Sunday, November 10, 2019

Sunday Dinner: Gluten Free Black Bean Chicken with Garlic

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You're in luck, food fans, because Sunday dinner today is another recipe from the fabulously talented Celia Wakefield. If we ever put together a RedCon, we're going to hire Celia to cater it, and you'll all get to experience the joy I do whenever I'm lucky enough to receive a dinner invite from her. This recipe is gluten free*!



Chinese Black Bean Chicken with Garlic

4-6 people, unless you are feeding teenage boys!
The quantities for the sauce for this recipe is based on 6 chicken thighs or 1.5# boneless chicken.

Back Story: I got my first Cuisinart in 1979. Oh what joy was mine. Along with the FP came a magazine published by Cuisinart, The Pleasures of Cooking. I had a subscription and still have my copies but this is my most successful share. I made black bean chicken and left it for the family a couple of weeks ago. The younger teen terror (almost 15), FaceTimed me after he and almost college terror had eaten the lot, to tell me that they had made dinner with some rice and it was good. My poor daughter arriving home later must have felt like Goldilocks as the bears had polished off almost two pounds of boneless chicken leaving her without dinner.

INGREDIENTS:
2+# Chicken, either skin on / bone in thighs, or boneless breast
(2# = 6 chicken thighs but with boneless chicken you will not need so much)
6-8 peeled cloves of garlic
3/4 Cup black beans*
1tsp each Chili paste with garlic and black bean paste with chili*
1 tsp Sugar (optional)
3-4 Tbsp. Soy sauce*
1 Cup hot water
2-4 Tblsps. Vegetable Oil

SAUCE
Put the garlic cloves and black beans in a Mini Food Processor and whirl to mix well
Add Chili paste with garlic & black bean paste with chili and sugar if desired
 Add the Soy Sauce plus 1/4 cup hot water. Whirl well, scrapping down if necessary.




COOKING
Trim or cut up chicken as needed
Heat the veggie oil in a heavy frying pan
Add the chicken skin down
When golden flip and cook another 5 minutes 
Spread the sauce from the mini prep on the chicken and add the rest of the water to the pan
Bring to a boil, cover the pan 
Turn the heat down, and cook for 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes.
Test for doneness, then turn off and cool. 




Serve with rice and steamed broccoli 

This is an easy dish to make. The magazine photo shows it made with spareribs which I love, but it's hard to get then cut to cocktail size, so I usually leave them whole.
Black bean chicken is much better served the following day so that the fat can be removed.
Reheat with broccoli sprigs tucked into the sauce and steamed.

* Gluten Free.
I make this recipe GF. The black beans in the yellow cylinder are available from Amazon.
The jars of paste are also GF and I buy them in Whole Foods. However if you are not a GF person you will find black beans in Chinese groceries, but check because wheat will be an ingredient. Most soy sauce is made from wheat so if going GF, check the band.

37 comments:

  1. Yum!
    I can't wait to try this! It sounds delicious, Celia . . . thanks for sharing it with us.

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    1. Thanks Joan, I love being a small cog in the JRW wheel.

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  2. That. Sounds fantastic ! Thanks Julia and Celia!!

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  3. That sounds so good! Can you use regular canned black beans?

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    1. I'm here earlier than Celia (she's probably headed for church right now) so I'll chime in and say I'm sure you can, Edith. Celia and Victor's daughter is gluten intolerant (I can't recall if she has full-blown Celiac's or not) so one of Celia's specialties is converting "regular" recipes to GF.

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    2. No you cannot. Chinese black beans are fermented black soybeans. Black beans are legumes. Both are gluten free but do not taste at all alike.

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    3. Thanks for clearing that up. I’d have been shopping the Hispanic aisle!

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    4. Yes, Julia is right, I am late to my job. But first Edith's question, Coralee is correct. Here is the Amazon link:
      www..amazon.com/Yang-Jiang-Preserved-Black-Ginger/dp/B00013WX7O/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=Chinese+black+beans&qid=1573408949&s=grocery&sr=1-8
      These black beans are GF because there is no wheat. You can get black bean mixes in Chinese Groceries, but usually they are mixed with wheat based soy sauce. These ones are the real thing.
      No, not headed for church. I am doing the granny thing, with my two teen terrors, well not really but it plays well against hooligans! My work this morning was Big Breakfast. Perhaps that will be another post in the future.

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  4. Sounds so good. When are you coming this way to cook our dinner? You can bring Julia, as long as neither of you eat too much, because I'm feeling greedy this morning!

    We're having roast pork tenderloin with rhubarb chutney, butternut squash from our favorite market stand, something green, and applesauce made from those apples we bought yesterday while loading up on squash.

    There's plenty, so come on down.

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    1. Oh, gosh, Ann, if that's not the most iconic fall dinner I can think of!

