Dong'an Chicken

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg whole chicken, or 4 large bone-in chicken legs
• 2 litres light chicken stock or water
• 60 g fresh ginger
• 4 spring onions
• 2 fresh red chillies
• 4 dried red chillies
• 1 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns
• 3 tbsp clear rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 3 tbsp lard or groundnut oil
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Before you cook

• Cut 30 g of the ginger into three thick coins and bruise them with the flat of a knife.
• Peel the remaining ginger and cut it into fine matchstick slivers.
• Leave one spring onion whole and cut the other three into four-centimetre lengths.
• Halve the fresh chillies lengthways, scrape out the seeds, and slice them into fine slivers.
• Snip the dried chillies in half and shake out most of the seeds.
• Stir the cornflour into two teaspoons of cold water and set the slurry beside the hob.

Steps

1. Bring the stock to a rolling boil in a deep pan wide enough to hold the whole chicken.
2. Lower the chicken into the stock, add the bruised ginger coins and the whole spring onion, then bring it back to a bare simmer.
3. Poach the chicken for eighteen minutes, skimming off any grey foam that rises.
4. Turn off the heat and leave the chicken sitting in the hot stock for a further ten minutes.
5. Lift the chicken out onto a board and let it cool until you can handle it comfortably.
6. Pull the meat and skin off the bones and tear it into strips about the width of your finger.
7. Ladle out and reserve one hundred and fifty millilitres of the poaching stock.
8. Set a wok over the highest flame and heat it until it just begins to smoke.
9. Add the lard and swirl it around the sides of the wok.
10. Drop the heat to medium, then add the ginger slivers, fresh chilli slivers, dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns.
11. Stir the aromatics for about forty seconds, until they smell fragrant but have taken no colour.
12. Tip in the chicken strips and toss them hard for one minute so every piece is coated in the spiced fat.
13. Splash the Shaoxing wine around the hot rim of the wok.
14. Pour in the rice vinegar and the reserved stock, then scatter over the salt.
15. Let everything bubble together for two minutes so the chicken drinks up the sauce.
16. Stir the cornflour slurry and trickle it in, tossing until the sauce turns glossy and clings to the meat.
17. Throw in the spring onion lengths and toss once.
18. Take the wok off the heat, stir through the sesame oil, and serve at once with plain rice.