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What are these little green slightly translucent balls in a Chinese/Uyghur dish called dapanji or "big plate chicken".
- The picture is them cooked
- each green "ball" is about the size of a peppercorn
- They taste citrusy, almost like lemon but not spicy or numbing at all
- if you zoom in the husk/shell is kind of spotted
Here's the picture
https://imgur.com/HmabPrg Extra details I bought this dish from a Uyghur restaurant while visiting New York. This dish blew my mind and felt like discovering a new genre of food. I have to try to reverse engineer it as best I can! It was listed as chicken Laghman but given the other ingredients they used a dapanji/ big plate chicken recipe for the base.
I have looked at a few big plate chicken recipes and couldn't find an obvious match for this ingredient.
In some recipes the base broth cooks for 1hr+ and I wonder if some of the spices change appearance or flavor after that time. Brainstorming here, would either fennel seed, or Sichuan peppercorns taste and appear this way after 1hr+?
Any thoughts on what this could are welcome!!!
Example recipe
The recipe that I have seen to include most of the ingredients I could discern is copied and pasted below. Credit to
u/mthmchris for the recipe and detailed guide.
https://www.reddit.com/Cooking/comments/7bcvarecipe\_xinjiangstyle\_dapanji\_braised\_chicken\_aka/ "So we wanted to show you how to make Uighur-style of Dapanji, a.k.a. the aptly translated ‘big plate of chicken’.
The Uighurs are a Turkish ethnic group from the Xinjiang province in the far North West of China, and have a fascinatingly awesome cuisine. They've got a solid mix of Central Asian and Northwest Chinese flavors - lamb features heavily, the grill and the tandoor's used, and they have their own version of pilaf (called 'polo' or 'shouzhuafan'). But at the same time, they'll use certain Chinese ingredients and also make use of the wok. This dish is one of the most beloved in the region, and a great place to start with Xinjiang food.
Video is here. We decided to also include in a recipe for those wide kudaimian pulled noodles that’re often served with this… but if you’re not feeling ambitious you could always opt for any sort of thick dried Asian noodles instead.
Ingredients:
One whole chicken cut into pieces -or- chicken wings, ~1.5kg. So really, the ideal sort of chicken for this dish would be an Asian variety of chicken cut into pieces across the bone... and if that's convenient for you, I'd implore you to go that route. If that sort of thing would be difficult for you to get, my sub would be chicken wings. You could cleave them in half, or honestly you could probably leave them in whole as well. I've seen some Western recipe writers call for boneless breast or thigh here, but I really think that's a dramatic reinterpretation of the dish, and you'd also run the risk of dry chicken. Wings aren't too intimidating, and the essence's the same.
Potato, 800g. Cut into large chunks. You don’t want your potatoes to be too small else they’ll end up dissolving into the braise.
Xinjiang xianjiao (线椒), ~3 minced and reconstituted -or- Hungarian Sweet Paprika, 2 tbsp -or- Sichuan Pixian Doubanjiang, 2 tbsp. So Xinjiang xianjiao is what gives the Dapanji its characteristic red color… this mild chili is super red, and dyes basically anything it touches. Now, this chili’s sort of difficult to source even in China, so substitutions might obviously be necessary. To me, this chili is very similar to a paprika chili… so if you can get your hands on some dried paprika chilis (in China, hongjiao), I think that would be the most ideal sub. Similarly, if you got some quality Hungarian sweet paprika that should also be fine. In China outside of Xinjiang the most common sub is some Sichuan Pixian doubanjiang – you can go that route too, but in my opinion I think paprika would be closer to the original. We also got a real interesting lead on what these chilis might be called in English... see the note below.
White sugar, ¼ cup This will be mixed in with a half cup of oil to make a ‘tangse’, or caramel, for the initial step of frying the chicken.
Ginger (姜), ~2 inches Cut into slices, to be fried together with the chicken.
Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), ~1 tbsp. Added when frying the chicken.
Star anise (八角), ~4. Added when frying the chicken.
Cinnamon/Cassia (桂皮), 1 stick. Added when frying the chicken. Note that this, just like what you’d get a supermarket in the West, is actually Cassia bark and not the so-called “true cinnamon” from Ceylon.
Black Cardamom (草果), 2 pod. Added when frying the chicken. Slightly crushed to open.
Dried Chaotianjiao Heaven Facing Chilis (干朝天椒), ~15. A dapanji isn’t set-your-mouth-on-fire spicy, but it should have some kick. Adding in about fifteen whole dried chilis in with your braising liquid does the job nicely (no need to deseed them). If you’re outside China, dried Thai birds eye chilis should work just as well, or you could play around with Mexican chilis (anything unsmoked from the Capsicum Annum cultivar, e.g. Arbols, would likely be fine).
Dried bay leaf (香叶), 1. To be added when braising.
