Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Chinese Happy Family

This is from allrecipes dot com. I wanted some sort of stir fry recipe, and I have yet to find one that I'm capable of turning into something yummy. This is my inspiration and of course I made many variations. As usual, I'll post the original recipe and then note my changes at the end.

3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cubed
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and cubed
1 (15 ounce) can baby corn, drained
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 (16 ounce) package frozen stir-fry vegetables
1 cup water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon soy sauce

This is the top rated review on the recipe: That is a good start. But to have a true happy family you need to add a few things more. You need to have shrimp, scallops and chicken. Also needed is some pea pods along with the veggies. How I make mine is to start with onion, garlic, a little ginger, water chestnuts stir fry together. Add some mushrooms, and green pepper. Remove all items as you fry them in a wok and store them in the wok cover. Stir fry some carrots, and a little celery. removing as they are fried and keep in cover to allow flavors to visit. Stir some mushrooms of your choice and put them in the wok cover then stir fry the chicken, remove to a bowl, add the scallops remove to same bowl, then stir fry shrimp. Add scallops and chicken to wok and continue to heat. Add a mixture of corn starch and chicken broth and bring to boil and let thicken. when thickened, add the items in the wok cover back to make one big happy family. Served over sticky rice. All these flavors are sure happy to be together and they will make one happy family sitting at that dinner table. 

Notes:
I used only one chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces, tossed in cornstarch and fried.

I used half of a small onion, 1/4 of a red pepper, no yellow pepper or corn, I added a thinly sliced carrot, garlic, and broccoli.

As noted in the review above, I fried the veggies in small batches and set them aside to "visit".

Instead of water, I used low sodium chicken stock.

I sprinkled in maybe 1/4 tsp ginger powder into the chicken stock.

After all of the vegetables and chicken were fried and set aside, I heated up the pan, added a small amount of oil and when it was hot, dropped all of the stuff in it to get it steaming hot. I cranked up a pot of water and dropped in noodles to cook for 2 minutes. I dumped the soy sauce, cornstarch, and stock mixture into the veggies to simmer and thicken. I dropped the cooked noodles into the veggies and sauce and mixed it and served it immediately. And it was delicious.

No comments:

Post a Comment