Sesame Honey Chicken

I've been cooking - and eating - a lot of Chinese food recently, say, since early November. Why, you're wondering? You see, I had to choose the recipes for the Chinese cooking workshops I was organising, and test and fine-tune the ones that made the cut. Now, three workshops (and some 45 happy Nami-Nami readers later), I feel confident that I have a pretty good Chinese recipe repertoire to work with and feed my friends and family. While I was trying to use pretty authentic Chinese recipes for those workshops - mainly from Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine - then here's a delicious American-Chinese classic, sesame honey chicken.

NB For other Chinese recipes here on Nami-Nami, click here.

Sesame Honey Chicken
(Seesami-meekana)
Serves four



400 to 500 g chicken breast fillets or boneless thigh fillets
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 Tbsp Shaoxing rice wine or (medium) dry sherry
2 tsp sesame oil

For the batter:
4 Tbsp cornflour/cornstarch

For deep-frying:
groundnut oil or rapeseed oil

Honey sauce:
3 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 Tbsp good-quality ketchup
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
3 Tbsp water

To garnish:
toasted white sesame seeds

Cut the chicken into 2 cm pieces.
Mix soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine or sherry, sesame oil in a bowl. Add the chicken, stir and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.
Sprinkle cornflour over the chicken pieces to cover on all sides, shake off excess flour.
Heat couple of cm of oil in a small saucepan until slightly sizzling. Deep-fry chicken pieces, couple at a time, until golden brown on all sides and fully cooked. Put fried chicken pieces aside.
Combine the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan and bring into a boil. Simmer for a few minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly.
Add the cooked chicken pieces into the honey sauce, heat thoroughly through.
Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
Serve with steamed rice or cooked noodles.

Pork tenderloin with leeks, raisins and warming spices

This was our family's last proper home-cooked lunch back in 2011. I didn't expect to like it, but I did, just like the rest of my family. You see, I had some young leeks and a pork fillet in the fridge, and a putting those two ingredients into the search box of my Estonian recipe site yielded this recipe that I had scribbled  down from a Swedish Arla-site back in 2002 (Gryta med julens kryddor was it called). Pairing pork and leeks wasn't a problem, it was the addition of raisins and the spices (cinnamon and ginger) that worried me. However, a positive reader comment encouraged me to go ahead with it, and I'm so glad I did.

This is not a dish I'd be making for my family on a weekly basis, but it's definitely one I'd happily make every now and then - and perhaps even use for a casual weeknight entertaining during the cold months.

Pork with leeks, raisins and warming spices
(Jõuluhõnguline siga porruga ehk porru-rosinaliha)
Serves four

500 to 600 g pork tenderloin
2 leeks or a handful of young leeks
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a knob of butter
200 ml whipping cream/heavy cream (a cup minus 3 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp concentrated veal stock (I used Bong's Touch of Taste)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
4 Tbsp seedless raisins

Cut the pork tenderloin fillet into thick slices (about 2 cm each). Season with salt and pepper.
Heat some butter in a non-stick frying pan, brown the pork slices on both sides over moderate heat. Put aside.
Cut the leeks into thick slices (larger ones) or 5 cm lengths (younger ones). Add those to the pan and sauté gently.
Now add the cream, veal stock concentrate, raisins and spices to the frying pan and simmer for a few minutes.
Return the pork slices to the frying pan, cook for another 4-5 minutes until heated through.
Serve with boiled potatoes or potato mash.

New Year's Eve 2011 @ Nami-Nami

Happy New Year to all my readers! I thought to start with an overview of our New Year's Eve feast. We stayed at home and entertained friends - we were 12 adults and 7 kids and as far as I could tell, everyone had great time. We ate and drank, competed in a quiz (a New Year's Eve tradition in our house), watched some shows at the TV (incl. the President's speech), and enjoyed fireworks outside just after midnight. Here's an overview of what we ate.

The menu scribbled on our blackboard wall:


Appetizers included crostini with cream cheese and lobster tails:


Rye bread buttons with spiced sprats cream:


Home-made rye crisps with chicken liver paté and red onion marmalade:


thinly sliced pain d'epices with Estonian goat cheese and ruby pomegranate seeds:



The salad board consisted of Waldorf salad (made by our dear friends Peter & Kristel):


Beetroot and pomegranate salad with parsley and Aleppo chilli vinaigrette:


Red cabbage, orange and Beluga lentil salad with parsley vinaigrette (as all Italians know, you must have lentils at the New Year's Eve, as this brings you wealth and money in the new year :))


More substantial dishes included home-made chicken nuggets (well, there were teens among the guests) with a adjika and sour cream dip:


A wonderful hot-smoked trout from Pepe Kala, served with a simple, yet luxurious trout roe and sour cream sauce:


Our friend Liina contributed a caramelised onion and Cheddar tart:


and a wonderful pork terrine:


I had also made two different crisp breads, one with fennel seeds and the other without:



For nibbling, there was fruit, gingebread cookies and sugared almonds:


For dessert, our friends had brought along a moist pumpkin cake, a lovely pink cherry and mascarpone cheesecake.

And to finish it all off, K. and I had made a croquembouche, complete with crème patisserie and spun sugar ribbons:



Again, may your 2012 be full of delicious and tasty bites and experiences!