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    2. Wow Ann, Thank you so much, accepted with pleasure. What a delicious menu. At the TT's house, I shall make sausages and a Dutch Baby with some veggies for dinner tonight. I have very appreciative boys where home cooked meals are concerned.

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  5. Thank you for sharing this recipe, Julia! I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in April and I'm still struggling to adapt to a gluten-free life.

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    1. Celia will pop in her later (after church) but I'm betting she can point you toward some resources, Cathy - her daughter has been gluten intolerant for years now, and cooking GF is one of Celia's specialties.

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    2. Hi Cathy, my apologies for being so late to the party. I do understand your concerns re GF. It was hard work when Olivia was diagnosed but it has become easier. Why don't I give you my email and we can take this to a more private place. Celia Wakefield wakefieldpro at gmail dot com. I am more than happy to chat and can also recommend some cook books that Olivia has found useful. The good news is that even in the four or five years since she was diagnosed, more GF awareness has come to the fore. I have made GF birthday cakes, English Christmas pudding, and lots of regular recipes just twerking them. So please do get in touch with me. And Good Luck

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  6. Here's the sausage roll recipe you asked for, Julia.

    1 package Pepperidge puff pastry, thawed to room temp.
    Dusting of flour for rolling.
    1 pound loose sausage, your favorite brand and flavor.

    Heat oven to 450

    Roll out each sheet of pastry and divide into six strips along the fold lines.
    Divide sausage into six portions.
    Roll each portion into "snakes", the length of the pastry strips
    Place sausage on pastry, brush pastry edges with water, fold over lengthwise and seal, then crimp with fork.
    Slice each roll into 1-1.5 inch pieces, lightly scoring the tops with a couple of slashes.
    Place on parchment paper covered baking sheets.
    Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.
    Enjoy!

    I serve thes hot or cold or at room temperature, usually with some good mustard. We prefer sage sausage, mild, but I've made them with a goodly dose of red pepper flakes, with Italian sausage, with chicken or turkey sausage, whatever taste demands.

    They freeze and reheat well, but they will never taste as good as fresh from the oven. Makes a great holiday breakfast after all the sweet stuff we eat. Excellent with drinks. And the easiest thing you'll ever make, getting a huge bang for the buck.

    Just ask Rhys. Or Debs.

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    1. Julia, for your lot, double or triple the recipe. Trust me. I raised boys.

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    2. Love, love sausage rolls. I haven't made them for ages. I have copied your recipe and will do so forthwith. Thank you.

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    3. Yum. So are these open on the ends?

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  7. Mmmm! Yum! I can almost smell it! I would love to try to "veganize" it for my son. It looks like there would be so much flavor you wouldn't realize the meat is fake.

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    1. Judi, thank you. I see no reason why not in fact I would make the sauce, cook whatever meat the rest of the tribe are eating, fry up the vegan sausage and divide the sauce up over both iterations. I think it will work just fine.

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  8. Celia - so the girl took tho boys spare change and bought a healthy dinner? men! The recipe does look wonderful. Glad you mentioned substituting pork, I think turkey thighs would work too, yes? I will be boning out another fresh ham today; might set some meat aside for this recipe. Bowing to the north, and to you.

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    1. Coralee, I'm not sure where you live other than south of NE. which covers a lot of ground. The original recipe specifies pork but I think any meat will work well. It's just a matter of adjusting your cooking time. No reason not to cook in the oven either.

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  9. That looks really interesting, Celia. Being paste ignorant I can’t imagine what the sauce tastes like.

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    1. Thanks Pat, I have tinkered with this recipe a lot over time. Originally I made it with the ingredients in the printed recipe. Then I couldn't find the yellow box beans anywhere, so I went searching and came across the Lan Chi Black bean Sauce with Chili etc. in Whole Foods. Now I mix the dried black beans with the Sauce from the jar. This way I can make it hot for my boys, but not so much chili for my beloved and me. This is the great appeal of this recipe; it's so easy to adjust. As to taste, first is probably salty, as in soy sauce, then theres a little ginger and as much chili as one cares to try. So salt and heat are the predominant flavors.

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  10. Thank you for sharing the recipes, Julia and Celia.

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  11. That looks AMAZING! Thank you, Celia!

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  12. You're very welcome Jenn, I do recommend this for hooligans as my terrors love it.

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  13. I think my husband would love this dish. I'm making chili later this afternoon. I think we live on chili during the cold months.

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    1. Hi Kathy, I do hate to use the work 'simple' but this really is a very simple process. In fact I used to worry about it much more than now. Once you have your ingredients, first start sauteing the meat, while thats happening, whirl up the sauce. Probably no more that twenty minutes to a half hour prep before its cooking itself quiety and you have time to relax.

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  14. Sounds wonderful, those I'll skip the broccoli, if you don't mind. I'm assuming it will freeze well.

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    1. No need for food torture Rick, when feeding the teens I will do - crudities which they will eat, or steamed green beans which I will toss with a sautéed onion and some more soy sauce. I love my veggies.

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