骨香兔 (gǔ xiāng tù)

It was a hit!! i've never had my food mistaken for bought food which was quite a compliment i must say. Another one was "this rabbit tastes like kfc". All went as planned and I think i hit all the little things that make a dish a "dish".

So the reason this is on my list of top 5 chinese dishes is because of the wonderful differences in textures between fried boney parts and sucking remnants of flesh of it to the smooth sauteed chicken. Also the sautee should be subtle and only offer just enough flavour to compliment the somewhat blander fried chicken. Anyways, you should go try it, if you're reading?

Things to improve on would be to go easy on the meat, when flash frying, really just flash fry and dont leave it in there for too long and also work on the fried parts to be crisper. Things that really worked was the ginger, the rice wine and surely the brine.

So I'll break it into the three parts, the prep, the fry and the saute.

The Brine

Some recipes have asked for the brine to brought to a boil and the cooled before adding the meat. No time for that nonsense. I used three primary ingredients water, salt and vinegar (3L, 1/3 cup, 1/3 cup). On top of that i fried off some garlic bay leafs, coriander seeds and szechuan peppers to add to the brine. Some recipes call for frying off onions and so on, it seems to be such a waste. The meat was added and placed in the fridge for the day.

What was interesting after the time in the fridge it was actaully changing colour as the vinegar was starting to cook the meat. Perhaps vinegar should be left out. what is to note that rabbit a sometimes tough meat if overcooked but the brining surely imparted flavour and gave me a larger margin for error

The Fry

Very simply pat dry the meat after the brine. I didn't want to use egg but i ended up going that way, for some reason it gives me a crisper fry. The batter was almost equal parts corn flour, flour, salt and chilli powder and some baking powder (something i read said this made it crispy). Simple combine and fry, no tricks here, apparently tastes like kfc =)

The saute

This turns out to be the most finicky part.

1. Bring water to boil and add salt
2. Flash fry the rabbit flesh pieces (these were also preseasoned). Save oil for the frying mentioned above.
3. Meanwhile, add broccolli flowers and snow peas to the water
4. Fry off diced garlic and thin squares of ginger (big enough that people who dont like it can pick it out and thin enough that if you unknowingly bit into it it wouldnt fill ure mouth with that overpowering ginger flavour.. this worked a treat)
5. Add onions and soften.
6. Strain off the broccolli and snowpeas set aside
7. Add capsicum and baby corn and when they are softened add the brocolli and snowpeas.
8. Add splashes of rice wine to help soften everything up, add the meat as well
9. Prepare the sauce which comprised of oyster and soy sauce. Careful on the oyster because it can get very overpowering. Add pepper and corn flour and stir.
10. Once the rice wine has somewhat reduced, add the sauce and stir till it thickens.

So to plate combine fried parts with the saute toss lightly and plate. Gosh it was one of the most finicky dishes i've done in a while with three pots going, blanching, frying, straining and stirfrying. In the morning i had it for breakfast with half an avocado and that was quite a win as well.

interesting interesting. perhaps this is a blog revival.