Food Fridays: Cooking with sticks ~ Creating a stir...fry

This dish is not actually "Chinese" food nor is it made quite like a traditional stir fry, but it is Asian style and I do cook it with chopsticks, also my husband loves it! The most wonderful thing about this dish is how versatile it is, you can switch up the ingredients to anything you like or perhaps use up those extra veggies you've got hiding in the fridge. For instance I like to use chicken and given the opportunity to have snow peas I will always choose those, but you could easily use pork and green beans. Broccoli is very traditional but cauliflower is also nice; meng bean sprouts, water chestnuts, or baby bok choy  are also nice additions! The point is to get creative and consider how your flavors will mix, most important have fun making it and more fun eating it.

Here is the exact recipe for how I made the stir fry in the above picture;

Ingredients:

• 1 boneless skinless chicken breast
• 1 tbs of oil
• 1 spoon each of soy, fish and oyster sauce
• A small head of broccoli 
• A good size pack of snow peas 
• 1 large handful of meng bean sprouts
• About half a carrot 
• 1/4 c. pine nuts
• 1 green onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• Thumb size piece of ginger
• 2 dried chili peppers
• Chicken bullion or other chicken flavoring
• Starch
• Water
• Another spoon of soy sauce
• A can of mandarin oranges

Instructions:

1. Before you begin the stir fry, get some rice cooking, the stir fry will be served on top of the rice.
2. Now clean and cut your chicken (I cut mine in thin thumb size pieces, but you can dice or slice depending on your preference) add oil to a wok or large frying pan and heat on medium high when it's warm add chicken lowering the heat to medium low, cover and let cook slowly stirring occasionally.
3. While it's cooking, clean and cut the broccoli into florets, I also like to trim of the outside of the stalk and slice up the core. At this point you can also peel and grate the half carrot.
4. When the chicken is just cooked add the soy, fish and oyster sauces. Stir and cook on low 5 min, then remove to a bowl and put the broccoli and carrots into the same pan adding about a 1/4 c. of water. Cover and let cook on lowest setting while you clean and snap your peas. When you've finished that, throw them in, give it a good stir add pine nuts and cover.
5. Next clean and add the bean sprouts, also at this time slice the bottom half of the green onion into thin inch long slices. Cook all this for a couple of minutes then remove to a large bowl.
6. Next it is time to make the sauce, add about 2 tbls of starch to about a cup of water stir well, slice or dice your ginger, garlic and the remainder of the green onion. Add all these, your two chilies, chicken bullion and a spoon of soy sauce to the pan. Cook on low heat stirring constantly for a few minutes then add your chicken and veggies. Mix well and serve atop the rice*, top it all off with some mandarin oranges and enjoy!

*you can also allow the mixture to simmer for a half hour or so, the longer you leave it the more the flavors will mix.