred over a charcoal grill and finished in a salamander grill.

The result puts any and all other rotisserie chicken establishments in KL to shame. Served with their spicy diablo sauce, this moist chicken is all lusciousness and layered flavour, evident in every bite.

A dish that I’d order every single time.

Even after that mammoth of a bird, one should always order the churros, freshly fried and dusted with cinnamon and sugar, paired with salted caramel cream dispensed delightfully from an espuma over a dulcey cremeux. The churros are hot, crisp and lightly sweet, and, when dipped into the ethereal cream, just gorgeous beyond words.

Fuego also doubles up as a watering hole, if ever the need arises.

Fuego Restaurant & Bar

Troika Sky Dining, Level 23A, The Troika, Jalan Binjai, Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-2162-0886

 

Thanks to timeout.com for the description of the prep that goes on behind the chicken.

https://www.timeout.com/kuala-lumpur/restaurants/the-dish-chermoula-chicken

Whole Roast Chicken and Roast Chicken Thighs

Tags

baste, butter, celery, chicken, chicken thighs, compound butter, dinner, easy, easy meals, easy preparation, french cut, garlic, mains, onion, oven, oven roast, protein, quick preparation, roast chicken, roast chicken thighs, rosemary, thyme, western, whole, whole roast chicken

Roast chicken dinner for the family! There’s nothing quite like a full roast at the dining table… and no, Nandos and Kenny Rogers do not count. Roasting a whole chicken (or just the thighs as I will show later on in this post) is actually easier than one would think.

Fresh out of the oven and piping hot, it releases a perfumed steam as you cut into the juicy roast. Absolutely divine.
My shopping haul XD. So without further ado, the ingredients:-

Ingredients (for just 1 roast chicken, you can double it if your family is as greedy as mine)

• 1.7kg whole chicken
• 25g salted butter, softened
• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary (or whichever herbs you prefer)
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thmye
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 medium white onion
• 1 stalk of celery of around 10 inches, chopped into large sections (optional)
• 2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary
• salt
• black pepper

Instructions

In a small bowl, combine the butter, chopped thyme, rosemary and garlic to form the compound herb butter.
  To prep the chicken, remove feet, giblets, head, neck and internal organs. Give the chicken a rinse and then pat it dry with some paper towels.
Gently separate the skin from the meat of the breast and spread the herb butter on the meat underneat the skin. If you can get to it, try to spread it onto a part of the thighs as well. Take the remaining butter and rub the skin (do it as gently as possible so the skin does not break. It is very important to keep the skin intact and whole). Rub some salt and black pepper onto the entire surface of the chicken, including the cavity of the chicken. If you’re prepping the chicken the night before, cover the chicken with cling wrap and refrigerate it. Some would condone leaving the chicken uncovered for crispier skin but I just can’t bear the thought of food exposed in the fridge!

Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before cooking. This makes for tender chicken and even cooking throughout the bird.
  Stuff the cavity with the onion, celery and 1 sprig each of the thyme and rosemary. Here I had stuffed a lemon into the chicken but I’d much prefer the onion and celery option.
Scatter the remaining herbs on top and it’s good to go into the oven!  
Into the oven they go at 205 degrees celsius.   Roast for around 1.5 hours, basting the chicken in its own juices every half an hour.
And there you have it,  a hearty roast chicken that’s ready to be eaten with a variety of side dishes, as can be seen in the picture below!   Roasted some vegetables (recipe to come), made some mushroom soup, lobster pasta, cauliflower cheese (recipe to come) and pomme puree (recipe to come) as well as gravy to go with the chicken.

My sister also made some excellent focaccia bread to go with aged balsamic vinegar. I’m going to nick the recipe off her as well!
  Complete roast chicken dinner.

Roast Chicken Thighs

This is a good alternative when cooking for 1-2 people or if you simply prefer the thigh meat.  Clean the chicken and pat dry. You can use the chicken straight away but I prefer to make it look … somewhat more posh and french.   With reference to the above picture, I cut around the bone near the end of the drumstick. What happens is that I cut through the tendons and sinew (as seen in the top chicken). Remove visible tendons (they’re tough to eat). After which I proceeded to remove all skin, bone and cartilage from the bone end of the chicken, thus resulting the the chicken on the bottom of the picture. All cleaned up at the end.Chicken quarters cleaned up french style.

Make the compound butter (same as that used in the whole roast chicken recipe)

  Smear the compound butter under the skin as evenly as you can.

