I love the crispy duck served at Chinese restaurants and could happily stuff the naughty little pancakes all day long. My other half is not so enamored of our pond dwelling friends, but does like chicken, so I thought I’d try that as an alternative.

Although I didn’t have any hoisin sauce nor the little pancakes, there are a couple of Chinese shops on my way home, so I thought I wouldn’t have any problem getting any. I had contemplated making the hoisin sauce from scratch, but in my brief internet search, I didn’t really see any that appealed and decided to stick with the pre-made variety. Anyway, neither shop had any pancakes left at all, both had sold out, although they did have a chinese made hoisin sauce. Fortunately, the lady at the second shop said that a takeaway down the road would sell me some uncooked pancakes on their own. This was an excellent tip and one worth remembering for the future. Most people don’t necessarily have Chinese shops or supermarkets nearby but they do have Chinese takeaways.

Back to the food. I used Chicken thighs and boiled them in water with a couple of star anise and a few peppercorns, for about 15-20 mins. I then sprinkled Chinese five spice on them and put them in the oven at the top on the highest setting for another 10-15 mins, to get the skins nice and crispy. In the meantime, spring onions were chopped and the marinated cucumber salad and prawn toast were made, as per my Valentines day entry. I know my appetite well enough to know that the chicken pancakes wouldn’t be enough on their own. The pancakes were steamed in a bamboo steamer for about 10 minutes, over a pan of boiling water.

I shredded the chicken with two forks, which was simple enough as the meat is so tender it falls off the bone with no trouble at all. Then serve with the hoisin sauce, spring onions and pancakes. I didn’t make cucumber matchsticks as well because of already having the cucumber salad. Actually, that’s a lie, as I just forgot and all the cucumber was used in the salad. Oops.

Overall it was very good and it does work well with chicken, although duck is a denser meat and deals with the strong tasting hoisin sauce slightly better than chicken. I think I will also use more spices when boiling the chicken or duck in the future, such as fresh ginger garlic and chilli to get more flavours infused into the flesh as there was room for a little more taste.