Chinese cooking has fascinated me for years, how flavours can be brought together at speed. My first ever takeaway when at middle school was king prawns and tomatoes with egg fried rice and I can remember it like yesterday. Trying to get my head around the flavours and speed it was cooked in from a ‘takeaway’. Also that night we hired Indiana Jones from the local video rental shop which was on the way to our local takeaway. It’s funny how food creates these memories. A great example of what food is all about in my eyes ❤️.

At times I’ve struggled with getting Chinese cooking right, but last night I got this spot on.

This book by Ching-He-Huang really breaks down methods and recipes to such simple methods.

Another beauty about this dish is that once you get into and understand Chinese cooking most of not all of the ingredients become standard cupboard ingredients.

Ingredients- 4 chicken thighs cut into strips, salt and white pepper, 1 tbsp of cornflour, 1 tbsp of groundnut oil, 2 tbsp of sichuan peppercorns, 4 dried chillies, 1 tbsp of rice wine vinegar, 1 red pepper diced, 2 spring onions and a handful of cashew nuts.

For the sauce – 100ml of cold vegetable stock ( I added a Knorr stock cube to the water and whisked it to break it down) 1 tbsp of light soy sauce, 1 tbsp of tomato ketchup, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp hoisin sauce, 1 tsp of chilli sauce and 1 tbsp pepper f cornflour.

Method – place the cut chicken strips in a bowl, season with salt and pepper then add the cornflour ensuring the chicken is coated.

Then add all of the ingredients to make the sauce together in another dish and mix well.

Heat the wok until it’s smoking then add the groundnut oil. Add the Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies frying for a few seconds.

Add the chicken strips and stir fry for 2/3 minutes.

Once the chicken turns opaque add the rice wine vinegar and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Followed by the pre-made sauce.

Bring this to the boil…..

Then add the red pepper and cook in the sauce for another 2 minutes or so. The sauce will become nice and thick.

Then toss in your spring onions and cashew nuts, stir and serve immediately. You want to retain the crunch in the onions and cashew nuts.

I served mine with steamed jasmine rice.

I would say all in all including the prep and rice cooking the whole process took 20 minutes. A beautiful meal when time is against you!

Credit to Ching-He-Huang for this dish.

Thank you for reading my ramblings.