This cookbook features fried chicken recipes from East and South East Asia

Asian culinary powerhouse Susan Jung’s latest cookbook celebrates fried chicken across South East Asia

Susan Jung, a trained pastry chef and food columnist for Vogue Hong Kong, was in Mumbai earlier this week after the launch of her book, Kung Pao & Beyond – Fried Chicken Recipes from East and Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury) at the Jaipur Literature Festival. When we meet her at Masque Lab for the launch, jovial Jung, flaunting an Asian bob, recalls a butter chicken story from Jaipur: “I overheard two friends discussing butter chicken. One of them was complaining, ‘It has so much butter,’ to which the other replied, ‘It is called butter chicken for a reason.’ I thought to myself: I’d like that.”

Susan Jung. Pics Courtesy/Phorum Pandya

This is not her first visit to Mumbai. “I was here in the mango season last May,” she recalls. Jung has been the Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau Academy Chair for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. When Jung shared her idea with the publisher to write a book on all things fried chicken, they requested she research the topic. “There were barely a handful of books on the subject, and mostly focused on American fried chicken, which I wanted to steer clear from,” recalls Jung, who decided to hyper focus on fried chicken recipes from Southeast Asia.

In the book, most of the recipes recommend double frying chicken. “The first frying is to cook it; the second is to crisp it. I always insist that you use the type of chicken you can afford. Free-range chicken is expensive unless you grow your own. Use what you can afford and don’t be ashamed of it,” advises Jung. “The most important recipe for me is my mother’s fried chicken, which is the first recipe in the book. And it’s the first fried chicken that I learned to make. Another important recipe, which I don’t expect people will cook, as it is very complicated, is whole chicken called Nor Mai Gai. You have to tunnel bone the chicken, which means remove the bones without cutting into the skin. Stuff it with glutinous rice, steam it, let it rest, and deep-fry it. It is an old-fashioned recipe and tough to source. It’s a lost recipe that I wanted to document.”

Taiwan Market spice chicken and Kung pao chicken

Some of the surprises were from other cultures — Vietnamese as well as Filipino fried chicken. “My friends sourced passed-down recipes,” she reveals, confessing her favourite fast-food fried chicken is Jollibee from The Philippines.

Fried and tested

For the launch, chef Varun Totlani of Masque recreated a few of the recipes. As servers pass around tasting portions from the kitchen, we dig into Maggi fried chicken. A bit dry, it invokes nostalgia. We love the succulent Taiwan Market spice chicken for its savoury tang and the Kung pao chicken for its sweetness. “Using Maggi was an adaptation on Susan’s recommendation. Typically, she uses Thai instant noodles. As chefs, we take recipes as a starting point to create our version of a dish. Since it is a book launch, we stuck to following her recipes to the T,” shares Totlani. “Susan’s recipes usually call for double frying. When I told my chef who was testing them, to skip the double frying, it didn’t work. We followed her recipe, and it was juicy to perfection,” says Totlani.

Written for an international audience, the book has 60 recipes from the region, including strawberry and pineapple sweet and sour chicken, pandan chicken, lemongrass and makrut lime leaf chicken, and fried African chicken. The book introduces the reader to the Asian pantry, on how to ace a homemade coating mix, to necessary equipment. A section also touches upon how to treat the chicken in every stage of cutting, marinating, resting and cooking.

Andaz apna apna

Like Indians, she agrees learning cooking from her mum didn’t include exact measurements. “When my mother taught me how to cook it, it was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And that’s how I cook most of my food. The hardest part about writing the book was getting the right measurements. I actually had to do everything by measurement because my recipes cannot say, ‘a little bit of this and that’," admits Jung. One of our favourite tastings was the Mom’s wings, which has the punch of garlic, ginger and soy.

We were curious of her views on Chindian cuisine. “It’s fascinating. It as a cuisine on its own; like American Chinese food, which isn’t what we get in Hong Kong. British Chinese cuisine is different too. I want to be enlightened about chicken Manchurian,” she asks us, as we explain the tangy, spicy and sweet balance of this unique culinary creation.

Cost: Rs 1,399
At: Available at select online and offline bookstores

Mom’s wings

INGREDIENTS
>> 4 peeled garlic cloves
>> 4-6 thin slices of peeled ginger
>> 140 ml (generous ½ cup) soy sauce
>> 20g (4 tsp) granulated sugar
>> 75 ml (5 tbsp) water
>> 2-4 spring onions
>> A few leaves of iceberg lettuce

For coating and frying the chicken
>> 1 kg chicken wings (mid-joint) and/or drumette portions
>> 120 g potato or cornflour
>> 750 ml 3¼ cups) cooking oil

METHOD

For the sauce, thinly slice the garlic cloves and julienne the ginger, then put them in a pan with the soy sauce, sugar and water. Do not cook yet, set aside. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Dredge the wings in potato or cornflour, and shake off the excess. Lay the wings on a cooling rack placed over a tray and air-fry for 10 minutes. Pour the cooking oil into the pan, preferably a medium wok, and place over a medium heat. 

Fry the chicken at 160°C in four or five batches. Fry for 5-6 minutes, then drain on the rack placed over the tray. After frying the last batch, fry the wings again, this time at 170°C for 1.5 minutes. Turn on the heat under the pan and bring the sauce to a simmer. 

Quickly coat the hot wings in the sauce, several at a time, and lay them on a foil lined tray. After coating all the wings, use a pastry brush to brush them with any remaining sauce. Place the tray in an oven and bake for 5 minutes. While the wings are baking, mind the spring onions and cut the iceberg lettuce into shreds. Spread the shredded lettuce on a plate, add the chicken wings, then scatter with the spring onions.

Recipe courtesy: Susan Jung; extracted from Kung Pao & Beyond – Fried 
Chicken Recipes from East and Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury)

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