Kung Po Chicken

My husband loves Chinese food and if both his jeans waistband and I would allow it, he would eat it every night for dinner.  Surprisingly this dish was a new one even on him and thankfully being home made is at least slightly healthier than the takeaway.  Trying to find a definitive recipe for Kung Po chicken on the internet was, predictably some might say, not an easy task. I was also hampered by not actually owning a wok and my one available frying pan being used for Ken Hom's egg fried rice (see earlier blogpost, I am now almost addicted to this stuff). It was also a weeknight meal so there was no way I was going to spend hours faffing about buying new ingredients I would use once in a blue moon, chopping, flavouring oil, deep frying etc.  In the end I took a few recipes I liked the look of and then combined them to make my own.  I was expecting it to be passable but require lots of tweaking but actually it was really quite good.  It wasn't a dish with a great deal of sauce and if that were a problem it would be easy to increase the quantities.  I know that no Chinese person or someone who knows anything about Chinese cookery would recognise this dish but we're pretty happy with it in my house and if anyone has a more authentic recipe they use please let me know.

Ingredients:

Two chicken breasts, diced

Vegetables knocking around in the fridge (in this case, mange tout, baby sweetcorn and a mushroom)

45g peanuts (non salted!)

For the marinade:

1 tbsp white wine

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp corn flour mixed with 1 tbsp water

2cm piece of fresh ginger, chopped.

For the sauce:

1 tbsp white wine

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp white vinegar

2 tsp brown sugar

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp garlic oil

2cm piece of fresh ginger, chopped.

Serves two

Mix together the marinade in a bowl, add the diced chicken and leave in the fridge for at least one hour.

Once the chicken has marinaded, heat the ingredients for the sauce together slowly. When the sauce is hot, add the peanuts and simmer for around 10 minutes.

Sauté the chicken and towards the end of the cooking time add the vegetables.  Once cooked, add to the sauce and simmer together for a minute or two.

Serve with egg fried rice and groans of happiness!