Cuisine Approximate: Asian BBQ Chicken

June 4

Arriving home tired and ravenous, I mix half a cup of hoisin sauce with a tablespoon each of Vietnamese chilli sauce, grated ginger, light soy sauce and lime juice, plus a teaspoon of five-spice powder and a crushed clove of garlic. I toss four chicken thighs in it, then tip the lot into a roasting tin and bake for half an hour. What emerges is 'cuisine approximate'--a rough copy of something I remember eating long ago, sticky and dark, not quite Chinese, not quite Vietnamese, but nevertheless utterly delicious. I haven't the energy to cook rice, so I wipe my plate with bread.

Nigel Slater, Kitchen Diaries II

Versatile, simple, easy, quick.

Utterly fantastic!

This hit my taste buds where they live and I have made it several times.

Sometimes I had fresh ginger. Sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I had garlic. Once, to my eternal shame, I didn't. (I know. A house without garlic is an abomination before the Lord. Let us never speak of this again.)

And honestly I somehow completely missed his mention of five-spice powder until I was typing this out.

This recipe also highlighted just how different various brands of hoisin sauce can be. I maintain there is no such thing as a bad hoisin sauce. However, there are some that are definitely more to my taste than others. Part of the interest has been experimenting to see which I like best.

I'll be honest though. Most of the interest has been in the eating.