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Here is my main feature tonight: Lemon Chicken (Chinese style). Eat with lots of rice and some vegetables, of course. I love Lemon Chicken. In China, Lemon Chicken is made with a whole chicken (skin and bones). In USA, most Lemon Chicken dishes are made with boneless chicken breasts only. In most of the Chinese restaurants that I ordered this dish, either they used too much batter, or that the lemon sauce had very little lemon flavor but lot of yellow coloring. I decided to make this with only a thin crust using corn starch, egg and breadcrumbs. The lemon sauce? Very simple... just use lemonade and reduce it, mix it with some real lemon juice and some sugar. Pour on top of the shallow-fried and chopped chicken. For a step-by-step pictorial instructions on how to make this dish, click here.

#30, Lemon Chicken (檸檬雞)

Lemon Chicken (檸檬雞) I love Lemon Chicken. In China, Lemon Chicken is made with a whole chicken (skin and bones). In USA, most Lemon Chicken dishes are made with boneless chicken breasts only. In most of the Chinese restaurants that I ordered this dish, either they used too much batter, or that the lemon sauce had very little lemon flavor but lot of yellow coloring. Here is my interpretation of the Lemon Chicken dish that I like. Picture of the finished dish: Serving Suggestion: 2 to 3 Preparations: Main ingredients: (From top left, clockwise) 1 1/2 cup of lemonade, 2 chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 lb), 1 lemon, some breadcrumbs. (Not shown: 1 egg) For each chicken breast, use the food mallet to pound slightly on the breast to flatten it. Trim off the fat. Cut each breast into about 4 pieces. Set them aside. Sprinkle a pinch of salt on the chicken breasts. (Suggest: 1 tsp total for 2 breasts). Optionally, you may sprinkle some fresh ground pepper on the chicken breast as well. Cut the lemon in half. Save 2 small slices for garnishing. Prepare to coat the chicken breast before frying: Pour about 6 to 7 tblsp of corn starch on a swallow dish. Break one egg into a small bowl and scramble it. Pour about 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs onto a flat dish. Cooking Instructions: Use a small pot, add 1 1/2 cup of lemonade. Set stove at high. Squeeze the juice from the fresh lemon into the pot (strain off the seeds). Add 5 to 6 tsp of sugar. Bring the lemonade to a boil and continue to boil until the liquid has rougly reduced in half. On a second stove: Use a wok/pan, set stove at medium high, add a generous 7 to 8 tblsp of cooking oil. Heat the oil to frying temperature. For each piece of chicken breast patty, first dust it with some corn starch. Try to cover the chicken meat the best you can. Then coat the chicken breast with some eggs. Finally, coat the chicken breast with some breadcrumbs. Try to make sure the entire piece is covered on both sides. Lay the chicken breast flat on the frying pan. Shallow-fry the breast until the crust turns golden brown. About 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Fry multiple pieces at a time. When both sides have turned golden brown, remove from pan and lay on top of a paper towel to absorb the excess oil. Continue with another batch of chicken breast patties. Cut each piece of chicken breast patty into bite-size. Assemble the cut chicken breast patties on the dinner plate. After the lemonade has reduced in half, use corn starch slurry (suggest: about 3 tsp of corn starch with 3 tsp of water. Adjust as necessary.) to thicken the sauce to the right consistency. Pour the lemon sauce onto the chicken. Add a piece of lemon slice as garnish. Finished. (Note: The quantity of food made in this recipe is about twice the portion shown in this picture.)

Nobody is born knowing how to cook. Can start with a simple dish like this one. Then you can make it for your mom on her birthday to surprise her!

For those who had attempted Begger's Chicken at home: what did you use as "clay" to wrap up the lotus leaf?

