Szechuan Chicken Stir-fry

Hello Foodies! A quick post tonight of a really simple midweek meal I made...wait..well yes I made it, but I adapted it from a recipe I found on the internet. Szechuan Chicken can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I choose the simple way because that's my midweek style. I love simple and quick meals that use 1 wok and 2 chopping boards and can generally be cooked with pantry and fridge staples.

I like being different in the kitchen and I will always adapt a recipe to suit what I have in the pantry and in this case it worked really well and the flavour combination at the end of the day was fantastic.



So a stock standard Szechuan Chicken requires the use of Szechuan peppers which can be a little hard to find in a smallish country town, although I have vowed to search the Asian grocery store here on my next visit. So to compensate for this I added a little chilli to the dish, made a sauce out of oyster sauce, soy sauce, ginger & garlic, and added some Shao Hsing wine to the dish for a little punch. It really balanced well once the win was in as the ginger was a little overpowering to start with but the wine smoothed the taste out a little which I enjoyed.

The chicken pieces would normally just be lightly floured and shallow fried but I do have an obsession with potato flour at the moment so I used this instead. It gave the chicken a perfect crunch once it was fried up and also soaked up a lot of the sauce too.

Szechuan Chicken

Ingredients

4 Chicken Thigh Fillets, cut into pieces
Potato Flour, to coat chicken
1 tsp garlic
1 tsp ginger
Chilli Flakes
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup Shao Hsing wine
Corn Flour
Water

To Garnish
Peanuts
Shallots


In a bowl or shaker bag toss chicken strips with potato flour. Heat deep fryer to 200 degrees. Fry chicken pieces in batches until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

In a bowl combine soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey and chicken broth. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok. Add garlic, ginger and chilli flakes. Stir fry 30 seconds. Add soy sauce mixture and Shao Hsing wine, simmer for 2 minutes and then in a measuring cup combine 2 teaspoons cornstarch with 2 teaspoons of water and slowly pour into the sauce. Stir until the sauce has thickened.

Add chicken back in to heat theough and serve on rice with Asian greens like steamed Bok Choy and garnish with sliced shallots and crushed peanuts.

You can stir fry veggies with it or just keep simple like mine. It is a really tasty dish the whole family will enjoy.

Bon Appetit from The Little Gated Kitchen