Leek (大葱), ½. Cut up a half a leek into strips, these’ll be added about halfway through the braise.
Garlic, 1 head. Peel a head of garlic, these’ll be added when there’s about 15 minutes left of the braise. Note that I add the garlic a bit earlier than many recipes might (most common is to see it added five minutes until it’s finished), mostly because I fucking love munching on garlic that’s been softened in a braise.
Mild chilis, 1 small red chili (红辣椒) and one small green chili (青辣椒). Cut into wedges. Neither of these chilis are very spicy, so you could also opt for one small green or red bell pepper.
Salt, 1 tbsp. To season. If you’re using doubanjiang in the place of xianjiao chilis, cut this out.
Chicken boullion powder (鸡粉), 1 tbsp. To season.
Process, Dapanji.
If using Xinjiang xianjiao chili, finely mince and reconstitute the chili. You’re aiming to get this into a super-fine mince – if you got a food processor (we don’t), I imagine that’d be a help. Once it’s fine enough for you, add in some water – we added roughly two tablespoons. Leave that aside for about thirty minutes - the chili will end up absorbing the water and forming a sort of paste.
Prep your ingredients. I’d use that time to peel and slice your ginger, peel the potato and cut into large chunks, crush the black cardamom pods, cut the leek and mild chilis into strips/biased wedges, peel the garlic… measuring everything out so that it’s good to go once you’re ready to fry.
Blanch the chicken pieces. Blanch the chicken in boiling water for three minutes or so. Because the braise isn’t going to feature much liquid, we’re not going to be able to skim the scum, blood, and impurities from the braise. The quick blanch’ll clean our chicken right up so it’s good to braise.
Make the tangse (caramel). This is a relatively common step in many Chinese braises. To make the tangse, add in a half cup of oil and a quarter cup of sugar to a wok over medium heat. The sugar will begin to melt into the oil, and after a couple minutes it’ll deepen in color to something resembling a caramel. For this stage, it’s important that you stir constantly, and know that tangse can go from zero to midnight real quick. All in all, it’s better to have an overly blonde tangse than a burnt one.
Fry the chicken pieces in with the tangse, then add in the ginger and the salt/chicken boullion. Fry the chicken with the tangse for 30 seconds or so, then add in the ginger and fry for another 30 seconds. Sprinkle with salt and chicken boullion to season – I know it seems a bit strange to season so early in a braise, but things end up getting a bit unwieldy near the end when the potatoes are nearly dissolved.
Add in the xianjiao chili, then the Sichuan peppercorns, black cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon. Add in the xianjiao chili (or some Hungarian sweet paprika, or some Pixian doubanjiang) and coat the chicken with it. Then, add in those spices and let them fry for about 45 seconds or so until it’s all just starting to smell awesome.
Add in 400 mL of water, and nestle in your potatoes, chaotianjiao heaven facing chilis, and bay leaf. Cover and let simmer on low. 400 mL of water might feel like a bit of a small amount (it won’t cover all of your ingredients), but the idea is that the ingredients are going to steam in addition to braise. Because of that, after you cover it you really don’t want to peek. This’ll end up cooking about an hour in total – we still got three ingredients to add (the leek, the garlic, and the mild fresh chilis), so we’ll mix it when we open it up to add those ingredients.
After 30 minutes, add in the leek. At this point, the braising liquid should still look ‘water-y’ and the potatoes should be mostly intact. Toss the leek into the braising liquid, give everything a mix, and cover.
15 minutes later (45 into the braise), add in the garlic. Now the braise should start to look like it’s coming together. The very edges of the potato should be starting to dissolve – if you eat a potato it’ll be roughly cooked through but not very soft. Now, I should note that I add in the garlic a bit early – when I was researching this dish, the Han Xinjiang guy at my market was insistent that the garlic be added at the very end, five minutes before finishing. I like my garlic soft and cooked through so I can munch on it though, so I add in in here.
15 minutes later (60 minutes into the braise), add in the mild fresh chilis. These will only need five minutes or so to cook.
Serve. Serve this with the kudaimian noodles below. Generally, it's best to serve them after you've already munched on the dapanji a bit so that you can get them all in that braising liquid.
Ingredients, Kudaimian Pulled Noodles:
Bread Flour -or- Dumpling Flour (高筋面粉), 250g. Basically looking for a high gluten content, we used bread flour.
Water, 125g.
Salt, ½ tsp.
Oil. To roll the noodles in before resting.
Process, Kudaimian Pulled Noodles:
Ok, now before we get into this, a quick word of warning: hand pulled noodle making is more of a skill than a recipe. If you’re new to noodle pulling, it might take a few tries to get your noodles right – by far the most common issue is noodles that’re a bit too thick, which I’ll talk about how to save in the notes below.