Sorry I came to this little digression topic late. I just read it. I agree that most eateries in Hong Kong charges an automatic 10% gratuity. And this practice, I think, is following the Brits (most likely) or Europeans in general. In Mainland China it's a different story. I used to work as a waiter 20+ years ago in about 10 different Chinese restaurants in San Diego, CA. Of all restaurants that I worked at, never one would the tip go to the owner. Sometimes you may see as if the tip tray goes to the owner's counter in the front. But usually it goes into a jar, which shortly before the restaurant closes, would be tallied up. There were 2 schools of systems: the communists (tips divided equally among all) and the capitalists (tips kept by individual waiters, not shared). It's up to the restaurant owner which system to adopt. There are avantages and disadvantages of each. The bigger the restaurant, the more likely that they are dividing the tips because it's virtually impossible for one person to wait on several tables and maintain the level of service required. Remember in Chinese restaurants the owners demand the waiter to bring the food, once cooked, immediately from the kitchen to the table - unlike those American restaurants where they leave the food under the flood light to keep warm and wait for every dish at the same table to be ready before bringing them out at once. In a more sophiscated (large) Chinese restaurants where there are higher/lower ranking staff above/below waiters, i.e. captains and managers; bus boys and ladies whose sole job it is to bring cooked dishes from the kitchen to the table, they divide up the tips according to job grades. It goes something like: waiters get 1 share, bus boys get 1/2 share, dish ladies get 1/4 share (maybe), captains get 1 1/2 shares (or more) and managers get 2 shares (or more). Many Chinese waiters do depend on the tips as a good part of their income. Why? Because the owners almost never pay them even minimum wage. The owners have already factored in the tips as a compensation! In some really busy eateries, the waiters may even forgo the wage all together for the chance of working for tips alone.

Yes - but think of it as more of a light peanut sauce - in the same vein that they serve with 'bang bang' chicken or 'strange flavoured' chicken. ← By any chance you were describing the diluted sesame paste? Sesame paste is commonly used as condiment for cheung fun, and is used to make "bang bang" chicken and "strange flavored" chicken.

Re: Chinese (Cantonese) banquet meals Yes they basically follow the same format and serving dishes from the same categories, and never too far off. Usually there are only a few items that set one package apart from others: 1) Appetizer: The most expensive ones use a whole roasted suckling pig. Less expensive: some pieces of suckling pig and other things such as jelly fish, beef shank, pork leg, etc.. 2) The soup: shark fin typically. And there are different classes of shark fin. Some soup has more fin than the other. The price can vary a lot depending on the host's choice. 3) Whether there is abalone on the menu. The most expensive ones, of course, use whole abalone. Others use slices. 4) The fish: different classes of fish, different price range. The rest would be about the same... scallops, shrimp, crab, fried chicken or squab, fried rice versus noodles, etc.. Re: Fish The word Fish in Cantonese and Mandarin has the same pronounciation as the word Extra. (Yu). "Yau Yu" - means having a fish, has the same pronounciation of "Yau Yu" as in having extras. Those fish is a good symbolic dish in Chinese banquets. Re: Ying Yang Fried Rice Ying Yang, in Cantonese, is the term for a pair of wild ducks: one male, one female, or in general refer to lovers. In general, we use this term "Ying Yang" to describe a pair of something. Ying Yang Fried Rice, indeed, is very appropriate for wedding banquets.

The soup is a very important part of a good bowl of wonton noodles. I heard that to make the good, Hong Kong style wonton soup, they put: - Pork bones - Shrimp shells (which makes sense... what are you going to do with the shells when the shrimp meat goes into the wonton filling?) - Dried fish (Dai Da Yu), best yet grill the dry fish first (this I have not tried... maybe that's what makes the illusive, characteristic taste of the Hong Kong wonton soup?) - MSG The after-effect of MSG... thirstiness... and the taste lingers on your tongue all day long. Price to pay, huh?

Sorry. I thought that bowl was congee, but reading it again I realized that it is chicken soup. Still... we can have one whole peking duck in Sacramento for US$16.00 (some places may charge up to US$25.00).

Yeah, my father's 3-leg dish lifter must have last over 10 years at least. Simple, ugly, but does the job. My father only owned one cleaver for all of his life. He used it for any kind of cutting/chopping. I look at my brother-in-law. He owns a set of many different knives held on a nice wooden block. Whenever he cuts something different, he needs pick a different knief. Aiya! Nowadays I see shops like Sur La Table carry so many kitchen gadgets... most of which are designed for one single purpose! ($$$ for the manufacturers, and the kitchen furniture builders) We Chinese do with the minimal. (e.g. do we really need an "egg beater" when we can use our chopsticks? Persuade my aunt! )

(1) It is true. (2) The explanation is very simple: salt increases the boiling temperature of water. If you see that 3-leg gadget to pick steaming dish out of the rice cooker or steamer, BUY IT! It's worth the money. No other method can come close to its effectiveness and simple design. I use a pair of wire tongs at home - just grib on to the side of the steaming dish real tight and gingerly take the dish out, and hold another big flat plate with the other hand... immediately slide the big flat plate under the steaming dish to carry it as soon as it clears the top of the steamer.

