April 19, 2012 Dinner - Stir Fried Chicken and Vegetables.

April 19, 2012 Dinner - Stir Fried Chicken and Vegetables.

Suzette sometimes puts time limits of how long we can keep leftovers by usually saying, “If we do not use this tonight, we will have to throw it out tomorrow.”   So tonight the PPI roasted chicken from the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery faced that fate. We agreed that a stir fried dish would be fine and I looked through the fridge and baskets for other late term leftovers.  I found a moldy brown onion and three Mexican Squashes and the old box of baby portabella mushrooms and a couple of baby bok choy that needed to find a home in a dish. 

I made 1 ½ cups of Basmati rice with three cups of water, a little Knorr dried chicken stock and when that came to a boil, 1 ½ cps of dry rice and boiled that on low heat for about 23 minutes, when I smelled that all the water has been absorbed.  Our gas stove does not have a very good adjustment for really low temp cooking

Then, I chopped everything into ½ inch cubes and sliced the mushrooms and divided the ingredients into bowls depending upon cooking time: onions and squash in one, baby bok choy and mushrooms in another and chicken and about ½ cup sliced water chestnuts in another. 

Then I minced about 1 Tbsp. each of garlic and ginger and we tossed that into a heated wok with about two Tbsp. of peanut oil and then after a minute of sautéing added the onion and squash.  After that cooked for about ten minutes on a relatively high heat, we added the bok choy and mushrooms and chicken and then added 1 tsp. of sesame oil and 1 ½ Tbsp. of rice cooking wine and covered the wok to steam a bit. 

Then we added about three Tbsp. of Suzette’s Mu Shu cooking combination of dark soy and rice wine and sesame oil and a bit of water to keep the sauce from drying out and burning on the bottom of the wok.

I then made a thickening mixture with cornstarch, regular soy sauce, rice wine and a dash of sesame oil and about three Tbsps. of water and threw that into the wok.

The dark soy in the Mu shu sauce stained and coated the other ingredients with a dark brown, almost black colored sauce.  I added water to get the sauce to a thick soupy consistency and then we served the stir fried chicken in a bowl filled with a pile of rice, so that the sauce also coated the rice.  The sauce had a rich savory flavor and depending upon whether you think soy has much salt, salty.

I drank water. 

Although it probably does not sound very appetizing I found the dish to be very satisfying.  Suzette was still hungry, so she took more vegetables.  Healthy and low fat.  .

Bon Appétit