Five spice & honey chicken with mushroom noodle stir fry

Well this is the one that very nearly didn't happen.

The menu plan this week has had several different re-writings and re-shufflings largely due to circumstances changing at the last minute.  As a result, this recipe got bounced off the list, then I forgot to get something else out of the freezer and suddenly it was back on again!

I'm glad I made it though, as it was really rather good.

It's all part of my on-going love affair with the chicken leg.  As I've said before, I like chicken breast meat well enough - I just prefer the darker meat.  As our butcher sells 5 good sized chicken breasts for £5, I'd been having that right up until it suddenly dawned on me that if I bought a chicken leg at the same time, that amounts to two dinners (three breasts/two breasts & a leg) as opposed to one and a bit.  I know, I can't believe I didn't work this out sooner as well - but sometimes the obvious is the last thing we notice.
 

 All dressed in their spicy goo and ready for the oven

Well, I've done chicken in curry, chicken in citrus, chicken in a hat (alright, maybe not in a hat) but whatever there is to put chicken in, it feels like I've put it in it.  However, up until now, I hadn't investigated the Chinese 5 spice route.  Can't say that any more!

As I was pondering on what to put with the 5 spice, I had the dulcet tones of hubby running through my head.  He was expounding on the fact that "the Eastern thing is the balance of salty/sweet/ sour etc.", so I kind of went along with that - except I totally missed out the sour thing.  As they say in America, "so bite me".  (Except, I'd really rather you didn't, on the whole).  What I wound up with was the 5 spice for flavour, rapeseed oil to encourage the cooking and crisp up the skin on the chicken leg, honey for the sweet (and to caramelise slightly, which always looks great), soy sauce for the salty, a cheeky pinch of dried red chilli flakes for interest - and thought "that'll do!".  Yes, I could have gone the whole hog and added some lemon juice, or vinegar or some other source of sour, but I was interested to know how the unbalanced version would come out.  As it turned out, it was very nice indeed.  (Thank goodness!).

Stir fry ingredients : check. But where's the noodles?

So, what to put with it?  After all, a woman (or her menfolk) cannot live by chicken alone.  (More's the pity).  Well, with it being Chinese 5 spice, stir fry was the obvious choice and as we still had to settle on a carb. of some kind, a noodle stir fry made sense.
 

Yum - looks healthy!

Now I know that stir fry isn't right up there on son & heir's list of favourite foods, but it's good for him to re-visit foods he hasn't enjoyed, every so often.  He appears to be over his mushroom dislike of earlier years.  Which is just as well, as Asda - in their infinite wisdom - decided to send us a mushroom stir fry pack instead of the Edamame bean stir fry pack such as I'd ordered.  ~shrug~  Oh well, life is all about making the most of what you've got, so that's what we went with.  Of course, the extra mushrooms I'd bought to pad out the Edamame bean stir fry were a bit superfluous, but I chucked them in anyway.   I'd also ordered a pack of mange tout peas - some for the stir fry and some for a salad later in the week and they went in too.  They added a lovely sweet note to the veggies, which would have been a bit cabbage heavy without them.  Yes, Asda's "mushroom stir fry" turned out to be more of a "cabbage stir fry with the occasional mushroom", so it was good that I had a few extra.

At one time, I'd have been happy to have just had the veggies stir fried along with the chicken, but these days I think it is important to have a little carbohydrate in your main meal.  The end result of not having carbohydrates, is just that everyone starts reaching for the bread or crisps at around 8pm.  Truth be told, they do that anyway - but with rather less conviction if they've had carbs in their meal.  Now, because I was including noodles in the stir fry, this meant I needed to also come up with some kind of sauce to include in the wok which would lubricate the noodles and prevent that clagginess that they can sometimes have.  I'm not sure what I had against sour notes for this meal time, but they were very definitely off the menu as I decided to go with the classic dark soy sauce/light soy sauce/mirrin/fish sauce combo - which worked as perfectly as it always does.  This sauce combination gives such lovely colour to your stir fry and more to the point, gives a lovely rich flavour.

