Mango Chicken

Tuesday 26 June

Back when Holt's parents lived in Ontario, we used to go out to dinner to Toronto's Chinatown in a big family group - even there where they love big families, ten adults and eight children is quite a group. All the dishes got passed around, and since it's sweet and not too spicy, everyone loved mango chicken so much that we needed several orders of it. So far as we've seen, it hasn't caught on as much in the States - but when mangoes were on sale at Findlay Market, we got a couple and tried our hand at it.

The best way to cut up a mango is the one we saw on an episode of Poirot. Cut around the circumference of the mango down to the stone. Then, run a thin soupspoon around the stone. The curved inner surface of the spoon follows the curved outer surface of the stone. Cut all the way around and you'll have a perfect mango half. Do the same with the other half (but this'll be a tad drippier). Then cut deep criss-crosses on each half and turn it inside out. It'll look like a Japanese squeeze toy hedgehog. You can now flatten your hedge-hog and cut right along the skin line. This works better than any other method I've seen.
(Here are some links including a video. They use the hedgehog trick but not the spoon trick:
http://www.wildoats.com/u/department173/
http://lifehacker.com/software/cooking/how-to-cut-a-mango-185005.php
One guy here knows the spoon trick:
http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2005/10/31/so-how-do-you-cut-up-a-mango/)


Now, get your Chinese-style mise-en-place. In a bowl, mix a teaspoon of soy sauce with a teaspoon of Shao Xing wine and a grind of white pepper, then add two deboned and cut-up chicken breasts. Let them marinate while you do all the following other stuff. In a cup, mix up a sauce out of a teaspoon of cider vinegar, a teaspoon of ketchup (yes, ketchup, it's traditional), and a teaspoon of brown sugar, to make it sweet-and-sour. Slice up a mild onion or so, and if you've got it, a red or green bell pepper. For spice, chop up a clove of garlic and a tablespoon of ginger, and break off the radial pieces of a whole star anise (without the stem) and crush them a bit with the side of a knife. And of course, have your mango standing by.

Once all that's done, you get your wok hot, add some oil, and stir-fry the onions first for a minute or two with a pinch of salt. Then stir in garlic and ginger, then the peppers, if any. Set aside the vegetables when they're done to your liking, and reheat the wok with more oil. In this, stir-fry the anise for a few seconds, then the chicken until it's opaque. Then put the sauce in a crater in the center and stir it, making sure it cooks enough to melt the sugar and brown the ketchup. At last, throw the vegetables back in to reheat, and add the mango, stirring gently so it doesn't break up too much. Eat it hot, with alacrity.