Tempt the dog (dog doesn’t seem tempted at all).Place the chicken into the oven preheated at 205 degrees celsius (ignore the 190 degrees seen in the picture) for about an hour or until juices run clear and the skin is golden brown in colour. Don’t forget to baste the juices onto the chicken, a couple of times will do I should think.

That’s it! Oh and if you have spare sprigs of herbs, go ahead and arrange them onto the completed dish for decoration.

Shaoxing Wine Ginger chicken

Tags

chicken, Chinese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, ginger, ginger wine chicken, healthy, Home Cooking, scallions, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, shaoxing wine ginger chicken, South East Asian, spring onions, white pepper, wine, wine chicken

This dish brings back a lot of memories from my Warwick days. For some reason I remember that the preparation process was long and tedious back then! It involves deboning chicken thighs/drumsticks and skinning and julienning ginger. At the present though, I no longer find it as long and dreary a process. Perhaps I could attribute it to… better knife skills? Or maybe just better knives, I don’t think my knife skills have improved at all since then!

This is a very warming, hearty dish and the sauce is lovely with freshly cooked white rice. It’s currently a favourite with the family and guests who happen to try it! It doesn’t take very long nor need many ingredients and makes a perfect addition to the dining table. I include pictures from two attempts at cooking this dish and I realized that I naturally throw the same ingredients into the pan, despite starting off with perhaps a couple less ingredients in one of the photos. That goes to show that agaration (the South East Asian technique of cooking by guesstimating) isn’t very far off from precision after all!Ingredients from trial number 1Ingredients from trial number 2.

But don’t worry, I’ve consolidated the ingredient list and summarized it as below:-

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 2-3 stalks of Spring onions including the white bits with roots removed
• 3 inches of ginger, peeled and roughly julienned
• 4 Chicken thighs with skin on, deboned
• 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 3 tbsp clear chicken stock/broth
• 1 tsp kicap manis
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Chicken marinade

• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp corn flour

Cooking Instructions

Upon deboning the chicken, remove the skin from two of the chicken thighs and discard. Keep the skin on for the remaining two chicken thighs. We want some chicken fat rendering in the gravy but not too much!

Trim off the excess fat and remove the tendons from the chicken. Tendons are tough to cut through and unpleasant to eat so be thorough in removing them whenever preparing chicken! Once that is done, cut the chicken meat into bite-sized, uniform pieces so they cook at the same speed. 

Place the chicken in a bowl and lightly mix in the chicken marinade with your hands. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature.

In preparing the scallions/spring onions, cut them into thirds or 2 inch sections. You can take some of the green sections to slice thinly for garnishing as well.

Heat up some oil in a pan/wok on medium fire. When the oil is hot enough (i.e. if you drop a piece of ginger into the oil it starts to sizzle right away), slide the ginger into the oil gingerly (I’m so funny I know) and fry for a minute until the ginger starts to turn a little golden and the gingery aroma seeps out. The point of this step is to flavour the oil with ginger as well as prep the ginger so it’s at its best to mingle with the chicken.Add the chicken pieces and fry until half-cooked.

Then, flip the pieces over and add the chicken stock, sesame oil plus Shaoxing wine and cover to cook for a minute. We’re quick-braising/stewing the chicken with some moisture, not searing it to death. Remember, the chicken has to be swimming in a luscious pool of delicious gravy!Upon uncovering, add the spring onion sections into the pan/wok and stir fry for a little while more. Taste to check if it needs more white pepper or salt.

And it’s done!Not the fanciest of dishes but highly satisfying and easy on the stomach. Healthy too!

Check out the before and after picture of trial number 1. I used 10 thighs for that round of cooking!

Wiped clean. ❤

Nonya fried chicken (inchi kabin)

Tags

chicken, chilli powder, coconut milk, curry, fried chicken, ginger, heritage food, inchi kabin, malaysian, nonya food, nonya fried chicken, South East Asian, spices, straits

Ingredients:

1 small chicken – 1.25kg – 1.5kg, chopped into sections

Marinate:

• 2 tbsp curry powder
• 3 tbsp grated ginger (or if u can find it, galangal)
• 5-6 shallots
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 4 tbsp coconut milk
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 chilli padi (optional – just for the extra kick if you like it spicy)
• 2-3 stalks lemongrass (optional – I didn’t add this in this time round, but I remember my grandmother putting some in hers.)
• 1 tsp salt, or to taste
• 1 tsp sugar, or to taste

1.  Trim the excess fat and skin from the chicken pieces and pat dry.
2. Combined all the marinate ingredients together (blend it if you can, it makes the paste so much smoother. I didn’t ;( )  and add in the chicken. Mix well, really get the marinate into every nook and cranny, then cover with a cling wrap and let the chicken marinate in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight.

