Viandacious: 2012

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Vegetable Chow mein

This veg chow mein is supper simple and delicious. You can add any vegetable that you like to anything that you have in your fridge. The most common ingredients I end up using are:

1. Onions - 2
2. Carrots - 3
3. Bell peppers - 2
4. Cabbage - 1
5. Spring onions - 1 bunch
6. Soy sauce
7. Vinegar
8. Salt and pepper
9. Rice noodles - 1 pc

Boil a pot of water, add a lot of salt (~ 2 tbs) since it would favor the noodles. Once the water comes to a boil, add the noodles and cook them until they are just about done. Be careful not to over cook the noodles. It generally takes about 6 - 8 min to cook them properly.

In the mean time, slice all the vegetables and stir fry them in a skillet on high heat. Cook the vegetables just enough for them to retain their crunch (about 2-3 min). Add the noodles, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper and stir quickly. Serve it hot with chilly chicken :)

You can make chilly garlic noodles by adding some garlic to the vegetables when sauteing and add chilly garlic sauce/paste when mixing the vegetables with the noodles.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Chilly Chicken

India Chinese is one of my favorite cuisines, hence I would like to share my mom's recipe of a healthy version of Chilly Chicken since the chicken cooks in its own fat. I would like to warm you that I don't believe in precise measurements thus would be talking in terms of handful, eyeball, pinch, etc. I shall try my best to be as precise as I can, although I strongly believe that measurements are overrated and improvisation and substitutions are the key to delicious food!

Ingredients

2 Chicken breast
1 inch Ginger
4-5 Garlic cloves
2 Green chilies
2 Dried red chilies
3 tbs Soy sauce
1 tbs Rice wine vinegar
1 tbs Chilly paste (Chilly garlic paste, Sriracha, any hot sauce in your fridge)
1 tbs tomato ketchup
1 Onion (Red,white whatever you like)
1 Bell pepper
1 tbs Oil
Salt
Pepper

Procedure

1. Dice the chicken into cubes. Always remember to wash the chicken before cutting and to wash your hands, knife and chopping board right after you finish dicing the chicken. Chicken is one of the proteins that shouldn't be consumed raw since it contains Salmonella, a bacterium which can lead to food poisoning.

2. I always use fresh ginger and garlic since I love the aroma of these ingredients but feel free to use the store bought paste if you like. Grind ginger and garlic and add it to the chicken. Also add soy sauce, vinegar, chilly garlic paste, salt and pepper. Set the chicken aside for 3 - 4 h. Marinating the chicken overnight would be ideal, since the acid in the marinate would make the chicken tender. Nevertheless, there are times when I have got sudden craving for chilly chicken while finishing my experiments at work and have marinated it only for an hour: the results were still very good.

3. In a pan (I prefer a heavy bottom) add the chicken, cover the pan and let it cook on medium flame. Keep stirring and checking the chicken from time to time; would take 15 - 20 min to cook. You don't want to eat under cooked chicken.

4. In a separate pan add oil, since I really like garlic I add some at this stage (Omit it if you don't like too much garlic). Add dried red chilies and fresh green chilies (cut lengthwise in 4's). I like my food hot and tend to use a lot of chilly, but you should tone it down or elevate it further depending on your taste since a Viand meal is what "Your" taste buds like :). Add diced onions and bell pepper (cut into 1" cubes), fry the vegetables until they become slightly tender but still retain their crisp.

5. Combine the chicken and the vegetables when still on heat, drizzle some more soy sauce and vinegar, add tomato ketchup, salt and pepper and stir well. Lip smacking chilly chicken is really!! Pair it with vegetable chow mien or fried rice. An easy substitution for vegetarians would be paneer instead of chicken with just 30 min to 1 h of marination time.