Experiment 19: Semi Chicken Pastel

Prelab:
I was in the mood to cook something different, so I tried it out. But I only did half of the chicken pastel recipe because we don't use the oven. I still have zero experience on oven dishes. I used to help them (ma mere et ma soeur) when they bake cupcakes or grill the fish using the oven, but I've never done oven dishes on my own.

Date Performed: October 24, 2010

Ingredients:
600 g chicken (on the "half a kilo" range)
1/3 of a Spanish sausage (Chorizo de Bilbao), approx. 4 inches length)
5 small pieces of Vienna sausage
2 tbsps. of green peas
- (I didn't have time to measure the weight since ma tante poured it from the tablespoon)
1 dalandan
2 tbsps. soy sauce
3 hard-boiled eggs
120 g butter (approx 1/4 of a regular butter)
3 cups cold water
1 tsp cornstarch
Optional: carrots - I cut 1 small piece of carrot and added it at the same time I added the green peas.
Optional: onion - I added 1 small red onion when I fried the sliced chorizo and the vienna sausage.
Optional: salt and pepper - I didn't add this since my folks like it bland.

Preparation:
Boil the eggs in water* for 10 minutes. Peel off the eggshells. Slice the hard-boiled eggs. Set aside.

Traditional step 1: Dress and bone the chicken. (I didn't do this step)

Cut the chicken into small pieces and place these in a bowl. Using a juicer**, squeeze the dalandan and pour the juice onto the chicken. Add the soy sauce. Mix the chicken pieces together with the liquid gently with your hands for about a minute. Then, let it stand for 30 to 45 minutes.

Put in a frying pan that can handle 3 cups water. Add water (and salt and pepper). Simmer for 30-45 minutes, then remove about one and a half cup of water (or leave about one cup of the original amount of liquid). From the half cup of liquid removed, add some cornstarch and mix. Add the green peas into the liquid, then pour them together back into the pan. Simmer for another 30 minutes or until the meat is tender. (Most of the liquid should have evaporated by then. To know if the meat is tender, thrust a fork into the chicken. If the fork is easily removed, then it is probably tender.)

While waiting for the meat to be tender, fry the small and thinly sliced Vienna sausage and chorizo in a separate frying pan with melted butter. When the chicken meat is tender, pour in a little bit of the sauce (this depends as to whether you want it to have a lot of liquid or not) with the chicken and the peas into the pan where the sausage and chorizo were cooked. Cook for 2-3 minutes. Arrange the hard-boiled eggs on top of the dish and serve while hot.

In the traditional step (the last part which I didn't do), one is supposed to put them in a pastelera with the remaining sauce, arrange the eggs, peas and sausage on top and let cool. Then, cover the top with pie crust, press the edges, and bake in moderate heat (oven) until brown.

* water: Add a pinch of salt before boiling the eggs so that the eggshell can be easily removed.
**Juicer: Cut the dalandan in half. Squeeze the half by screwing downward.

Post-lab:
Everyone save ma soeur liked it. Ma soeur was complaining as usual with my dish.
There's a secret ingredient, the chorizo. We normally don't eat chorizo because it's pork. And ma mere don't buy cornstarch because of the "corn".
Ma mere never attempted to do this dish because she knows it's a difficult dish. She says it really felt special when I cooked this.
Next time, I should give mes tantes some of my dish right from the start. I totally forgot in the excitement. They're the ones who lent me the chorizo and the cornstarch.