Thanking the turkey and digging into some Chicken in Orange Sauce

It’s Thanksgiving and the perfect time to be cooking up a delicious duck l’orange. Now this is a Calcutta favourite – and one of mine as well. And no other dish looks as lovely as a whole roasted duck, hot out of the oven, glistening in a rich orange sauce. The mixture of bitter-sweetness of the orange sauce and the ginger juliennes adds a unique taste to the dish. It’s also the perfect season for juicy sweet oranges, which helps make it as organic a dish as you can possibly whip up -- of course for most of us the fruits will come from the neighbourhood vegetable vendor and not a tree, but at least we know our intentions are good.

But since we can’t get our hands on a good duck usually or won’t eat duck –here’s a recipe for Chicken in Orange Sauce, which is almost as nice to eat and definitely much easier to cook.

Chicken in orange sauce

1 chicken – around 1.5 kg, cut into 12 pieces

1/2 tsp salt, to tase

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup flour

1/3 cup oil

½ cup chilli sauce/ any spicy sweet sauce (I sometimes use a dash of chili flakes and a 1/2 cup of white wine instead of chili sauce)

2 capsicums (chopped)

1 tsp garlic paste

1 tsp prepared mustard (Colman’s mustard powder is the best)

1 cup orange juice (freshly squeezed)

1 tbsp dark brown sugar

2 tbsp soya sauce

2 oranges, sliced into rings


Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees.

In a bowl mix the flour, salt and pepper. Dredge chicken parts in the mixture. Place a heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Pour in the oil and lightly brown the chicken pieces. Then arrange the chicken in a baking dish – which you can also serve it in, like a casserole.

In a separate pan, place the remaining ingredients other than the orange slices and allow to simmer over low heat for about five to seven minutes – you’ll figure out it’s done as all the ingredients look well-blended. Keep stirring now and then. Taste and adjust the salt, keeping in mind that the chicken has already been salted.

Pour this sauce over the chicken pieces, cover with foil – if using a casserole then with a lid -- and place in the oven. Bake the chicken until it is tender, usually takes around an hour. Keep checking the chicken, you could inset a knife in it and to see hwo tender it is. The juices running out of it should be white and not pink. After an hour, place the orange slices on the chicken, remove the lid and bake for another 10 minutes. There should be a fair amount of sauce in the pan by now.

Remove from the oven and serve with either rice or thick bread, buttered potatoes and a green salad.