Revisiting My First Culinary Misadventure

Thursday, as you may know already, Gentle Reader, was quite the day for me initially. But thankfully my tooth issue was resolved (albeit in a longer-term temporary way) in 15 minutes, which enabled me to get supper ready and on the table well in advance of Kindergarten Orientation on what turned out to be a very rainy (praises be to the FSM!) Thursday evening.

Suspecting I'd be very pressed for time for preparing supper, I whipped out a recipe card from my stack that I knew had minimal prep time and minimal cooking time: The Faudie's Thai Chicken Stir-Fry. If you were back with me in early June, I mentioned the creation of this recipe in my very first culinary misadventure post. At the time, I didn't actually include the recipe, just the links to the recipes I based my creation on, nor did I include photos. So I'm taking this opportunity to remedy the situation.

Thai One On
If you're a fan of stir fry recipes, Gentle Reader, then you should stock certain ingredients in your pantry and freezer: soy sauce (I keep House of Tsang low-sodium on hand), rice vinegar or rice wine vinegar (I've read they're the same thing), frozen sugar snap peas, julienned carrots (or carrots you can julienne if you've got the mad knife skills), a red bell pepper or three, green onions, a can of water chestnuts and sugar or brown sugar. With those ingredients, you can stir up a delicious stir fry in no time.

If you want to get Thai with your stir fry, then I recommend keeping a bottle Thai sweet chilli sauce on hand as well. This stuff just rocks. I've seen it referred to as Mae Ploy sauce since that's the best-known brand of it, but it's not the brand I have (and I don't recall which brand I bought, so my apologies, Gentle Reader). You can also make your own if you're that industrious or anal about home-made stuff. However you go about getting your mitts on some, this sauce adds a terrific sweet heat to any dish.

When it comes to making stir fry dishes, some folks swear by their woks while others have sworn off woks because of uneven heating conditions. My wok came from IKEA back in 2000 or so, and while I've drooled over and had wet dreams about the Le Creuset one I saw in Round Rock about a month ago, I guess I'm going to have to be satisfied with my IKEA one because the residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker can't afford to drop that kind of dough on a kitchen item. Le sigh....

Anywho, whether you use a wok or a skillet or frying pan or crepe pan or saute pan, just make sure, Gentle Reader, that it affords you even heating. There's nothing worse than hot spots and cold spots in a pan because then your veggies and/or meat don't end up relatively uniformly tender and cooked. Just some advice from this faudie that I picked up from other places.

And when you choose your ingredients for your stir fry, go for color. You want the stir fry to visually pop as well as flavorfully pop in your mouth. Don't go for bland because eating and cooking are as much about tantalizing the eyes and the ears and occasionally the tactile senses as well as the taste buds. Your final doesn't have to rival Warhol's color palettes, but don't go for white-on-white mush.

Colorful, non?

Okay, enough preaching. Here's my recipe:

The Faudie's Thai Chicken Stir Fry1 (3.5 oz.) boil-in-bag long-grain rice or 6 oz. rice noodles
2 T sugar or sugar replacement
3 T low-Na soy sauce
2 T rice vinegar or rice wine vinegar
1 t ground ginger
1/4 C Thai sweet chili sauce
1 C julienned carrots
1 sliced red bell pepper
1/4 C water chestnuts, sliced and drained
1/3 C chopped green onions (about 3)
1 C snow peas
2 C cubed chicken breast meat

1. Prepare the rice or noodles and set aside.
   
2. Combine the sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger and chili sauce in a small bowl, then set aside.
   
3. Prepare the wok with either cooking spray or a small amount of olive oil then begin to heat it over medium-high heat.
   
4. Saute the carrots and bell pepper pieces (2 minutes).
   
5. Add the chicken and peas, cooking until the chicken is no longer pink (6-10 minutes).
   
6. Add the water chestnuts and green onions, sauting for another few minutes.
   
7. Pour the sauce over the meat and veggies, gently tossing said ingredients to coat them in the sauce.
   
8. Bring the contents to a boil for about a minute and a half, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens slightly.
   
9. Reduce heat and serve.

Sorry that I can't provide you with nutritional info, but you can check out the recipes for the Thai dish and the generic Asian-esque dish I...leveraged for my own dish. They both, I believe, include nutritional info, so you can get an idea of what my dish contains nutrient-wise.

Gorgeous, non?

Orientation
If you're curious, Gentle Reader, the boy's kindergarten teacher seems like an educator who has her wherewithall all within (er, whatever). Believe it or not, I'm thinking of volunteering at least once a week since I'll be working from home and will have time. With 19 kids in the classroom (which is a pretty small space)--including my rambunctious boy--she's going to need some help.