Make/Bake 34 - Beef Chow Mein and Sweet and Sticky Stir Fry Chicken

M won't eat Chinese food. It's not that he doesn't like it but apparently after every time he's tried it, he's felt really ill, which is quite off putting I can imagine. We have no idea what causes it and unsurprisingly he's not willing to try it much to test it out!

This problem  does cause a few grumbles as Chinese is probably one of my favourite foods so I only ever get to eat it on very rare occasions - booo. To compensate for this Ma greed to let me try a few home-made versions of dishes to see if they had the same effect and I'm very pleased to say that they don't - hooray!!!

I started off with simple stir-fries and found he liked Hoisin and Chow Mein sauce and also noodles and stir-fried veggies. I think made my own stir-fry sauces which were a big success. No pictures at the moment but my favourite is as follows:

Sweet and Sticky Stir Fry Chicken

Serves 2

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts cut into chunks
4 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp oil - I use rapeseed but any flavourless oil would do
2 tbsp Light Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Rice Vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 packet of stir fry vegetables
 noodles or rice to serve

Method
1. Coat the chicken with the cornflour. Mix the Soy Sauce, Vinegar and Honey and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a wok and then fry the chicken until it's golden brown.
3. Add the vegetables and cook for 3-4 minutes
4. Add the Soy mixture and cook for another 2-3 minutes until thickened and sticky.

 
To follow on from this success I decided to try another recipe from one of my favourite books - The Takeaway Secret. I've blogged about this book a few times, it's brilliant! The recipes are so spot on to some the the popular foods but better as they can be much healthier.

I decided to give the Beef Chow Mein a go as M likes beef and noodles. Personally I tend to prefer Chicken but after this I could be converted! Very tasty indeed and very simple and quick.

You marinade the beef in soy sauce, garlic powder, ginger powder and vegetable oil for five minutes then mix in cornflour and leave for 10 minutes. Whilst the meat rests you make the chow mein sauce by combining oyster sauce, soy sauce, chicken stock and cornflour.

Meanwhile cook egg noodles according to the packet (usually boil in water for 3-5 minutes) and then drain, rinse and toss with toasted sesame oil.

The meat is then lightly fried, until just brown and then set aside whilst you fry some garlic, ginger, sliced onion and bean sprouts for 2-3 minutes. You then add the noodles and beef and prepared sauce for another 2-3 minutes and then season with pepper and serve.

Yummy. M liked it so much he's requested it another night - success!

New make/bake no 2: Barney's Monday Night Rice

Okay, I'm doing well so far as we're three days into 2012 and I've made 2 new make/bakes!

We had a fair bit of left over chicken from the Roast Chicken & Sticky Carrots which I made on Sunday.  Last night I used up most of the white meat in a cheat's Korma (thank you mr Patak for your yummy paste) but I still had some of the leg and thigh meat left. In my attempt to be less wasteful (yet another new years resolution) I thought I'd try to make a fried rice.

I've never tried to make a proper fried rice before, unless you count reheating yesterdays takeaway leftovers!  M is not a fan of Chinese food so we don't ever have any rice to use. He won't touch a Chinese takeaway at all (which I'm gutted by as Chinese is my favourite) as they make him feel ill. I've managed to get him to eat home made Chinese stir-fries which is a step forward towards introducing my favourite cuisine to him.  Another factor is that I rarely have left-over rice as it is one of those dishes that I just can't seem to master. I've tried cooking rice every way possible and it always ends up a gluey sticky mess no matter what I do. After disaster after disaster I have now accepted defeat and I use boil in the bag or microwave rice. Sadly I cheat a bit today and I did use microwave rice for this dish but it did use up the left over chicken so I think that outweighs it!

The recipe I used was from the BBC Good Food (possibly my favourite site ever) and I attempted Barney's Monday Night Rice as found here

Okay, so today is Tuesday and I've made Monday Night Rice but never mind!

At first glance the ingredients sounded a bit unusual (Curry Powder and Tomato Ketchup?!) and I really wasn't sure how it would end up but the reviews were good so I thought I'd give it a try. I added a chopped yellow pepper, a handful of frozen sweetcorn and some chopped smoked ham to the ingredients but otherwise I followed the recipe exactly.

My conclusion was that it was lovely and even M rated it as "delicious"! The mild curry powder (I'm a complete spice wimp) I used gave it a very slight spice and you couldn't even tell it had tomato sauce in it - it made for a lovely fusion of Asian flavours. The egg mix was a bit too watery so I ended up with scrambled egg instead of an omelette so I think I'd leave the water out next time. Quick, easy and tasty and quite healthy considering - a success and definitely one to make again.

I think I'm going to have to try and make all my favourite chinese dishes at home :)