3.   Remove the chicken from the fridge at least half an hour to an hour before frying.

4.    I tried frying the chicken two ways, one with my brand new air fryer, and the other using the conventional deep frying method.

5.    For the air frying method, I added a little oil to the chicken and mixed it well before placing the pieces into the air fryer. Here’s the result:

It’s actually pretty good. Saves me quite a bit of oil and manages to also be healthier.

6.   As for the deep frying method, heat up enough oil to completely submerge the chicken pieces. This should be on high heat.

7.   Gently drop the chicken pieces into the oil, taking care not to overcrowd the pot.

8.   Skim off the brown bits from the surface of the oil. This is to prevent being burnt bits floating around the oil and sticking to the chicken.

9.   Fry until the chicken turns golden brown (because of the marinade, the chicken will tend to be on the darker side) and starts to float, take care not to overcook the chicken. Remove from the hot oil and place on a kitchen towel to drain off the excess oil

10. Serve. Obviously the deep fried chicken is going to taste better than the air fried ones. However, for the health-conscious, the air fryer is a pretty good alternative.

Juicy spiced chicken!

Oyakodon

Tags

chicken, eggs, healthy, japanese, mains, rice

A dish made with chicken, eggs, onions, sake and mirin

Oyakodon is a Japanese dish consisting of chicken and onions simmered in a dashi broth with eggs lusciously and carelessly drizzled over the whole mixture. The eggs should be silky smooth and the chicken tender and juicy. It is also called the “Parent and child” donburi (donburi = a sort of Japanese rice dish in a bowl) for obvious reasons; the egg and the chicken.

My brother loves this dish and always orders it at restaurants but it is pretty easy to make once you’ve gotten the hang of it. I tend to mess this recipe up when cooking for many people but it’s easy cooking for one or two people at a time. It’s healthy, no frying or oil in sight, thus no stinking up the kitchen (or my hair =D) while cooking. And it’s got eggs and onions, my favourite combination!

It’s the ultimate Japanese comfort food for me.

Cooking for 1-2 pax:

Ingredients

1. 2 Eggs (3 if you’re cooking for 2)
2. 1/2 a green onion, sliced
3. 1 Chicken thigh deboned and cut into bite sized pieces, skin on (1 Chicken thigh per person)
4. Dashi, I use the bottled one
5. Sake
6. Mirin
7. Light soy sauce
8. Sugar
9. Some sliced Japanese leeks for topping

Cooking the Oyakodon

1. Your rice must be already cooked and warm as you will ladle the chicken and egg mixture directly on top of the rice.
2. Crack your eggs into a separate bowl. Use a chopstick to break up the egg whites so that they separate easily. Gently break the yolk and give it a stir so its slightly mixed but not incorporated with the whites When you pour in the eggs to cook you want to have some distinct white pieces and yellow bits from the eggs. Don’t scramble the eggs.
3. Get a small saucepan ready, it shouldn’t be too big as we want the dashi/sake mixture to cover half of the onions and chicken.
4. Add about 3/4 cup of dashi and 1/4 cup of water to the saucepan. Taste your dashi sauce before cooking. You may want to make fresh dashi from scratch, by all means do but I’m too lazy! This brand of dashi that I’m using already has soy sauce in it so it’s salty.
5. Add 3 capfuls each of mirin and sake and half a tablespoon of sugar. Taste the mixture and adjust dashi, sugar or water content. Remember it has to be a bit salty as it will form the sauce for your rice. I forgot about that at one time and made the dashi mixture nice on its own but too bland when put together on the rice.
6. Heat up the dashi on medium high heat and add onions. Again remember that the dashi mixture has to cover up to half of the chicken and onions. Cover until onions are slightly translucent.
7. Add chicken bits evenly throughout the pan and try to avoid overcrowding. Cover for 1 minute. Uncover and turn the chicken chunks over to cook on the other side. Cover for 1 more minute.
8. At this point, pour half of the eggs in the bowl over the chicken and onions. Make sure the eggs are evenly distributed throughout the pan. Cover for 10 seconds til partially cooked but still runny. You could cook it further if you prefer your eggs cooked through. Pour the rest of the eggs evenly into the pan. Switch to high heat for 1-2 seconds and turn off the heat, covering entire mixture, and let stand for half a minute.
9. Ladle your rice into a bowl and spoon the chicken and egg mixture on top carefully so as to keep the shape of the eggs chunky and silky.
10. Top the whole bowl with shreds or slice of raw Japanese leek which lends a crunchy accent and spicy punch to this sweetish savoury chicken dish.