After weeks of boring and mostly unhealthy outside food, I've tried to make cooking a more routine activity. Although, I also actively monitor the cost and time I've spent preparing each meal.
While pouring through a recipe book which I have bought more than a year back, but never had time to read. I found one that looks interesting enough, healthy enough and easy enough.. but alas.. look at the "discrepancy"!
Ingredients:
Ingredients:
- 2 tbsp groundnut oil
- 1 small red chili, de-seeded and finely chopped
- 150 g chicken breast or thigh meat, skinned and cut into cubes
- 2baby leeks (韭葱 jiu cong), trimmed and sliced (for cooking novice like me, ch
eck through www.nciku.com for the picture and Chinese name, very helpful when asking the vegetable stall holders (usually Chinese) for the right ingredient)
- 12 asparagus spears （芦笋lu sun）, halved
- 125 g mangetout peas (豌豆wan dou）, trimmed
- 125 g baby carrots, trimmed and halved length ways
- 125 g fine green beans, trimmed and diagonally sliced
- 125 g baby sweetcorn, diagonally halved
- 50 ml chicken stock
- 2 tsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp dry sherry
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- Toasted Sesame seeds to garnish
- Heat the wok until very hot and add the oil. Add the chopped chili and chicken and stir-fry for 4-5 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and golden.
- Increase the heat, add the leeks and stir-fry for 2 minutes.
- Add the asparagus, mangetout peas, baby carrots, green beans and baby sweetcorn.
- Stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, or, until the vegetables have soften slightly yet retaining slight crispness
- In a small bowl, mix the chicken stock, soy sauce, dry sherry and sesame oil. Pour into the wok and stir. Cook until heated through. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and serve
immediately.
Oops!
- Since I don't have any groundnut oil, I used Olive oil instead.
- My late marketing trip didn't allow me to find baby carrots too, hence, I had 1 big carrot and sliced them into "baby sizes"
- Dry Sherry?! I didn't realise I need this until I was frying! Too late to panic and I skipped it altogether!
- Despite my conscientious effort to check out the pictures, my overtly excitement at finding the leek caught me at the wrong end. Kelvin was asking me about a sour smell and eventually, he revealed the mystery when he realised that I had used lemon grass instead of leek! (horror of horrors)
- I couldn't understand from the recipe, do I only keep the spears of the asparagus? And halved them? However, I find it such a waste to discard the stalks and hence, cut them up into "slim" slices and add them to the dish :P
Once again, I am grateful to my lovely family members who commended on the dish despite all the oops. :P They have been very encouraging and worked very hard to spit out the sliced lemon grass (which supposedly should be edible and chewable leeks).
Thank you for your support and I shall strictly stick to a simple asparagus or leek dish in future. Think I should just try calling Mum's hotline for the recipe. These recipe books really aren't suitable for cooking novice for me.
