Shanghai Style Appetisers, Soy Fish & Drunken Chicken

When we were watching Masterchef a couple of weeks ago and Alvin did his version of drunken chicken, hubby turned around and said to me, I haven't had drunken chicken for a long time now....

That's probably true considering I don't usually cook Shanghai style food. Most of my Chinese cooking skills were obtained from Cantonese home cooks and chefs, and very rarely I do mum's style of cooking. Whenever I cook Shanghai style food, mum always tells me, ah, you've done it wrong again, it's not Cantonese style!

Alvin's drunken chicken was done in 1 hour and half - Masterchef challenges were never long enough for you to even blink. I'm not sure if the Shanghai Style flew over to Malaysia, but this is the drunken chicken I grew up with...

Drunken chicken and the Soy Fish that I did a couple of weeks ago, are strictly appetisers and are served as cold dishes in Shanghai style restaurants all over Melbourne... Something not pretentious at all... and not fancy at all.

First of all, the white cooked chicken, poached chicken.

I used a size 10 young chicken from the poultry shop, and the broth is just ginger and salt, nothing else.

Chicken was placed in the pot with water just cover for 15 minutes and then taken out and soaked in icy cold water (this is the process to get gelatine in the skin).

Scoop the oil of the broth away, and place the temporarily cooled down chicken back to the pot, simmer in medium heat for 10 minutes and turn and simmer for another 10 minutes. Take out to put on rack.




Rub in salt whilst still hot, and put salt (I doubt you can rub this time) in the bird's tummy. Quickly put it in the fridge, no covering is needed.
Once cooled in fridge, cut chicken in 4 quarters (you don't really need to cut if you have big enough close lid container and enough Shaoxin!) and stack in a container neatly and tightly...
and Pour in Shaoxin, to almost cover the chicken, this time I used 1 1/4 bottle of wine, lucky shaoxin is relatively cheap! There are other Chinese cooking wine, but Shaoxin is from the similar region to this dish.

Cover lid and put the chicken back into the fridge for at least 24 hours....
Cut in portion and eat. The meat should be pretty tight, and really gets the wine flavour.... Mum's strict instruction is for drunken chicken, nothing else is needed. But if you really insist, you could add a couple of szichuang pepper corns? ah... I'm polluting the Shanghai food again...
Usually the Soy Fish will also be offerred as a side dish or cold dish.... and usually a fresh water fish is to be used for this one. Because it's not the main course, normally a cheaper fish is used and my fish monger told me Shanghais usually buy a carp... By the time I got the carp home, mum was shaking her heads - it can be used, but not as good as the mullets (or maybe another river fish, I get confused... next time, I will shop with mum)
But anyway, we have to work with the carp this time. Fish is to be cleaned and dried - mum prepared the fish whilst I was at work, because it takes a while to dry the fish, and she used some paper towel to soak up the fish fluid...
Then we prepared the soaking sauce. The sauce contains: dark soy, shaoxin wine, star anise, cinnemon stick, ginger and pepper corn, and was carefully boiled to get the flavour out.

We prepared the oil in the wok for frying the fish - it's deep frying but strictly fish only, no batter. Fish was to be taken out straight away when ready and soak into the soy marinating sauce - that's the only way it will soak up flavour... How to tell the fish is ready, the bones are fried to crisp....

After that, we usually let the fish soak in sauce until we are ready to serve it, best leave them in the sauce over night.