Oh, in that case, no... hairy melon is very mild and slightly sweet. No bitterness at all.

Hmmmm.... I haven't seen this dish offered in restaurants. (Maybe it's too simplistic that nobody wants to pay for it...) You just might need to make it yourself.

Those mung bean threads are quite generic. The brand that I usually buy is called "Lung Hou" [Cantonese], or Dragon Mouth (龍口粉絲)

That is indeed a very pricey meal, considering one of five items is congee, and the other one a bowl of noodle. It is really hard for people who live in China to imagine. I mean... you can have a bowl of congee or Dan Dan noodle anywhere for a few YMB, which would be something like US $0.50. That must be part of why most things are "made in China" these days... Let me assume that these 2 items (congee and noodle) were C$10.00 each, that leaves C$80.00 to divide by the other 3 dishes. Around C$25.00 each? That seems quite high. (Considering your wonton noodle is C$5.00 a bowl...) Was there other services we didn't know about while you were eating? Like a foot massage or something? I remember Ling recently had the 8-course banquet dinner, including one whole abalone for each person, at C$60.00 per head...

Do they really serve tea with the pot sitting on top of a small sterno stove? That is so cool! But as we get less water in the pot, I am afraid that the tea will get very strong. You should have seen some of the restaurants in Hong Kong... the waiter holds the hot water pot with long neck and shoot up steaming hot water onto the small teapot over a 1 to 2 feet distance. What a scene!

I had Beggar's Chicken in Hong Kong "House of Beijing" once (Tsim Sha Tsui East). When served, they roll the big blob of clay on a cart up to the guest of honor at the table (my colleagues just pointed their fingers at me as the ad-hoc GOO ). I had the pleasure of using the mallet they provided to break the clay. That darn thing only cracked slightly! Oh well, it's just a symbolic gesture. The waitstaff took care of the rest... which is a lot of work, more so than slicing Peking Duck. They needed to break free the clay, unwrap the lotus leave, carve the chicken, then divide up the chicken pieces along with the fillings evenly among the guests. I could see the waiter uttering a few !@#$%^%^ words after the work. The chicken was tasty, as I remember. But not as tasty as other styles of chicken. I got the impression that this dish is good only for the form.

Sorry about the time-warp. I did not know about this wonderful thread on Chinese food in the Vancouver forum until recently. Thanks for the invitation Lee. It's very nice to see your reviews, pictures and all the humors in this thread. I am only on page 3 so far. Slow reader. I have been to a dim sum restaurant in Mountainview, CA where they offer a sample lunch plate. Exactly one of each: har gow, siu mai, beef ball, cheung fun, daikon cake, etc.. (about 8 to 9 varieties). That's a concept too! The perfect "Dim Sum for one". Did they really offer peanut butter as a dip for "zha leung"? First time I have heard of this.

Hmmmm.... I don't even consider winter melon as bitter. When you eat bitter melon, that's bitter.

Milpitas Square is what they call that shopping mall on Barber Lane. Now they open Milpitas Square II just right next to it. I have only been to a few of the shops/restaurants because I only pass by once every 6 months or so. I have compared the Chinese versus Vietnamese bakeries in Sacramento. They (Vietnamese bakeries) make wonderful French breads. But they seem to lack the varieties that I am used to with Hong Kong style bakeries. You who live in Vancouver are really in Asian food heaven. I envy you.

I hope it makes you want to make it again.

pcbilly: Thank you for the education on Chinese wine. Quite enlightening. I have to say that I am not a fan of Hua Diao (花雕) for drinking. For cooking and drunken chicken, they are great. My favorite Chinese wine for drinking would be: 茅台 玫瑰露 竹葉青

Nice dinner, TP! Did you have all these food to yourself? I was expecting a Malaysian-Chinese lobster feast... this is very nice too. Malaysian-European style? The escargot is my favorite.

That indeed looks very nice. I have never countered something like that. I have been to Kee Wah Bakery (the Hong Kong brandname) in Milpitas and Monterey Park, who I think is the best Chinese bakery in California. They only do the classic stuff and not as creative as yours. I have been to some Taiwanese bakery shops both in the bay area and Los Angeles and they all disappointed me.