Now, a word must be had as regards oil.  If you've been reading along over the years, you'll know that I fairly recently eschewed the use of olive oil in favour of our lovely locally produced rapeseed oil - for the health benefits as much as anything.  As much as I love my rapeseed oil, it does have the unfortunate habit of spitting every flipping where if you use it at high temperature.  I've got a bit fed up with it doing that - and consequently ruining whatever I happen to be wearing at the time, as I've pretty much always forgotten to put an apron on.  We've always got sunflower oil in the house, as there are just some things that are better fried in sunflower than rapeseed (not many though, I'll grant you that!).  However with a stir fry, because the veggies are fried for so short a time it always feels as though the oil is much closer to the surface than with other types of cooking and consequently, you want an oil that has a lovely flavour.  My oil of choice is groundnut oil.  Not surprisingly, it has a lovely, light and delicate nuttiness that goes so well with stir fry dishes and complements curried dishes too, without any of the heaviness that accompanies a mixed vegetable oil or indeed olive or rapeseed.  If you haven't tried groundnut oil, I heartily recommend you get some in and give it a go.  Not as your everyday oil - you want something healthy and full of the lovely omega fats for that - but for stir fries and curries.  You'll be surprised.

So there we have it!  I don't have any special points to make as regards the cooking, as that is simplicity itself.  As regards the chicken, you can cook the breasts for the same time as the legs, so long as you remember to joint the leg portion.  Just cut across the hinge joint and separate it into a drumstick and a thigh.  That way it will cook a lot more quickly and correspond with the time it takes the breast to cook.

Use your own choice of stir fry veggies - they all take roughly the same amount of time to cook.  Just remember if you're adding any extra veg., to cut it into similar sized pieces so that it all cooks in the same time scale.  I sliced my mushrooms and cut the mange tout peas into three, which did the trick.

Mmmmn .... yummy chicken rules!


FIVE SPICE & HONEY CHICKEN with MUSHROOM NOODLE STIR FRY   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

3 chicken portions (I used 2 skinless boneless breasts and 1 leg)
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 tbsp runny honey
2 rounded tsp Chinese five spice
a good pinch of dried red chilli flakes
1 tbsp light soy sauce plus another 2 tbsp
a pinch of sea salt & ground black pepper
2 tbsp groundnut oil
4 large chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
40g mange tout, each cut into three pieces
400g pack of fresh stir fry vegetables (cabbage, carrot, beansprouts, pepper etc.)
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp mirrin
2 tsp grated ginger (from a jar, but feel free to use fresh)
3 sheets of dried egg noodles.

Method :

1.  Score the chicken breasts lightly across in a diamond pattern, to encourage the absorption of their marinade.  Score the leg portion similarly.

2.  In a bowl, mix together the rapeseed oil, honey, 5 spice, chilli flakes, 1 tbsp light soy sauce and some salt and pepper.   Add the chicken and toss until completely coated.  Allow to sit for as long as until you have the baking dish and veggies for the next stage prepared.

3.  Slice the mushrooms and mangetout and chop the garlic.

4.  Into a small bowl, add the 2 tbsp light soy sauce, the dark soy sauce, fish sauce, mirrin and ginger and stir to combine.

5.  Place the chicken onto a baking dish with a lip - as it will generate some liquid that you don't want to spill all over the kitchen floor - and place into a pre-heated oven at 190degF/375degC/Gas 5 for 30 minutes or as long as until the juices from the chicken run clear.

6.  When the chicken has just 15 minutes to go, bring a saucepan of water to the boil and add the groundnut oil to a wok.  Heat the oil until almost smoking, then add the sliced mushrooms and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.  Add the contents of the stir fry pack, the mangetout and the garlic and stir fry until tender.

7.  When the chicken has just 5 minutes to go, add the sheets of dried noodles to the boiling water and simmer for 4 minutes or until the noodles are soft.  Drain and return to the saucepan.

