Orange Chicken

Orange Chicken

Welcome to my third blog post! Last time, I made Gising-Gising, an original Filipino dish that makes use of ingredients that are native to the Philippines. Today, I'm going to share to you how to make Orange Chicken. Even though Orange Chicken is a Chinese dish, it has long been served in restaurants in the Philippines. I chose to do Orange Chicken for this blog post to show the diversity of the Filipino cuisine. It showcases the Filipino ability of recreating a dish and adding a Filipino twist to it that is as equally tasty as the original dish.

Let's start cooking!

Ingredients:


Orange Chicken Sauce

• 3/4 cups water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice concentrate
• 2 tablespoons banana catsup
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch diluted in 1 tablespoon water 

Chicken

• 250 grams chicken breast fillet
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 cup cold water with 4 pieces ice cubes
• 1 cup flour
• 3 cups cooking oil

Procedure:
1. Prepare Orange Chicken sauce by combining water, orange juice concentrate, banana catsup and brown sugar in a saucepan.
2. Bring to a boil, then thicken with cornstarch mixture. Set aside.
3. Cut chicken into 1" strips and roughly score each piece. Season the chicken with fish sauce.
4. Dip chicken in ice water and flour. Repeat twice.
5. Heat cooking oil in a deep-frying pan, then deep-fry chicken. Set aside.
6. Toss fried chicken into the Orange Chicken sauce, until evenly coated.

(Ozaeta 71)

The procedure wasn't that hard to follow. Though, I had a hard time making the sauce thicker. I had to deviate from what was instructed in the cookbook. I added more cornstarch to increase its viscosity. In the cookbook, it describes the Orange Chicken as: "A variation of the Chinese Lemon Chicken, this dish has become a family favorite with its sweet yet tart bite that coats each crispy bite of chicken" (Ozaeta 71).The sauce and the chicken are equally important to the whole dish, which means I had to make sure that both components are cooked perfectly. The chicken needs to be crispy and the sauce has to have just the right flavor or blend, or what we, Filipinos refer to as "tamang timpla." Through Ozaeta's words, it made me realize that in cooking, you have to pay attention to all of the aspects of the dish, making sure that both the sauce and the chicken are given an equal amount of attention.

My Orange Chicken was unexpectedly delicious. The sweetness and sourness of the sauce were properly balanced. It complemented the chicken very well. The chicken was crispy and chewy too, except that I overcooked it slightly. This cooking experience showed me that there would be times in cooking wherein every thing won't go as it is written on the cookbook. There are times where you need to rely on your instincts, disregarding what is on the instructions.  How about you? Have you ever experience a time wherein you didn't follow a cooking instruction because it didn't seem right?

Works Cited:

Fontanilla, Marilen, and Anne Marie Ozaeta, eds. Timpla. First Edition ed. Makati City: Hinge Inquirer Publications, 2010. Print.