A quick wok dish, this spicy chicken and noodle stir fry is a nod to Chinese Szechuan-style cooking as well as to Hainan Chicken. It's completely frauthentic, but the perfect meal when you're pushed for time or want a summer dish that's not too rich, yet sufficiently nourishing and filling.
This is most certainly not one of the traditional Chinese dishes copiously recorded by my Da' in his journals and passed on to me. Rather, I stole shamelessly from Szechuan (now more often known as as Sichuan in English) and its cuisine that is hotter and spicier than most other Chinese cooking, and Hainan Chicken, originally created by immigrants from the Chinese island of Hainan when they settled elsewhere. Often viewed as "street hawker" food in Singapore, with which it is most closely associated, it's become something of a street food staple across many other parts of South East Asia—I will publish my version on here at some point; when I find a reason to poach a whole chicken (or enough people promising to eat it). This recipe doesn't involved the chicken fat intrinsic to that dish. But, as with Szechuan cooking, it involves some fiery chilli flavours; right up my alley (or hutong).
This is a dish born of maximising convenience and flavour. Thus, the building block I use for it is a good readymade Sichuan sauce, such as Lee Kum Kee's Sichuan Style Hot & Spicy Stir-fry Sauce, and notch it up in the cooking with additional spices. Excellent Sichuan sauces are widely available worldwide and you get the spice content for a number of meals out of a small jar.
One of my personal bugbears is the enduring Western fallacy about Asian stir-fry cooking; that everything is chopped up and simply chucked in at once. As with more traditional Chinese cooking, it isn't the case with this dish. So do pay attention to what goes into the wok and when it goes in.
This recipe serves 2 diners, possibly 3.
Shopping list
the spicy chicken and noodle stir fry
1 skinless chicken breast per diner, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 large shallots, vertically quartered and pulled apart
1 large red bell pepper, cut vertically into slices
3 tspns of garlic & ginger paste
Approx. 150g fresh mange tout; trimmed
Approx. 100g small, closed cup mushrooms; halved and/or sliced
2 tspns Lee Kum Kee's Sichuan Style Hot & Spicy Stir-fry Sauce (or alternative)
2 red chillies; deseeded and chopped
About 4 tbspns of sunflower oil
1 tspn of sesame oil
450g fresh egg noodles (the more common thicker kind or the "skinny" Singaporean version)
Approx. 2 tbspns dark soy sauce
The juice of 2 fresh limes
Salt and black pepper to taste
The spicy cucumber salad
½ a fresh cucumber, thickly sliced, lightly salted and chilled
3 cloves of garlic, crushed or very finely grated
1 hot red chilli, chopped
1 tspns of demerara sugar
2 tpsns malt vinegar
2 tspns blackened sesame seeds (plain if you don't have blackened)
A tiny sprinkle of chilli powder
1 heaped tspn of desiccated coconut
Cooking Method
The spicy cucumber salad
Start the prep on your salad first. A few hours before serving, salt the thickly sliced cucumber and store, in a sealed container in the fridge. The salted cucumber should remain there for at least a couple of hours
At a convenient in the cooking process, sweat the garlic and chopped chilli in a small saucepan in the sesame oil. Then add the vinegar, sugar and chilli powder, stirring over a medium heat so that the all combine. Make sure that the sugar is completely dissolved.
Add the desiccated coconut and allow to sizzle for a at least 3mins. Remove from the heat, add the sesame seeds and stir in. Ideally, time this so that your "dressing"can cool slightly before serving
About 15mins before serving, thoroughly wash the salt from your cucumber in a colander. Dress with the lukewarm dressing before taking to table
the spicy chicken and noodle stir fry
In a small dish, smear your hot Sichuan sauce over your chicken pieces. This should should not marinade for too long i.e. about 20mins before cooking in the wok
Heat the oils in a wok on high heat. Add the garlic & ginger paste and allow to sizzle for no more than a minute before adding the chillies. Allow these to sizzle, stirring constantly—there's a reason it's called a "stir fry"—before adding the shallots. Sizzle for no more than a minute or two before adding the bell peppers and mushrooms—you want to wait until the shallots are sealed but definitely not browned
Add the chicken with all of its Sichuan sauce—don't worry about the residue, there's a trick for that later. Stir so that the chicken seals on all sides and starts to cook
When the chicken shows signs of being cooked and the bell peppers and onions have made that all-important transition from "raw" to "al dente", add the mange tout, stirring vigorously so that it seals on all sides. Add a little hot water—no more than ¼ of a cup—to the dish in which you marinaded the chicken. Swirl around and add to the wok. If you've done it right, it should sizzle and give off quite a lot of steam. Stir constantly
Add the lime juice. Again, this should sizzle and sputter. Stir in until the caramelising liquid cooks off almost entirely
Add the noodles and stir in so that the sauce and other ingredients are evenly distributed among the noodles. If necessary, add a little more water to prevent sticking. In most cases the noodles should cook no longer than 4mins or so. However, play it by ear —both woks and cookers vary. Once all of your ingredients are optimally cooked, remove from the heat, cover and allow to rest for a few minutes
Then plate and take to table, serving with your spicy cucumber salad
Alternatives
As with other stir fry dishes, tofu, large Quorn pieces cooked in the style of the chicken or additional mushrooms offer the best vegan and vegetarian alternatives (this is by default a dairy-free dish) for this recipe, cooked in much the same way and process.
For pescatarians, most forms of seafood work well, although you will need to cook the initial vegetables in the spicy sauce and only add you seafood (or fish) towards the end of the cooking process—roughly where the mange tout is added above.
Pairings
I've never had this dish with anything other than beer—which works very well—or soft drinks. All suggestions from budding oenologists are welcome...
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