On our visit to Beijing, we encountered a dish that we loved. It was called "ugly fish"……. a day later we went to a restaurant that served something very similar, the specialty was called "Wushan Fish"….. it is the stuff of later posts, but I'll give you a preview of the "Ugly Fish":
It is kinda ugly, eh??? But this was among the five best dishes we had during our visit to China, which we'll cover in a future post. My thing was to make this on a weeknight…. and I chose boneless chicken legs as my subject. So this is my first attempt at "Ugly Chicken".
I'll admit that I didn't reach the pinnacle of ugliness….. but even grilling with charcoal, I finished everything within an hour which is what I think weeknight grilling is all about.
So in sequence, this is the blow by blow……I marinated some boneless (but still with skin) chicken legs with a tablespoon of sweet bean paste, some shaosing wine, and two tablespoons of premium soy sauce. I went and got some hardwood charcoal started in my chimney starter…..
And when things got hot enough, I mixed a blend of sea salt, a tablespoon of white sugar, cumin powder, I ground some Sichuan Peppercorn from Sichuan (roasted from from my "stash"), and ground chili, and set out to make the ugliest chicken I could find…….
What came out was some major "Ma – La" (numbing hot) stuff……
Those toasted Sichuan Peppercorns from Chengdu numbed me from my nasion to my chin! Man those peppercorns are really top-notch!
It tasted fantastic with rice……
It was pretty darn good……. which reinforces my belief that you can grill up some pretty good stuff on weeknights…….