Gigi (see link on the right) asked for the recipe for Poulet au Citron – the only recipe that the New Husband has as yet mastered. We shall therefore assume that you can prepare and serve this without absolutely no knowledge of cooking whatsoever. Don’t expect photos as 1) during the preparation the kitchen takes on Hiroshima proportions and 2) I am not that sad to take photos of the completed dish before eating it! The recipe is originally in French so I have vaguely translated it so if there are funny words use your imagination. It is easy, cheap and seems to be idiot-proof. It will take 30 minutes and is enough for 4 people.
You need
700 g chicken breasts (I bought organic)
1 bit of fresh ginger (1cm or 2cm)
2 shallots
2 lemons preferably organic
20cl of oil
3 soup spoons honey (acacia is best as fairly neutral in taste)
3 soup spoons rice wine (we left this out as we didn’t have any)
3 soup spoons of soy sauce
5 cl chicken stock
Salt
Coriander leaves (chopped)
Rice to accompany – the cooking of which I will leave to your imagination …
How to go about it
Cut up chicken breasts into 3cm squares, dry them on kitchen roll so they don’t spit at you during cooking. Peel ginger and cut into thin strips. Peel shallots and dice finely.
Wash your lemons in hot water and dry. Peel one of them finely leaving behind the white inside which is too bitter. Cut into very fine strips. Juice the two lemons.
Heat up oil in wok or a pan – when hot fry the chicken for about 3 minutes until golden – take it out of pan and put on kitchen roll to absorb excess fat.
Empty pan of fat, just leaving 3 soup spoons of fat; quickly fry up ginger, shallots and lemon rind in the oil. Add honey and leave it to melt, then add lemon juice, rice wine, soy sauce and stock.
Let this bubble away quietly until it starts to thicken slightly. Then add chicken, salt to taste and at the last minute the chopped coriander.
In the meantime you have cooked the rice – just put all this together on a plate and serve.
As easy as that!
4 responses so far ↓
Bill Taylor // March 20, 2009 at 2:58 PM
I have what may be a really stupid question — I know it’s called Poulet au Citron but how would it work without the lemon? I find that lemon often overwhelms the other flavours in a dish and that ruins it for me.
Gigi // March 20, 2009 at 4:06 PM
Brilliant! Thanks, Louise…I’m rushing off to buy the ingredients right now…:-)
dragondays // March 20, 2009 at 4:30 PM
If you don’t like lemon – or at least not too much – perhaps it would be better without the rind which is quite strong. However I would use the juice. But this is not my recipe!
Bill Taylor // March 21, 2009 at 1:43 PM
Yeah, that could work. Thank you! I shall give it a try. That’ll surprise Lesley.