Baked Light and Tangy Chicken Drumsticks! "lemon and herb" - Vegan, gluten free, healthy, low fat, low calorie, egg free

Inspired by Zacchary Bird's (Is it ironic that I had a bird named Zacchary??) CFC Vegan Chicken, I set out to make pretty much the same thing. As per usual I stuffed up AND I had to use some creative license to cater to my bland palate and gluten free neccessity--- BUT it still turned out tasty! Win!

Check out that texture! I mean... PLEASE! Tell me that doesn't look good I dare you!

This is the not so mysterious ingredient - JACK FRUIT. I feel everyone has learnt about this stuff by now...

Many years back i followed a "pulled pork" Jackfruit recipe. And it did not turn out well at all. The BBQ sauce was TOO MUCH! Ick! Also couldn't get the weird sweet/fruit flavour out of my mind....

This time however the tangy flavour works WONDERFULLY as a chicken substitute, I just can't even. Anyway, I know you're dying to know so let's get to it.

What's so odd though, is that it reminds me a lot of the "lite and tangy" chips i used to eat at primary school in the 90s so there was a bit of nostalgia there too 9for a food i'd never tasted before!)!

Baked Light and Tangy Chicken - "lemon and herb"

Makes 4 drum-sticks or small "chicken breasts"/nuggets

INGREDIENTS

"Chicken"
1 tin of jackfruit in brine (565g net)
A quarter head of cauliflower (optional) - for the "bones" - you will need 4 stalks/Floret clusters
3/4c water
1/2t chicken style stock SALT REDUCED
2t nutritional yeast
3/4t onion powder
1/4t scant liquid smoke (i like liquid smoke so you may want to take this with a grain of salt- as in, use less)
Spray oil
If you want you can sub your fav spice mix here (like nandos, whatever!)

"Batter"
2 TB Corn Starch
6t Flax or Chia, ground
1/3c Water
1/3c Rice Crumbs (or other gluten free crumb)
pinch of Celery Salt (optional)
Good pinch of keens curry powder
Good pinch of chicken style stock
1/4t Smoked Paprika
1/4t Onion Powder
Black Pepper, freshly ground, to taste
1t Italian herb mix
1/4t Rosemary
1TB Nutritional Yeast Flakes
1t nigella seeds (optional)
Spray oil (optional)- if you want your crumb to be golden and you don't want to use oil i suggest using golden brown crumbs to begin with.

Additional:
glad wrap
silpat
oven - 200C fan forced

METHOD
1- Open the jack fruit tin and drain the jackfruit. Cut off the core and squash with a fork. Tear the core into pieces with your hands if need be (you can blend the cores but try to keep it a bit textured, i blended half the cores, the texture resembled cheap crumbly tuna). With your hands squeeze the tender part of the jackfruit over the sink in a sieve. This will get rid of the excess water and "shred" it.
2- Transfer the chicken ingredients except the cauliflower into a pot and bring to boil- and simmer a further 10 or so minutes until the water has evaporated.
3- While the jackfruit is cooking get the cauliflower and carve out some bones (using the stems of the florets). Keep some of the mini stalks on too to help the "Chicken" adhere.
4- While waiting for the jackfruit to be ready and cool enough to handle, mix up a flax egg by combining the flax with the water. This will need 10 minutes to "gel".

5- Once the jackfruit has dried up and it is cool enough to handle preheat your oven to 200C fan forced. Put the corn starch on a plate. Using a bit of glad wrap place a scoop of "chicken" into the centre, lay the "bone" in the area you want, and put another scoop on top. Wrapping up the edges toward the end of the bone - press firmly and realistically around the bone leaving the end exposed, shaping as you see fit. Peel back the glad wrap and place the drumstick aside on the corn starch plate and coat it with the corn starch. Do this 4 more times. (the bone part is optional.) If you are making chicken breasts/nuggets just shape in the glad wrap without the cauliflower pieces. You can try by hand but it needs a very firm air tight press to keep it together so keep the shapes bulky to help it hold together.
6- Mix up all your other remaining batter ingredients on a plate to set up your breading station. First dip the dusted drumstick in the flax egg, then in the bread crumbs (this process is tricky since it wants to seem to fall apart but it can be done- just be careful). Use your hands to keep applying crumbs and pressing gently it in, until it is no longer sticky or runny and is quite firm. Place on the silpat mat.
7- Once all chicken pieces are on the silpat you can spray it well with some spray oil for a golden colour- it will still cook AND be crunchy without the oil, but it will not brown.

8- Place in your 200C preheated oven for about 35 minutes. Keep an eye on it as YMMV. This should be enough time to cook the cauliflower till al dente so it still holds it's shape- and also make the crumb lightly golden brown.
9- I suggest serving with the discarded cauliflower (which you would have steamed while it was in the oven) on a salad. :)

SO GOOD!


Taste- It definitely has a tanginess to it! But very much like chicken- depending on the stock you use to flavour it.
Texture- Texture is also spot on it's scary how spot on. The Buddhist monks were onto something when they would cook this as mock meat!



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