Big Plate Chicken (Da4 Pan2 ji1) Recipe Revisited (大盘鸡的做法)

It was such a pleasure to get a request from a reader who wants to know the recipe for Da Pan ji (Big Plate Chicken), a traditional and very popular Xinjiang dish in China. I thought it would be a good idea to post the recipe here:

Main Ingredients and Prep Work:

-a whole chicken (You can have the butcher to chop it up into mouth-manageable pieces for you. I would't want to chop up a whole chicken again, because I really didn't enjoy doing that - it gives me creeps as if I was killing it! In the States, it's hard to find a freshly killed chicken; and Americans don't like bones! Chinese tend to love bones, because they add extra flavor and fun to eating, so keep the bones if you can - imagine ribs without bones, it wouldn't taste the same!)

-3 or 4 potatoes (First, peel potatoes; then, chop them into big cubes; then soak them in cold water to get rid of the starchiness.)

-1 red pepper and 1 green pepper (If you like the dish spicier like I do, I recommend adding jalapeño pepper and habañero pepper - dried habañero peppers will do too - which will add both color and spiciness.)

-a handful of Sichuan pepper (If it's hard to find Sichuan pepper, black pepper corns would do too, although when frying blackpepper corns in hot oil, they may crackle - watch out for hot oil!)

-fresh ginger (sliced), green onion (2 or 3, chopped), garlic (2 cloves, minced)

-star anise (3 or 4 for enhancing flavor)

Steps for Making the Dish:

1. Marinate chicken pieces in light soy sauce, salt, cooking wine and a dash of ground black pepper and sugar for 15 to 20 minutes.

2. Pour some oil (I cook almost everything with olive oil) into a wok or deep cooking pan, wait until it's hot, then throw in Sichuan pepper corns.

3. Take out Sichuan pepper corn bits and pieces with a drainer. Then, put a spoon of sugar (for coloring the chicken pieces) in the oil, wait until the sugar starts to turn brown, then put marinated chicken cubes/pieces in, followed by ginger, garlic and green onion. Stir.

4. Add soy sauce and water (enough to barely cover chicken cubes)

5. Add salt, star anise and cooking wine (don't add too much salt, remember you can always add a bit more at the end when the taste test requires more.)

6. Cover the pot and let it simmer for 15 or 20 minutes depending on the amount of chicken meat until the chicken pieces are cooked through.

7. Add potato cubes and let the pot simmer again for about 5 or 10 mintues until the potatoes are cooked. (If simmered for too long, the potato cubes may get very starchy and lose shape, then the dish will lose clarity. I almost prefer using microwave for heating up the potato cubes and then throw them in the pot and stir/mix at the last minute - a trick that I recently learned from Ronnie while vacationing in Merida.)

8. Add green and red peppers, stir for a few minutes.

9. It's ready for the big plate that you have!

Last time when I made the dish, I didn't make the wide noodles that usually go with the dish; instead, I bought a packet of wide noodles from China Town. Cook noodels in a seperate pot, then mix noodles with the Big Plate Chicken dish (similar to eating Pasta).