Chinese Chicken with Black Pepper Sauce

The Uber Delicious Black Pepper Sauce:

I love all versions of black pepper sauce! Be it the western style decedent gravy for steaks, the lip-smacking masala in the South Asian Black Pepper Karahi or the Asian tangy and glossy sauce to coat stir fried pieces of chicken and vegetables. Black pepper adds a unique depth and deliciousness to each dish. Are you a fan too?

Pakistani Style Chinese Chicken with Black pepper Sauce:

This particular Chinese inspired recipe is one of the most popular on the menus of Pakistani-Chinese restaurants. And yes, Pakistani-Chinese food is a genre in itself. It’s more saucy and slurpy because most dishes are inspired by the Cantonese cuisine with abundant use of chicken stock, soy sauce, chili sauce, tomato ketchup and vinegar. At home this particular dish is one of those life savers that can be made in bulk for a family meal and served in twenty minutes, even on days when cooking seems like a Herculean task. Also you can control the quantity of salt and oil while cooking at home.

A Flexible Recipe:

I cut and slice my vegetables for this in big chunks that would maintain their taste and texture. But really feel free to add any of your favourite vegetables.
I can imagine cauliflower, peas, bamboo shoots and eggplants tasting great in this too. This time I made it at the request of my elder daughter who suddenly had a strong urge for Chinese food to celebrate her freedom from exams. So I searched my kitchen cabinets and fridge, I came up with a tin of mushrooms, a carrot, some French beans and onions. It appeared that together with chicken they would make a pretty decent bowl of Chicken with Black Pepper Sauce, and so they did!

What Your Ready Dish Should Look and Taste Like:

The sliced onions lend a natural sweetness to this black pepper chicken recipe, and help tone down the heat from the black pepper, so they are an essential ingredient of the dish. The sauce is silky smooth, sour, salty and thick enough to coat everything but not too thick to make the dish gluggy. It tastes superb when poured steamed rice or egg noodles.

Add plain flour, corn flour and salt in a big bowl. Mix thoroughly. Add soy sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar and black pepper in a small bowl and mix. Save two tablespoons of this flour mix to thicken the sauce later on in a separate bowl.

Dredge chicken pieces in flour mix and coat them completely. Heat oil in a deep frying pan. Add chicken pieces and fry them on medium heat till crisp and golden. If the pan is small, fry in batches. Overcrowding the pan doesn’t give a crispy result.
Remove them from oil and set aside.

Add onions, French beans, carrots, mushrooms and garlic to the remaining oil in the pan. Stir fry for 2 minutes. Add the sauce mix and fried chicken to the pan. Dilute two tablespoons of flour mix that we had set aside with two cups of water and add to the pan. Cook another 2 minutes, stirring continuously, till the sauce thickens to your desired consistency.

Serve immediately hot, garnished with green chilli peppers and freshly ground black pepper. Tastes great with steamed rice and egg noodles.