Stir – fried chicken, mushrooms and peas

When I first learned to stir-fry the Chinese way, I always added a little sauce thickened with cornstarch or tapioca starch. That was the way Stephen Yan did it in his Wok with Yan. It was from that 1980s TV show that I learned about stir-frying.

Stir-fried Chinese style dishes are meant to be consumed right after cooking. They are not designed for reheating. But, sometimes, we cook too much and there are the inevitable leftovers. This is especially true when the stir-fried dish calls for too many ingredients in small quantities. If the recipe says, 1/2 c. of broccoli florets or 1/2 c. of diced carrots, well, the tendency is to use an entire head of broccoli and one whole carrot because, otherwise, we accumulate bits and pieces of cut vegetables in the fridge which, most often, becomes wasteful. The result is that we cook more than we can consume for one meal and we store the excess in the fridge as leftovers.

Reheating stir-fries is especially problematic when the dish’s sauce is has been thickened with cornstarch or tapioca starch. If I heat it in a saucepan, it gets too dry. If I steam it, the vegetables get overcooked. Reheating in the microwave, covered, seems best.

Great, but not everyone has a microwave oven. To be honest, we never had much use for our microwave except for reheating leftovers. I never could get the hang of cooking in it. I’ve wasted enough money buying all those microwave cookware and I still find my trusty old stove much better for cooking our meals. The microwave has become an “ornament” in the kitchen until we finally decided to put it in storage. Whenever we have leftover stir-fries, I recycle them into something else instead of simply reheating them.

Still and all, I wanted to try some other solutions to make stir-fries just as good after reheating as it was when it was cooked. Just for kicks. So I thought I’d try creating a stir-fry dish without the usual thickened sauce. Problem is, I never did get a chance to reheat this chicken-mushrooms-peas stir-fry. We had no leftovers.

Ingredients :

whole breast of a 1-kilo chicken
1 carrot, peeled and cut into florets
1 cup of mushrooms (shiitake, abalone, oyster or straw)
3/4 c. of frozen sweet peas, thawed
1 tbsp. of finely minced garlic
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsps. of light soy sauce
1 tbsp. of oyster sauce
1/2 tsp. of sesame seed oil
1/2 tsp. of sugar
salt and pepper to taste
4 tbsps. of cooking oil

How to :

With a small sharp knife, separate the chicken meat from the bone in one piece. Cut the boneless meat into thin strips. Season with the soy sauce and marinate for at least 20 minutes.

To prevent the meat from sticking to the skillet or wok, it is not necessary to use a lot of cooking oil. The trick is to heat the skillet or wok first. When hot, pour in the cooking oil and heat until it starts to smoke. At this point, the temperature should be just right to start stir-frying. Add the chicken meat to the hot oil, a few pieces at a time to make sure that the temperature does not drop drastically. Stir after each addition. Keep the heat high. When all the chicken pieces are in the skillet or wok, cook for a few minutes then add the garlic, onion and carrot florets. Stir-fry for about a minute then add the mushrooms and peas. Cook for another 30 seconds or until all the ingredients are very hot. Pour in the oyster sauce and season with pepper and sugar. Stir-fry for another 15 seconds. Turn off the heat and pour in the sesame seed oil. Stir a few more times. Add more salt only if absolutely necessary. The combined saltiness of the soy sauce and oyster sauce is usually sufficient.

Serve at once.