Clam hunting and lemongrass chicken

Baked Lemongrass Chicken

When I was in New Zealand, I had a friend, named Leonie, who made me and my then flatmate, Tien, this really awesome lemongrass chicken. The ingredients were so simple and yet SO tasty. And the marinate is done in a bag!

We just got back from clam hunting with her and her then bf and was hungry from mucking around in the low tides looking for clams. They took us to this secluded beach nearby Dunedin ( I really dont’ remember where anymore) and the place was just FILLED with clams! It was my first time hunting for clams and oh boy, did I have fun! You just need to put your hands into the shallow sandy waters and you can feel them…like millions of them! Time to roll up our sleeves and pants and get down and dirty digging for clams! They were HUGE – we found some baby clams but we didn’t take them. We just threw them back into the water so that these clams can have a future generation We brought three buckets to collect the clams and when we were done we had two buckets full. I …uhm…lost the 3rd bucket…i let it float too far into the deep end of the waters and neither of us wanted to get our clothes wet swimming there (3 of us couldn’t swim, the onlyboy could but didn’t want to) I had 1/3 of the buckets full in there! Good for the gulls, i guess but we have 2 buckets full anyway!!

We baked it, we made clam chowder with it and we even steamed it till the clams are succulently cooked…it was a clam feast! The flesh of these clams were just bursting with juices. Awh..if you have never had clams, please go out and buy some when they’re in season. Add them to your pasta (or whatever) and you won’t need to season it ever again because these little buggers are SO flavorful! But a little dish stood out and it was Leonie’s baked lemongrass chicken. She made it for us as filler food while we wash and wait for our clams to be done but we finished the chicken SO quickly I was amazed we still had space for the clams

So this is post commemorates my first ever clam hunting trip with my friends…oh what a great time we had!

Baked Lemongrass Chicken

The ingredients:-

The ingredients

600g -800g of chicken wings, drummets and wings separated
2 large stalks of lemongrass, peeled, cleaned and chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 onion and 2 cloves of garlic minced finely
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons any kind of cooking oil

1 large Ziplock Bag

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

ALL IN!

2. Put chicken pieces into the ziplock bag and add ALL of the ingredients in.
3. Zip the bag shut and squish it. It’s quite relaxing to be squishing…i think it’s de-stresses. Play with the bag until you’re most certainly sure the chicken wings are well coated.

The product of your squishing

4. Let it sit for about 15-30 minutes on the counter. If you want, you can also do this the day before you need it and you’ll have more flavors absorbed into the wings.
5. Unzip bag, pour ALL the content out into a baking pan/dish. Spread the wings out so they cook evenly and make sure no pieces are over lapping each other.
6. Bake for 30-45mins, depending on how powerful your oven is.

Serve.

SERVE it when you want to reminisce on clam hunting trips or as part of your dinner with rice or as munchies for a ballgame/football/hockey on TV with a nice cold beer or soda. YUMZ.