Ms Fu Pei Mei was a culinary master from Taiwan who had her own cooking programme for more than 30 years before she passed away in 2004. Her cookbooks can be found in any bookstores that bring in Chinese cookbooks and I think that her books are one of the must haves if you really want to master Chinese cooking.

  As a "cookbooks collector", I have a few copies of Ms Fu's cookbooks and the recipe that I tried out today was Stuffed Chicken with Treasures. The original recipe requires the chicken to be deep fried and then braised for 1 hour. But due to time constraint, I had simplified the process by just roasting the chicken in the oven.

  Hubby and I were digging in the chicken as soon as it was taken out from the oven. The stuffing, especially the glutinous rice has soaked in the juices from the chicken and it's really yummy. We gobbled up all of the stuffing and then slowly ate the roast chicken. That is a satisfying meal, I must say!

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken (about 1.5 kg)
• 1/4 cup glutinous rice
• 1/4 cup diced sausage
• 1/4 cup diced char siew
• 1/4 cup diced bamboo shoot
• 1/4 cup dried shrimp
• 1/4 cup dried mushroom, soaked until soft and diced 3-4
• cloves of garlic, chopped
• spring onion, chopped

Seasonings:

1 tbp Shaoxing wine
1 tbp light soy sauce
fish sauce, to taste
salt, to taste
Worcestershire Sauce

1) Soak glutinous rice overnight.
2) Spread the rice on a plate, steam for 15 minutes. Add in 2-3 tbp of water, steam for another 20 minutes.
3) Heat up 2 tbp of oil, stir fry the garlic until fragrant. Add in diced mushroom, and 1/4 tsp of sugar, continue to stir fry for another 2 minutes.
3) Add in dried shrimps, sausage, bamboo shoot, char siew, spring onion and stir fry for a while, season with Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, fish sauce and salt.
4) Turn off heat. Add glutinous rice and mix thoroughly.
5) Stuff the glutinous rice mixture into the cavity of chicken and seal the tail opening with a needle. Rub all over the chicken with Worcestershire Sauce.
6) Pre-heat the oven at 190 deg C. Roast the chicken for 50 minutes.
7) Serve