Owner, Peter Chang Baltimore and NiHao Baltimore (Photo credit: Robert Bowen)
Peter Chang is an award-winning chef specializing in Szechuan cuisine who has cooked for restaurants throughout the American Southeast and the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia area. Born in China’s Hubei province, Chang attended culinary school in China and began his professional career cooking for foreign guests in luxury hotels and on cruise ships. He moved to the United States in 2001 after securing the prestigious position of chef for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and in 2002 he had the honor of cooking for then-Chinese President Hu Jintao.
In 2011, Chang opened the first restaurant under his own name in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today, he owns 16 restaurants across the DMV, including two in Baltimore. NiHao Baltimore opened in Canton in 2020 and specializes in contemporary, collaborative Chinese cuisine, and Peter Chang Baltimore — his first fast-casual restaurant offering authentic Szechuan cuisine — opened on Ashland Avenue near Johns Hopkins Hospital this past summer.
Peter Chang’s Sticky Rice Eight-Treasure Chicken
Ingredients
Ingredients for chicken
- 1 whole chicken (about 2.5 pounds)
- Appropriate amount of sticky rice
- 1 piece of ginger
- 2 stalks of green onion
Ingredients for eight-treasure:
- 1 Chinese sausage
- A handful of dried shiitake mushrooms
- A handful of dried lotus seeds and peanuts
- Some dried shrimps
- 1/2 a carrot
- A handful of green peas
- 1/2 a piece of winter bamboo shoot
Seasonings:
- Salt
- Chicken powder
- A bit of sugar
- Oyster sauce
- Cooking wine
- Sesame oil
- Some pepper and salt
Instructions
- Soak dried shiitake mushrooms, lotus seeds, and dried shrimps in warm water in advance. Rinse the sticky rice clean and set aside.
- When purchasing the chicken, ask the butcher not to cut it open. Start cutting from the tail end, remove the innards, and wash the chicken thoroughly.
- Bring a sufficient amount of water to boil in a pot, blanch the chicken for 2-3 minutes (ensure both sides are blanched evenly), remove, drain the water, and set aside.
- Crush a large piece of ginger and sections of green onion. Rub them all over the chicken to remove any gamey taste. Once slightly dry, rub pepper and salt all over the chicken evenly. Lastly, lightly rub oyster sauce all over the chicken and set aside.
- Dice carrot, winter bamboo shoot, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese sausage, and dried shrimps. Drain the water from the sticky rice and place it in a bowl, add all diced ingredients and mix well. Sequentially add a bit of salt, cooking wine, oyster sauce, sugar, chicken powder, and sesame oil and mix well.
- Use a spoon to stuff the Eight-Treasure mixture into the chicken’s cavity until it is about 70-80% full (leave some space as the rice will expand).
- Secure the tail end of the chicken with white cotton thread. Steam on low heat in a pot with boiling water for 2 hours until the chicken is tender, and the Eight-Treasure mixture is cooked. Remove from heat, pour the chicken juices that have collected during steaming, and sprinkle some chopped green onions on top before serving.
Notes
On this episode of "The Food Enthusiast," Dara Bunjon talks with Anne-Marie Bonneau, author of "The Zero-Waste Chef."
This roasted eggplant recipe from Elite Jakob is easy, quick and delicious, perfect as a side dish, for brunch or next to fish or chicken or meat dishes.
Dara Bunjon talks with wine aficionado Zena Polin, proprietor of Beauty Champagne and Sugar Boutique and co-host of the "When You Just Want a Glass of Wine" podcast.
You can bake these no-flour, no-white sugar blueberry muffins from Elite Jakob in a regular muffin tin or as bite-size mini muffins.