Almost every day I whip up a quick lunch and/or dinner with this and a variation or two.

What you need

1/2 pound boneless chicken, cut into cubes. This serves one hungry David, but quantities are not set in stone.

1 tablespoon cooking sherry
1/8 teaspoon or so of ground ginger

sauce: 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of hoisin sauce. I sometimes add 1 heaping teaspoon of sugar when I'm in a sweet toothed mood.

Vegetables as you desire (see notes below)

1 clove garlic and 2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 handful cashews. I've found that whole cashews are only marginally wholler than cashew parts, so get the parts if it saves you money.

Directions

Mix the chicken with 1 tablespoon of cooking sherry and 1/8 teaspoon of powdered ginger, and set aside. Many recipes will require 1 teaspoon or even tablespoon cornstarch here, but I don't find leaving it out changes the final result much.

Mix 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce and optionally 1/2 tablespoon sugar in a small bowl. I find that if I'm in a sweet mood the sugar's good but I can leave it out and it's still tasty.

Cut up the vegetables. I use carrots, celery, a slice out of a bell pepper (red or green) and occasionally scallions and pea pods. Anything similar to this seems to work out pretty well.

Chop up your garlic into fine pieces (a food processor helps here).

Dribble the two tablespoons of oil into the wok. It's best to dribble them over the sides so that the inside of the wok is coated. If you don't do this, the chicken will stick to the pan. Dump the garilic into the wok and spread it around together with the oil.

The garlic will start to sizzle very fast if you're using a gas stove. It pays to wait about 20 seconds past when the garlic begins to sizzle, to when it really begins to sizzle and the oil starts splashing around. That means everything's super hot so you will have to move fast.

Dump the chicken mixture into the wok. The whole thing will make a dramatic sizzling sound and start smelling really good. Toss it around until it's cooked, maybe 2-3 minutes or when the liquid starts to disappear, which ever happens first.

Pour in the sauce. Again it will make an enormous noise if everything's going well. Toss the chicken in the sauce until fully coated. The original recipe says to turn down the heat at this time but I often leave it to high until ...

Dump in the vegetables, swirl them into the wok until well coated with the sauce.

Then throw in the cashews (about 1-2 handfuls is good) and swirl the whole mixture around a few times until mixed.

Pour it straight out on the plate and serve.

These portions feed one hungry David, who has a remarkable appetite. You can probably reduce the portions for someone with less of an appetite.

Varying the portions of the sauce, or even using entirely different sauce ingredients, prevents this from getting boring as a daily creation. Substituting Dynasty's Kung Pao sauce for the sauce mixture mentioned above produces Kung Pao chicken. Throwing in a few Chinese Chiles (sometimes labelled as Thai chiles) helps with the Kung Pao ambiance.

Hope you give it a try and report back how effective it was for you!

D

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That sounds really good. I'll have to give it a try next time I'm in the mood to cook...

Sue

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and it comes out, Beef with Onions is next!

D

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I will look forward to it!

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