Lost & Found: Star Anise Chicken with Pickled Ginger Red Cabbage

This dish is probably one of my top ten favourite dishes, yet this is the first time I have 
made it. It's something that my Mum has made since she found it in a Delicious Magazine way back in 2008. Being the fantastic cook that she is, she now makes it from memory and I always ask, nay, plead for her to make it when I am visiting her in Orange. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't. When she doesn't, I then go through the process of pulling out the 50 billion Delicious Magazines that she has carefully stacked in the bookshelf in chronological order to try to find it so I can make it. Before you say anything; no, I can't find it online and yes, I forget which one it is in, every time. 

When I eventually do find it, I then go through the process of scanning, printing it out and emailing myself a copy so that I can then give it a burl when I get back to Sydney. 

Then, by sad twist of fate (or the culinary gods playing a cruel trick on me) I would lose both forms of recipe. I like to think that I just wasn't ready to make it and it was best just to wait until Mum served it up to me when I visited...hopefully.

'Til one day I was scratching around in my cookbook collection and a photocopy of the recipe fell out! It was time. If I didn't make this now, who knew when I would be able to make it again! This recipe is a slippery little sucker.

The cabbage is best to make a day or two before you plan on eating it - I made it a day ahead and it is honestly best when combined with the richly braised chicken. When you hear a chef on TV say that the flavour of something "cuts through" the flavour of something else - this is a perfect example of that. The chicken on its own is beautiful, but  rich, especially when you reduce a little of the braising liquid* to use as a glaze. Here is where the cabbage comes in to play; slicing through the air like a samurai sword to cut elegantly through the richness. In a blatant contradiction to what I have just said however, the cabbage is sensational on its own (it is actually a little addictive).

So when I found this recipe I knew it was my fate to cut the apron strings and make this myself. I might even make it for Mum when I am next visiting. 

Star Anise Chicken with Pickled Ginger Red Cabbage
Via Belinda Jeffrey's recipe in Delicious Magazine, February 2008
For the chicken
1 cup kecap manis
1 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 star anise
2 tbs Chinese rice wine
2 garlic cloves - crushed with back of knife
2-3cm piece of ginger-thickly sliced
8 chicken thigh cutlets-skin on
Water-cress or any fresh greens to serve
Preheat the oven to 180C. Put kecap manis, soy, sugar, star anise, ginger, garlic, rice wine into a heavy bottomed pot with a cup of water. 
Bring to a boil over a high heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the chicken, skin-side down and then bring the pot back to the boil. 
Once boiling, put a lid on the pot and put in the oven for 1/2 hour or until the chicken is cooked through.
Remove from oven and set aside to cool for about 20 minutes, then transfer chicken to a plate. 
Put about a cup of the braising liquid into a small saucepan and reduce over a high heat until you have a syrupy glaze. Brush this over the skin of the chicken before serving.


For the pickled ginger red cabbage 
- start this a couple of days before if possible
3 tsp salt
1/2 red cabbage- finely shredded
1 cup rice vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 tsp grated ginger
1 small red chilli or 1/2 tsp chilli powder
In a large colander over a large bowl, put the cabbage and toss through the salt. Weigh the cabbage down with a plate and a couple of cans sitting on top. Leave for 3 hours.
Whisk up the vinegar, sugar, ginger and chilli until the sugar has dissolved. Add the drained cabbage and toss to combine.
Store in the fridge for at least 8 hours, turning occasionally. Put the cabbage into an airtight container (preferably glass) and press down so that the cabbage sits below the liquid. Place plastic wrap on to the liquid and seal tightly with the lid. Keeps in fridge for weeks.
Serve the chicken with the cabbage and cress. Enjoy.


* Note for braising liquid.
Strain the liquid through a sieve into an airtight container and stored in the fridge. As long as you boil it up every few weeks to kill any bacteria and top it up using the above ingredients, you will have a super duper braising liquid to use for all manner of things.