To celebrate the Chinese New Year I’ve now for a number of years cooked a dish that’s new to me. To celebrate the year of the snake again I turned to a recipe from Ching-He Huang & Ken Hom. I picked this cook book up in a second hand charity shop. This book is a full encyclopaedia of recipes from the different regions in China and it accompanies the TV series which dropped more than 10 years ago.

As is the norm with Chinese cooking, most of the time actually goes into the prep due to the high speed and intensity you are cooking at with your hot wok.

I loved making this dish. A mixture of new flavours, a traditional dish which you can’t order locally plus using a new ingredient- chilli bean paste.

The thing with Chinese food, people are off cooking it due to the ingredients required, however once you get used to the prep it’s actually very rewarding cooking tasty meals at speed!

Ingredients-

Heaped tsp of salt & white pepper

1 tbsp of cornflour

300g of chicken breast cut into thin julienne type strips

3 tbsp of groundnut oil

1 tbsp of rice wine

1 aubergine sliced into thin batons

2 garlic cloves finely chopped

1 inch piece of ginger grated

1 small red chill finely chopped

1 tbsp of chilli bean paste

1 spring onion finely chopped

For the sauce –

100ml of chicken stock

1 tbsp of light soy sauce

1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar

Method –

Add the salt, white pepper and cornflour into a mixing bowl. Just then a mix.

Add the chopped chicken breasts and coat them with the cornflower mix.

Heat 1 tbsp of groundnut oil in your wok. Once the oil is spiralling due to the heat add the chicken breasts and brown.

Once they brown set them aside in a bowl. Add another tbsp of the groundnut oil and heat again. Once hot add in your batons of aubergine. Stir fry these off for 5 minutes until dark in colour.

Again, once they have coloured remove and set aside. Add the final tbsp of groundnut oil and heat once again.

Add in the garlic, ginger & chilli bean paste. Cook for a few seconds.

Add back in the chopped aubergines.

Follow this with all your ingredients for your sauce – vegetable stock, light soy & balsamic vinegar giving it a big stir.

Follow this with the chicken, stir in the chicken to coat everything and allow it to come to a gentle simmer.

The sauce will start to thicken. Add your chopped spring onions, stir then serve.

Your kitchen will smell amazing!!!

Whilst doing my prep I put a small pan of jasmine rice on (1/2 cup of rice, 1 cup of water). Brought this to a gentle simmer and allowed the water level to drop below the top of the rice and bubble holes form in the rice. Removed it from the heat with the lid still on and allowed it to steam itself to finish cooking. I do love jasmine rice, perfect accompaniment to Chinese cooking.

I am a person that is made happy by the simple things in life. When I’d cooked this dish and shared it via my Instagram account Ching-He Haung was even kind enough to repost it ❤️. Lovely touch ❤️

Really enjoy understanding Chinese food, I long to be back there. Even though I’ve only been twice through work the food experience in the evenings was just something to cherish.