Jiangnan · Starter
Zui Ji
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite.
Ingredients
- 1 free range chicken, about 1.3 kg
- 25 g salt, for the bird
- 40 g ginger, sliced
- 3 spring onions, knotted
- 2 L water
- 500 ml Shaoxing huadiao wine
- 40 g salt, for the brine
- 20 g rock sugar
- 20 g goji berries
The skills inside
Brining & curingThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilBlanching & shockingKeeping the cooking liquid
The words inside
Berries: The Late-Spring Sprint
Allergen screen
Found: alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the bird inside and out with the 25 g of salt and leave it uncovered in the fridge for 4 hours, until the skin feels dry and tacky rather than wet. 240 min
- Slide it into water held at 85C (185F) with the ginger and spring onion, keep it there 25 minutes, then kill the heat and steep 25 more, until juice from the thigh joint runs clear and the meat at the bone is just set. 25 min
- Plunge the bird into iced water for 10 minutes until the skin is taut and slippery, then joint it into large pieces, bone in. 10 min
- Cool 500 ml of the poaching liquid to fridge cold, stir in the wine, brine salt, rock sugar and goji, and taste it: it should read a shade too salty on its own.
- Submerge the pieces, weight them under the surface and refrigerate 24 hours at least; serve cold with the set jelly spooned over. 600 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir or Gamay
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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