Our neighbor Sam, who is from Singapore, sometimes brings us herbs from her garden. A few days ago she brought us a bunch of leaves called Screwpine leaves.
Along with the bunch of leaves, she left us a note about the different ways you can use these in cooking: as a rice or dessert flavoring, as food coloring, or to wrap chicken in.I decided to try wrapping chicken, so I looked up a few different recipes and made a sort of amalgamation of all of the different elements that I thought looked good: soy sauce, sugar, oyster sauce, fish sauce, garlic, sesame oil and a lot of coconut milk. I marinated the chicken for an hour, then went through the tedious process of wrapping about 30 bundles and securing them with toothpicks.
Next was the part that I HATED. I had only enough oil to do a medium deep fry. The wrapped pieces leave little pockets of liquid that explode when they hit the oil. Or they lie dormant, waiting for you to walk by to check the doneness, then BAM, they splash all over your arm.
But according to my wife, all of the work and oil splashes were worth it. She loved it!! The marinade for the chicken is similar to a chinese minute chicken, with the exception of the fish sauce and coconut milk flavoring which gives it the Thai taste. The Screwpine leaves added a really nice and unique fragrance, almost like a cross between ti leaves, green tea, and maybe lemongrass. Just a really unique flavor that really can't be replicated with any other leaves, though I guess I would try wrapping in ti leaves sometime.To complete our meal, we had it with some rice, and a Thai red vegetarian curry with cabbage, bamboo and onions.
Kinda ambitious undertaking for a weeknight, but there was no soccer today, and I had the kids bathe and finish their homework early. Next time I'll wait for a weekend!!
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