8.  Add the soy sauce/mirrin/fish sauce/ginger mixture to the wok and allow to frizzle and reduce whilst you add the noodles.  Toss and stir to make sure the noodles are coated in the sauce and vegetables.

9.  Remove the chicken from the oven and serve with the noodle stir fry alongside.

Printable version

Sweet Chilli Pork Stir Fry - or "how to use the other half of your pulled pork"

This is the final destination of the other half of our pulled pork joint.

Now it was supposed to be a "sort of" roast dinner - with accompanying roast potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, Yorkshire Puddings and gravy etc.  However, we forgot to take one of the tubs of stock out of the freezer at the same time as the pork, which meant that we'd have to forgo using it to make the amazing gravy - which would be a shame.  True, I could have got it out anyway and defrosted it in the pan - but in the time before I was due to start making dinner, I started to think sideways.

Initially, I started to think about gravy alternatives such as making a sauce.  I contemplated fruity sauces, but couldn't think of anything that didn't demand going out to the local Sainsbury's for supplies - and I didn't want to have to do that.  I seriously contemplated making an onion sauce, mainly because I love onion sauce and haven't had it for an aeon.  I thought it would go quite well with the pork (even better with lamb - but we didn't have any of that) and onion sauce always goes well with vegetables and roasties.  However, when I contemplated the washing up that would result at the end of the dinner, that put me off the sauce idea completely.

After all, I'd have a pyrex dish for the pork to be heated up in, the roasting tray for the roasties and a pyrex bowl that I'd used to oil and season them in, another tray for the Yorkshires, the three-part steamer pan for the other vegetables - and that was before I'd begun to think about the gravy or a sauce!  I was going off the idea rapidly.

So I began to think even further sideways - about things that weren't roast dinners.  Now, what would I be likely to do with some leftover roast pork, if I wasn't going to make it into a roast?

Wraps - I could put it in wraps with some BBQ sauce.  Don't have any wraps though - and don't want to have to go out and get some.  A pie - it'd make a nice pie.  Mind you, then I'd have to make pastry - and I refer you back to the washing up problem.  So what doesn't make a lot of washing up?  Hmmn .. something made in the wok.  Aha - now we're onto something.  A stir-fry.  Oh, but son & heir doesn't like stir fries - and I don't have any traditional stir fry vegetables in.  Well yes, but this IS pulled pork we're talking about stir frying - and son & heir is a sucker for pulled pork.  Add some chilli to the lure and I'm sure he'll forgive the stir fry effect.  So what vegetables have I got?  A red pepper .. two courgettes .. the taggy end of a head of broccoli and plenty of onions.  Wish I had some mushrooms!

So okay, what sauce could I put the whole thing in?  I've got a Blue Dragon Black Bean sauce, but one won't be enough and anyway, I don't fancy the oh-so-savoury route.  Wish I had some Hoi Sin sauce!  I've got Oyster sauce .. hmmn, once again not enough.

It was about this time that I remembered I had a bottle of Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce in the cupboard that we'd not tried as yet.  I knew I also had a part-used bottle of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce in the fridge.  The sweet chilli was going down the right flavour route - sweet and hot - and the BBQ sauce would add the complexity to the flavours.  Add a little bit of Mirrin (Japanese rice wine) and a dash of Fish Sauce and I reckon we'd have it.  I had the bottle of Cider Vinegar standing by, just in case the whole thing came up too sweet - but didn't need it.

The vegetables behaved themselves in the pan and I even got to exercise a tip I'd seen demonstrated on the t.v. - that of stir frying the onions and peppers, then including a small amount of water in the wok and steaming the remaining vegetables for 2-3 minutes, before continuing the stir frying.  I did this just after including the broccoli pieces and it worked like a charm.  The combination of the two sauces was a complete masterstroke, if I say so myself - and the whole thing came together in what felt like minutes.  The washing up consisted of two pans and a chopping board - can't complain about that - and best of all, it was flipping delicious.

