Chicken with Shiitake Mushroom.

Hellooooooo! The blog is back on! Sorry I haven't posted any Chinese New Years recipe but I had to miss out too. I unfortunately came down with the flu for the past two weeks and had been living in hell. I was so looking forward to this holiday since last year's New Year was dismissed due to the insane Chicago blizzard. I guess I'll just have to wait till next year's New Year. But, we can't sit and mope all day so the best we can do is to salvage what's left of this blog for now. I've been cooking here and there but haven't had the time to post up a new recipe since New Years. Fortunately for you (and me, since I get to eat it), I had sometime today and thought it would cheer me up from a crappy month. Yes, it has cheered me up.

This dish is one of those home cooked dishes that you can't live without. Trust me, I've tried and have failed. With just a few ingredients and some white rice, dinner is served! I personally love mushrooms and its many forms, but shiitake (or as I call them 'black') mushrooms are my favorite. They range from extremely price to dirty cheap, but you just need to learn how to pick. For Chinese markets, they're usually dried and in a sealed package with silica gel for better convenience. I've seen them fresh before, but you have to be a baller to purchase something of that sort. And this being an *economical* college student food blog, we always try to make due with what we have. These black mushrooms are wonderfully fragrant raw and especially cooked. I honestly cannot think of a better dish to cook black mushroom with other this. Oh yes, and lo mai gai (a Chinese breakfast tamale) which I might post a recipe eventually when I get the time. Please keep in mind that this dish is usually steamed, but since I don't have the utensils to steam it, I'm using an alternative cooking method of a basic hot wok. So, get ready to get your hands dirty cause this down home dish is going to make you drool.

Ingredients:
1.) 3-4 large handfuls of dried shiitake mushrooms. For this dish, you can add as much or as little mushrooms as you want, but I'm a mushroom lover so I'm going nuts over this. :D
2.) 1 hindquarter of a chicken (I also used some left over steamed chicken I had from the day before and threw it in all together so in reality, I used about 6-7 cups of chicken in total--ideally dark meat works best in this recipe)

3.) 5-6 tbsps of soy sauce (dark version can work very well with this dish)
4.) 1/2 - 1 tbsp of salt
5.) 1 tbsp of sugar
6.) 2-3 dried goji berries (optional--but this gives it a very nice sweet flavor. I never tried until Mama Zhu gave me some :D)

Directions:
1.) Place dried mushrooms in a bowl and soak with hot faucet water (the hottest water possible from your faucet; not boiling water). Soak the mushrooms until soft. You can check by pinching the centre. You want the centre to be spongy. If the centre is not spongy, still semi-hard, then change the water, and keep soaking. This should take about 10 minutes or so.

Use as much mush as you please. Soak in hot water until soft.

2.) Cut up chicken in to medium sized chunks. Keep in mind, if you're using dark meat, there is going to be bone, so you're going to need to put in a little more effort in hacking the chicken. Best to use butcher knife :D Remove any loose shards of bone.

Cut chicken (through the bone) into chunks. 

I had some left over steamed chicken that I used for this recipe.

3.) Drain the mushrooms and cut into smaller pieces. You can leave them whole, but they can be very large and/or very small and not as comfortable for the eater to masticate.

Cut mushrooms into thirds or leave them whole. Your choice. 

Best to continue soaking them after they're cut up to the point of cooking.

4.) In a hot wok, heat up a few a tbsp or two of oil. Add chicken and cook into a semi state. Add mushrooms.(If you're using already cooked chicken like I did, add it after the mushrooms.) Add goji berries if using goji berries for this recipe.

Add chicken and sear first. Cook to semi state.

Add mushrooms and in this case, cooked chicken. I had used to the coagulated  broth left from the chicken also.

5.) Add soy sauce, salt, and sugar. Add enough water to submerge about 93% of the contents in the wok. You can use chicken stock, but water works just fine in this recipe. Put a lid on the wok and bring to boil.

Add water to submerge most of the ingredients. Add soy sauce, salt, and sugar.

Cover with lid and bring to boil.

6.) Once boiling, stir contents and give a taste test. Adjust whatever is needed. Continue boiling for another three minutes.
7.) Remove from heat and serve. 

Remove from heat and serve. Best to keep the broth within the dish to keep the chicken moist

Close up of final product.

Afterthoughts: I have not had this dish in such a long time. Steaming is a better method in cooking this dish since it basically cooks the chicken in the juices while it brings out the fragrance quicker and stronger within the mushrooms without drying out the chicken. This method of cooking it in a wok works almost the same but just takes a little more effort. If anyone is interested in how the steamed version works, just leave me a request through comments. This is a very simple and filling dish. The hardest part would be cutting up the chicken with the bones in, but a little effort goes a long way since the bones within the chicken (the bone marrow) creates a nice strong chicken broth within itself. You can try this recipe with goji berries too which add a special kind of slightly heavier) sweetness  to the dish, but I generally prefer it without since this is more of a savory with a light sweetness. I hope you can enjoy this dish as much as I did.

Costs:
1.) Dried mushrooms = $5.00 for a medium sized packet; ~1/3 was used for this dish, so ~$1.70 was used
2.) Amount of chicken used = ~$4.00 worth; I used a lot of chicken in this recipe
3.) Soy sauce, sugar, salt, etc = ~$0.15
Total Costs: $5.85 for 8-9 servings