RCP: Chinese Lemon Chicken

Back in the 1970s, several times a year my mother's garden club chartered a bus and drove to Manhattan to take in a Broadway show. They always ate lunch at Pearl's, an upscale Chinese restaurant. My mother raved about how good the lemon chicken was. When my two best friends from high school were interviewing at Columbia Medical School, I accompanied them. We ate lunch at Pearl's and I of course ordered the lemon chicken, which was heavenly. This was also the first time I saw someone eating moo shu pork. I said to one of my friends, "don't look now, but that lady over there is eating her napkin".

My dad subscribed to the Sunday New York Times, and a recipe for lemon chicken was published on the food pages one weekend in early 1976. The dish comes out as a dead ringer for what we enjoyed at Pearl's. That spring I remained on campus between end of term and graduation, and I called my dad and told him to make sure he saved that recipe. It turned out he had already thrown out all the old newspapers. I had to move into a new dorm while the students there were moving out. Someone left a huge pile of Sunday New York Times outside their door. I looked through the pile and found the recipe! It has since become one of my favorites. Here it is.

Chinese Lemon Chicken (Ning Mon Gai)

chicken
2 whole boneless, skinless chicken breasts (IMPORTANT: see note below)
1 tsp salt
1 TBS light soy sauce [see here about soy sauce]

batter
1/2 cup flour
2 TBS cornstarch
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

sauce
1 TBS cornstarch
1 cup chicken stock
3 TBS white sugar
1 scallion, cut into 2-inch lengths
2 lemons, thinly sliced

4-5 lettuce leaves, in 1/4-inch slices
2 cups oil for deep-frying

[1] Separate the two breast halves if necessary, and remove the tendon if present. Marinate in the soy sauce and salt about 15 minutes.

[2] Blend 1 TBS cornstarch with 6 TBS of the stock to form a paste. Mix in the remaining stock and the sugar. Set aside.

[3] Mix the batter using a wire whisk. Set aside.

[4] Heat the 2 cups of frying oil in a wok or deep fryer to 365 degrees F.

[5] Beat 1 TBS of the frying oil into the batter, then coat the chicken pieces in the batter. Deep-fry them two at a time for 6 minutes or until golden brown. Drain, then keep them warm in a 250-300 degree F oven.

[6] Put 2 TBS of the frying oil in a small saucepan and heat to 200-250 degrees F. Stir-fry the scallions 1 minute.

[7] Add the lemon slices. Stir-fry 30 seconds.

[8] Add the sauce mixture and stir until it thickens and forms a glaze.

[9] Cut the chicken into 3/4-inch by 2-inch pieces. Form a bed of lettuce shreds on a serving platter and arrange the chicken on the lettuce. Pour the sauce through a sieve over all and serve.

NOTE

Back in 1976 when this recipe was published, if you wanted a boneless skinless chicken breast you had to buy a whole frying chicken, then bone and skin the breasts yourself. These days boneless, skinless chicken breasts are readily available separately, but they come from the humongous "oven-stuffer roaster"-type birds and are about twice the size of what this recipe expects. If this is the type of meat you have, then use only one whole breast and slice it in two so that it's only half as thick. If you try to fry the big breasts whole, they won't cook all the way through.

-Paul W.

I'm going to eventually try all your recipes.

Paul, that looks great.

And you've reminded me: The first time I ever understood that what you get from a recipe is influenced by how the recipe is written. I think it was early 1990s, I was waiting for a haircut and flipping carelessly through the assorted magazines. I picked up a copy of Esquire, a men's magazine, and read the cooking column. It contained a recipe for lemon chicken; as I recall, a very lemony Lemon Chicken. But the writing style was short, forceful, blunt, imperative sentences. It made the dish very real. Even when the recipe was not going to tell you what to do, it told you what to do, e.g., "Take the skin off, skin is fattening. Leave the skin on, skin tastes good."

It's probably my academic background in biochemistry, but I'm always a bit irritated by recipes that are vague and imprecise. "Salt and pepper to taste" is, IMO, one of the worst offenders. How am I supposed to know the proper amount if I've never tasted--let alone made--the dish before? Why not say "1/2 tsp, or to taste" and give your recipe's audience a guidepost? And then there are the recipes that assume the reader has background knowledge of a specific cooking technique. I've had a real problem with this when dealing with, for example, recipes written by Indian cooks for other Indian cooks. It's all too easy when writing a recipe to assume the reader shares your cultural culinary background. And it's why I found books such as Chef Carey's Chef on Fire and Julia Child's The Way To Cook so valuable. They teach the culinary background techniques and provide the context for understanding recipes.

-Paul W.

Agreed, Paul. As a fan of History, I always marvel at medieval cookbooks as they give you only the vaguest idea even what the ingredients are, never mind how much or what to do with them exactly. I recently found a fun little YouTube channel, Tasting History, that picks a topic and a recipe -- from Ancient Rome, the 1400s, the 1920s, etc. -- to describe the setting in which the food occurred and then attempts to parse the recipe. The host, Max Miller, is neither a historian nor a chef, but he's engaging (and the videos are 15 minutes or less). For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYBccRqsv6M

[Jenise]

It's probably my academic background in biochemistry, but I'm always a bit irritated by recipes that are vague and imprecise. "Salt and pepper to taste" is, IMO, one of the worst offenders.

-Paul W.

That phrase irritates me to pieces but not for the reason it bothers you. I'm fine with people deciding how much salt makes sense--you should taste what you're cooking as you're cooking it, but I'm bothered by the idea that pepper is just as automatic. Salt is necessary for flavor unless you're medically unable to consume it, pepper is not. It doesn't belong in all food.

I'm sure you find my recipes very vague. I'm aware they are--I presume people can cook. I don't write for people who can't.