Peiwen’s Meal for Two – Steamed Dang Gui Chicken with Black Fungus and Chilled Tofu with Century Egg

Steamed Dang Gui Chicken

Wow, that’s a mouthful! It also sounds super nutritious, healthy, and…bland? Definitely not!

Like the commonly known medicinal herb, Ginseng, Dang Gui, also medically termed as Angelica sinensis, is an herb from China. It is known to grow in high altitude mountains in countries like China, Japan and Korea. To delve more into this traditional herb, Dang Gui is also primarily known as a “women’s herb”, though we’d have to admit that many men consume it as well.

Today, we show you how to use this advantageous herb to make a delectable and tasty chicken dish that tastes wonderfully appetising, especially with the addition of black fungus, goji berries and red dates.

A great pairing to this dish is chilled tofu with century egg. The best part is there is no cooking required for this and it takes less than 10 minutes to prepare it!

Chilled Tofu with Century Egg

We’ll go more into that later on, first, let’s get started on our Steamed Dan Gui Chicken.

This dish is extremely simple to make. To start, you’ll need two whole chicken legs, black fungus, red dates, goji berries and ginger.

For flavourful chicken, an important step before cooking is always the marinade –  In a mixing bowl with chicken, pour in the soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, chinese cooking wine, salt, corn flour and a dash of white pepper powder.

Marinate the chicken with soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, chinese cooking wine, salt, corn flour and white pepper powder

You may use your hands to massage the chicken during this process to ensure that all parts of the chicken are covered!

Massage the chicken to ensure it is evenly covered with the marinade

What we’ve done here is to place the chicken into food-grade zip lock bags so that the chicken can soak up the flavours from the marinade more easily.

We would recommend marinating the chicken overnight as this would add more flavour to the chicken, making it even tastier.

Remember to let the chicken sit in room temperature for about 15-20 minutes before steaming it as we want to ensure that the chicken is not too chilled or cold before it goes into the steamer.

These two dishes would go well with white cooked rice so the second step is to cook the rice, then prepare the other chicken ingredients.

Soak the black fungus and red dates in a bowl of 500ml warm water for about ten minutes.

Soak the black fungus and red dates in warm water

Use a scissors to cut away any hard parts on the black fungus after soaking them.

Then, cut the red dates into halves.

It is important to de-skin the ginger using a spoon before cutting them into thin slices.

Deskin the ginger

This step of cutting the ginger into strips is also called julienning.

Julienne the ginger into thin strips

Lay the black fungus on the steaming plate. Place the two pieces of chicken leg on it. Spread the julienned ginger on the chicken.

Place the dang gui, red dates, and goji berries on the chicken.

By arranging the ingredients in this manner, it allows the juice from the ingredients to flow down into the chicken towards the black fungus, ensuring that all the flavours in the dish will blend as one.

Now that the chicken is ready, it’s time to steam it!

Steam the chicken with ginger, dang gui, red dates and goji berries

While waiting for the chicken to be cooked, you can use this time to prepare the chilled tofu dish.

Simply mix the sauce ingredients – soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, water, pepper, chopped spring onion, sliced shallots and chilli padi if you want a nice spice to the tofu. Set this aside for use later.

Make the sauce by mixing soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, water, pepper, chopped spring onions, sliced shallots and chilli padi

Prepare the century eggs by removing the exterior and giving it a good wash.

Peel the century eggs, cut them into cubes, and set the peeled eggs aside.

Remove the exterior, wash and peel the century eggs

Cut the century eggs into cubes

Place the tofu on a serving plate, spread the century eggs over the tofu and drizzle the sauce you made earlier on over it.

Spread the century eggs over the tofu and drizzle the sauce over it

Garnish with more spring onions and add Japanese cuttlefish flakes as desired.

Garnish with spring onions and japanese cuttlefish flakes

By this time, the chicken would be ready, and you would have successfully prepared two delicious and nutritious dishes in under thirty minutes! Enjoy!

Steamed dang gui chicken

Peiwen’s Meal-for-two was created for newly-weds and couples who have just moved into their new homes, have a beautiful kitchen to work in, but have no idea what to whip up. These recipes are by Loo Peiwen, herself, who is an avid home cook, has a passion in culinary, and enjoys creating dishes using her love for food. These recipes have been tried and tested, are authentic, delicious, and perfect for two! These meals are easily achievable, just simply follow our steps and instructions! Most importantly, you can be sure both of your appetites would be satiated at the end of the day!