Three Cups Chicken

Three cups chicken is a traditional Taiwanese dish. The basic principle is 1:1:1 ratio of sesame oil, soy sauce, and cooking wine. Authentic three cups chicken should have Thai basil but my version did not include Thai basil because I am not a big fan of basil.

Just as the Fragrant Spicy Pork belly, I adopted this recipe from http://wendyinkk.blogspot.com/

Again, this recipe was designed for 3-4 standard servings.

Main ingredient: 1lb of boneless chicken thighs. 

If you haven't noticed, I am a big fan of dark meat and I will continue to champion the use of dark meat. 1lb of meat might seem like a lot but you will be surprise how little meat you get in the end. So again, adjust your portion accordingly.
 

Aromatics:

2 thumb size ginger
2 shallots (original recipe ask for 1 onion)
4 cloves of garlic

1 dried red chilli

Seasonings:
4 Tbsp sesame oil
4 Tbsp light soy sauce
4 Tbsp Shao Xing wine or rice wine
(original recipe asked for 1 handful of Thai basil, leaves only) but I used I sprig of spring onion instead.

Prepping

1.    Cut the chicken into cubes.

2.    Add the soy sauce to the chicken and set aside.

3.    While marinating the chicken, cut the aromatics into pieces.

Holy Trinity!!

Cooking

1.    Heat oil in pan. Add shallots and cook until slightly brown (about 1 minute). Add ginger and cook until golden brown(30 seconds). Add garlic and cook until golden brown (30 seconds). (Tips: I learned that it is essential to keep this sequence because each aromatic cooks at different rate. Shallots/Onions takes a while to breakdown. Garlic cooks the fastest)

2.    Add the dried chilies.

3.  Put in the chicken pieces and cook until meat turns white 

Chicken in the pan

4.  Put in cooking wine and light soy sauce. A small splash of dark soy sauce here will add color. 
5.   Cook in high heat until sauce thickens (about 15 minutes).

6. I slowly added incremental amount of starch water (wheat flour/corn starch + water) to speed up the thickening process.
7. Serve.

Voila. Final Product