Lotus Wrapped Chicken aka The Lotus Chick

If you want to impress anyone then cook this. It is simple to do but requires more preparation work than the rest. Who wouldn’t like to be presented with a wrapped up gift on plate accompanied with treasures of stuffing inside a chicken plus a sweet smelling lotus leaf to excite your senses?

I will always make this when I have someone coming for dinner whom I haven’t seen for a long time. It easily serves up to 5 people when accompanied with other dishes and it is an easy way of impressing your guests visually. I guarantee you will find it worth your while.

Ingredients

1 medium whole kampong Chicken

4 dried mushrooms

1 stalk of spring onions

1 teaspoon of white pepper

1 teaspoon of salt and sugar

2 cloves of star anise

2 dried lotus leaves

A handful of lotus seeds

2/3 water chestnuts (or chestnut)

2 bulbs of Garlic and 1 medium onion

One spoonful of sesame sauce, light soya sauce, oyster sauce Chinese rice wine

1 to 2 slices of dry orange peel

3 red dates – sliced up into pieces and take out the seed

Cooking Method

Unfortunately this recipe requires a bit of preparation work beforehand !

Step 1:

Lotus leaves preparation (when you shop at the market please make sure that the seller gives you at least a nice leaf without too many holes inside else it would be hard to wrap the chicken with leakage of the yummy juices afterwards.

Put each leaf at a time into boiling water for about 2 minutes. This is to take off all the dirt and residue from the dried leaves. After that take it out and leave it to dry. The water will be yellowish and that’s normal. But you will start to smell the nice smelling lotus leaves in the air as you are taking it out from the hot boiling water.

Step 2 :

Kampong Chicken preparation. First clean the chicken and chop off the head! Rub some salt on the chicken skin all over and then wash it out to clean off any odour or grime off. Then start marinating the chicken. Put some sesame sauce, light soya sauce, oyster sauce and chinese rice wine in a small bowl and mix it up.

Rub salt on the chicken first then again with the sauce that you have mixed up. Let it rest with all the marinade in the fridge for about 2 to 3 hours.

Step 3 :

Stir frying the ingredients to stuff inside the chicken cavity. Presoak overnight lotus seed and dry chest nuts (if you want to something else I would replace it with water chest nuts chopped up roughly) and boil it for about 1 hour until soft. Soak the orange peel for about 1 hour until a bit soft same for dried mushrooms.

Add oil and when it is ready:

Minced garlic and onions in the work to stir fry then add mushrooms. Put in the soya sauce, sugar, star anise, white pepper, sesame oil, oyster sauce in and continue to stir fry for about 1 minute (always remember to taste and do a check); then add chopped chest nuts, lotus seed and orange peel. Continue to stir fry until fragrant for about another 8 minutes. Leave it to cool.

Step 4 :

Take the chicken out (room temperature) and start to stuff the stir-fried ingredients in and put a stalk of spring onion into the cavity of the chicken.

Start wrapping the chicken with the lotus leaves.

Put the wrapped chicken onto a plate and you can start steaming the chicken for about 1.5 hours. Each time to check and make sure there is enough water in the wok so that it is not dried up when steaming the chicken. Once done open the wrapped chicken and smell the aroma as you open the lotus leaves. You can tidy it up by cutting away some of the lotus leaves as you unwrap it as you wish in your presentation to the guests.

Ready to serve with some fragrant rice.

Bon appetite!