Travel Agent

Since I came here in the dessert, I have always been on a lookout for cooking ingredients that are common in the Philippines but so far, the things that can be found on local groceries and supermarkets are limited to tomato sauce, patis (fish sauce), vinegar and soy sauce. What can be found mostly are Indian ingredients such as dried chilies, turmeric and curry powders and other spices like dried rosemary leaves, bay leaves, coriander seeds and the likes. That’s why whenever I would visit large groceries, I would often make it a point to buy a one or two ingredient even if I don’t know yet what to do with them. And when I got time, I would search food blogs which offer Asian food recipes. One of the blogs I frequent is Rasa Malaysia where I saw this recipe for Spicy Honey Chicken.

Rasa Malaysia’s Spicy Honey Chicken recipe calls for chili paste but since I can’t find any in the local market, I used chili salsa and adjusted the proportion of the ingredients to suit my own liking until I came up with my own Honey Chicken recipe.

Ingredients:

• 500 grams chicken legs (or any of your favorite chicken part)
• 3 tbsp. tomato ketchup
• 2 tbsp. honey
• 1 tbsp. chili salsa
• 1 tbsp. grated ginger
• 1 tbsp. grated garlic
• 1 large onion, sliced into rings
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 1 ½ tbsp. curry powder
• 1 tbsp. turmeric powder
• ½ tbsp salt
• Cooking oil
  

Cut the chicken into serving pieces. Mix 1 tbsp. each of curry and turmeric powder with salt and use it to coat the chicken. Fry the chicken on cooking oil until the skin crisps a bit. Reserve.

Sautee grated ginger and garlic in about 2 tbsp. oil for about a minute. Add the ketchup, honey, chili salsa, curry powder and a little water (just to loosen the mixture) and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the onion rings and allow to simmer again until the onion becomes translucent. Add the chicken and stir until the chicken absorbs some of the paste. Add the juice from one lemon, stir and turn off the heat.

Serve.

I don’t know how this recipe would turn out had I been able to use chilly paste instead of the salsa but I really love the outcome of my improvised honey chicken recipe. I love it paired with blanched carrot sticks and string beans and there were times that I would mix the sauce with boiled egg noodles. Yummy!