Recipe: Steamed Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce (using chicken breasts)

STEAMED CHICKEN WITH SCALLION-GINGER SAUCE

"This is a powerful sauce, one that will markedly change the character of anything to which you add it. Stir it into soup, noodles, or simply a bowl of rice, or steam some fish - just as you would chicken - and serve the sauce with that. Occasionally, I stumble over a culinary combination so obvious that I don't know whether to marvel over the bad luck that has kept it from me until now or the good luck that finally brought it my way. This was certainly the case with the Chinese dipping sauce of oil, scallions, ginger, and salt that I had in a Cantonese restaurant in Vancouver. It was served with chicken that had been steamed, then lightly dressed with soy and sesame oil; but my host demonstrated the usefulness of the sauce by stirring it into soup as well."

4 chicken breast halves, bone in or out
1 tablespoon ginger root, peeled and minced
1/2 cup canola oil (or grape seed, a neutral oil)
1/4 cup scallions, white and green parts combined, chopped
into 1/4-inch pieces
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Steam the chicken over simmering water: 6 to 10 minutes for boneless breasts, 10 to 15 for bone-in. The chicken is done when white and firm to the touch; cut into a piece if you want to be certain.

Meanwhile, stir together the ginger, oil, scallions and salt in a bowl. The mixture should be quite strong; you can add more ginger, scallions or salt if you like.

When the chicken is done, drizzle it with the soy sauce and sesame oil, and serve. Pass the scallion-ginger sauce at the table, or divide it into four small bowls for dipping

Makes 4 servings
Source: Mark Bittman, The New York Times