Disclaimer number two… we’re not the most experienced noodle pullers. Steph’s from Guangzhou (where there’s not exactly much of a tradition of this northern-style hand pulled noodle making), so it isn’t exactly something she grew up with. To give you an idea, about a third of our noodles we had to ‘save’ using the technique in the notes.
In any event, this variety of hand pulled noodles is vastly easier than lamian, so it’s a good place to start. Also, 'Biang biang' noodles are basically the same method, but are divided into smaller pieces and cut in half lengthwise with a chopstick.
Mix together the flour and salt, then slowly incorporate the water into the dough. Rest for 10 minutes. We’ve found doing this by hand is actually a bit easier than using the stand mixer. Add the water bit by bit, kneading and incorporating it into the dough. Once the dough is doesn’t stick to the bowl anymore and has been kneaded into a ball shape, it’s done. Cover with a warm, damp towel and set it aside to let the dough relax.
Cut the dough into eight even pieces, roll them into a sort of fat ‘log’ shape, coat generously with oil, and set aside for 60 minutes. Each one of these pieces is going to make one big noodle – this is like the noodle from KenM’s nightmares. Make sure the logs are coated real well with oil, cover them with plastic wrap, and set it aside for one hour. This second rest is gunna be really critical, if it doesn’t rest for an hour, you’re not really gunna be able to pull them.
Pull the noodles. As always, when I’m trying to explain what to do with dough via the written word, I sound like a convoluted doofus, so take a look at 4:49 in the video for a visual. First thing you’ll do is flatten your log by pressing it down with your palm – the flatter it gets here, the easier it’ll be to pull. Then, grab a hold of the two edges of the log and stretch it out four times. Now this is going to start to begin to look like a noodle. Then, continue to pull and smack the noodle against the table – this smacking motion’ll help the noodle thin out in the center as well. Once the noodle’s roughly as wide as your arm span, you’re finished. Just tear off and toss the little knobs of dough where your hands were pulling from.
Boil the noodle. Boil the noodles until they float. These northwestern style noodles are a bit thicker, so it might take a minute or so.
Note on how to rescue kudaimian that’re too thick:
One of the difficulties with learning hand pulled noodles is that if you screw up, you can’t just roll it back into a ball and start over – it won’t really form because of the oil.
If your noodle’s a bit too thick, use your fingers to lightly spread it horizontally, then pass it through your middle and index fingers with both hands while lightly pressing and pulling to straighten it back out – this motion is at 5:33 in the video. Again, this isn’t really impressive or correct or anything, but it’ll thin out the noodle and everyone’ll be none the wiser (unless you’re, uh… filming yourself).
Note on other Dapanji ingredients:
So a couple things that we didn’t add that you might see in a few dapanji recipes… (1) tomato paste (2) some other spices and (3) beer.
So right, Uighurs actually do use tomato paste in some dishes – the brand of tomato paste I buy here in Shenzhen is actually from Xinjiang. You could use half Xinjiang chili and half tomato paste to get that sort of red color if you like – it might be a bit more visually appealing, as our dapanji had a number of red flakes scattered about. We opted for pure chili as we were basing the recipe off of the dapanji of our favorite Xinjiang restaurant in Shenzhen, which didn’t use tomato paste.
Also, if you poke around, you’ll see that each restaurant’ll sort of has their own spice mix. We went with a basic one that was sort of a copycat of a Uighur-run Xinjiang restaurant we love in Shenzhen (plus Bay Leaf). The most commonly added ingredient that we didn’t use would probably be fennel seed… but sometimes you’ll see some places toss some more exotic stuff in too.
Lastly, many of the recipes around Xiachufang (the Chinese AllRecipes) feature a light beer as the braising liquid. Uighurs are Muslim though, so we just opted for water. Beer wouldn’t hurt though, so if you feel like it you could toss that in as well.
Note on Xianjiao Chili:
Again, please don't hesitate to sub this. I figured it'd be almost impossible for people to find abroad, except...
I was chatting with someone on YouTube and I'm now like 70% sure that this is Kashmiri Chili. They look really, really similar, have the same purpose (red color), similar heat level (~1k scoville), and if you look at a map that pathway seems like it makes a ton of sense. You should be able to find them on Amazon - at the very least, even if they aren't the same, I think it'd be a nice sub."
This is getting ridiculous I swear it didn't used to be like this. Has anyone else been experiencing the same?
Smallest was 5lbs and largest was 6.6lbs. Yum yum
Posting this for a friend: We are looking at new apartments around Eglinton Ave E (close to Kennedy) and we chanced upon an apartment at the above address. We will be booking a tour soon but in case it all goes well, I wanted to know how that area is.
Things we consider are: 1. Is it safe? Any areas we shouldn't venture at night?We liked walking around even at night and our old apartment area is safe & quiet. 2. How is the transportation going to downtown? 3. Are there places close enough for groceries and other food establishments? 4. Is it a pain to go around during winter? How's the bus frequency?
Thanks so much.