This recipe came from multiple sources. I have an Actifry. It claims it can deep fry food with only one tablespoon of oil. Well, I like Chinese Lemon Chicken, but I could not find a recipe for it that did not use deep frying. So I took inspiration from multiple sources and this is what I came up with.

It comes in two parts: The lemon curd which can be made in advance; the actual lemon chicken. These are combined with a special technique to cook in the ActiFry.


Lemon Curd

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and dry the lemons. (Wet lemons are harder to zest.) Using a fine grater, grate the peel off at least 3 of them. This should make about 1/4 cup, but feel free to be ambitious and do more. Lemon zest is great! Put in a heavy, medium saucepan.

Squeeze the juice out of your lemons. This should make about 1 cup of lemon juice. Pour into your saucepan.

Using four of your eggs, separate the yolk from the white. Put the yolks into the saucepan. Use the white for some other purpose; you won't need them here: I hear Baked Alaska is nice.

Put the remaining four eggs into the saucepan.

Add 1/2 cup of sugar. (The original recipe called for 2 cups of sugar, but I found this made the lemon curd far too sweet for chicken. Great for a pie, but not for a main course.

Use a whisk to beat everything together.

Cut the butter into pieces and add to the lemon mixture.

Cook over a medium-low heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes.

Lower the heat, and stir until the mixture thickens. This can happen quickly, so watch it carefully.

Pour the lemon mixture through a strainer into another bowl. (If it is having trouble because it is too thick, use the whisk to help it along.) Use a sheet of plastic wrap to cover the surface of the mixture so that there is no air.

Let it cool to room temperature. Then put into an airtight container and refrigerate.

This should make 3 cups worth of lemon curd, which is enough for three portions of Chinese Lemon Chicken.

Chinese Lemon Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

In a medium bowl, whisk together the lemon curd, vinegar and salt. The vinegar may be optional if the curd is already tart enough. (Check how much sugar you added when you made it.) Set it aside for later.

Cut the chicken thighs up into bite size pieces.

Lightly beat the eggs into a shallow bowl.

In a plastic bag, put 1/2 cup of the glutinous rice flour. Slowly add the chicken to the bag, tossing it a bit every so often. This should allow you to coat all the chicken with the flour. (Previously, I've made the mistake of trying to use my hands to dip it in the flour, and discovered that the glutinous flour is very tacky when it gets slightly moist. My hands become covered in thick globs of dough.)

Take the coated chicken from the bag, and dip it into the beaten egg. Use a utensil to move it around. Keep adding the chicken and moving it around until all the chicken is covered.

Add the other 1/2 cup of glutinous rice flour to the plastic bag. Take each piece of chicken from the egg batter and let the excess drip off and then place in the bag. Toss it a bit and then take out and put aside, either into the ActiFry or onto a plate. Repeat for all the chicken. It may be better to have two people doing this, one to put the chicken in, and one with dry hands to take it out.

Optional: Refrigerate the chicken uncovered for a few hours. It may make the chicken crispier.

Place the chicken in the ActiFry and cook for 25 minutes.

Optional: If you have rice and a rice cooker, start it cooking a batch of rice now. The chicken goes well on a bed of rice. However, be careful; if you have these two kitchen gadgets running, there is a good chance the smoke detectors will go off. Turn on the vents and open the windows.

While the chicken is cooking, chop up the pepper and the green onion. Five minutes before the ActiFry is finished, add them in.

Serve the chicken, topped off with the lemon curd sauce. Hopefully on a bed of rice.