So I got home and all I had were 3 chicken thighs
in the freezer, an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, half a bell pepper, half a
carrot, a tomato and some beans. This is what I did:
First I sliced the
vegetables and garlic – all pretty finely – the carrot in little julienne
strips, same with the beans. I like to do all the vegetables first before
cutting up the meat to avoid any cross contamination.
Then I cut
up the chicken into half inch or so cubes. I put it in a bowl with a
generous splosh of both soy sauce and fish sauce together with about a dessert
spoonful of a hot chilli jam I had in the fridge (you could substitute any
other sort of chilli sauce or even a few chilli flakes). Then I added 2
teaspoons of Sichuan pepper and 2 teaspoons of white peppercorns ( I pounded it
all up in my small mortar and pestle I use for spices). It sat
there only for about 15 minutes before cooking – but you could leave it for a
couple of hours in the fridge if you wanted the flavours to meld more. If
you don’t like things too peppery – maybe this isn’t the recipe for you!
Or you could halve the quantity of pepper.
So to the cooking. Vegetable oil in the pan –
then a quick fry of the garlic slices, add the meat, once it has coloured a
bit, add some golden syrup or brown sugar (say 1-2 tablespoons). Then add
the other vegetables in order from hardest to softest – ie carrot and onion
first followed by the beans and bell pepper - with the tomato going in
only at the last minute. Right at the end I added about a spoonful of limoncello
– but a bit of lemon juice or lemon zest would work just as well.
While this is all cooking –
and it only takes about 15 minutes all up – cook some noodles or rice. I
did noodles this time.
Serve by putting the
roughly drained noodles into a large bowl, add the chicken mixture, sprinkle a
bit of chopped parsley (or any other fresh green herb) on top along with some
crispy onion (you can buy this from Asian stores – an optional extra would be fine
without it). The photo of this dish was taken before I put the crispy
onions on because I almost forgot them. It turned out really delicious
which is why I thought I would share it with you.
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