As a last-minute avoidance of making a roast dinner, I'd say that was a complete score!

As regards the Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce, what a winner that is!  I'd already got a huge bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce on the go - and had been waiting to finish that before breaking out the Mic's Chilli version.  However, the Thai one is so rampant with garlic that I didn't fancy including it in the stir fry or we'd have been burping garlic for ever more.  Mic's Chilli's Sweet Chilli Sauce has a degree of garlic - much as you'd expect - but it also has some lovely deep toffee flavours going on in there.  The chilli effect, for all that it declares itself to be just "one chilli hot" was still pretty darned awesome when combined with a dash of Chinese five spice and the BBQ sauce!

So there you are - want something different to do with the other half of a pulled pork joint?  Raid the fridge! 


SWEET CHILLI PORK STIR FRY   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 medium onions, peeled, quartered and sliced thickly
1 red capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and sliced thinly
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 courgette, sliced into batons
4 broccoli florets, quartered
500g cold cooked pulled pork
100ml sweet chilli sauce
75ml barbecue sauce
1 tbsp Mirrin
1 tbsp Fish sauce.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the onions.  Cook on a high temperature until softened and just beginning to caramelise, stirring all the time, then add the red pepper.  Continue cooking and stirring until the red pepper has softened.

2.  Add the five spice and stir to combine.  Add the courgette pieces together with the broccoli and continue to cook and stir for another couple of minutes.  Add approx 100ml of warm water and cover the pan.  Let the contents steam for around 3-5 minutes, pausing to stir once in this process.

3.  Add the pork, chilli sauce, barbecue sauce, mirrin and fish sauce and stir to combine.

4.  Turn the heat down and cook for another few minutes, to allow the flavours to marry up and the pork to heat through sufficiently.

5.  Serve on a bed of white rice.

Printable recipe

Stir-fried pork with ginger & honey : another quick, satisfying supper

Harking back to the previous post (Lemony Prawn & Chorizo Rice), this is another one cropped from the Good Food Magazine.

February's magazine seems to have been a fund of interesting recipes, perhaps because the emphasis is on "healthy" instead of "expensive indulgence".  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a bit of expensive indulgence - but after Christmas and New Year I find I start hankering for sausage & mash, or meatballs & pasta.

Well, this recipe isn't either of those - but it was completely gorgeous.

I'm always keen on a stir fry and a stir fry that involves noodles and pork?  Well immediately I'm interested.  Ordinarily, I'd have got six pork steaks from our local butcher to do this recipe.  However, having bought a pork fillet for the Ballotines, I realised that - at the moment - it's an affordably good source of extremely lean pork.  Unlike the Ballotines, if you're buying just the one fillet then it becomes almost affordable as there is so little waste.

Hubby really liked this dish - as did I.  The only tweak to the original recipe I made beforehand was the inclusion of a red pepper along with the green.  That was largely because I had a spare red pepper sitting in the fridge without a home to go to.  In retrospect, I think I would add some mushrooms to it as they would fit very well within the flavour profile and just add to the interest.

Of course, this then places the stir fry completely outside of son & heir's comfort zone.  He'll eat the pork, noodles & mange tout happily enough, but the peppers received a big negative, as would mushrooms.  In fact, I'll keep on serving this sort of dinner up to him from time to time, ever hopeful that his taste buds will have matured and he'll find the vegetables palatable.  Well, it might happen!

STIR FRIED PORK WITH GINGER & HONEY    (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

3 nests medium egg noodles

3 tsp cornflour

1 tbsp water

3 tbsp soy sauce

1½ tbsp runny honey

1 tbsp sunflower oil

500g pork tenderloin (fillet) cut into thin bite-sized pieces

1 tsp ginger, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 green pepper, deseeded and sliced

1 small red pepper, deseeded and sliced

a handful of chestnut mushrooms, sliced

150g mange tout

1 tsp sesame seeds.

Method :

1.  Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the noodles according to the pack instructions.

2.  Mix the cornflour with the water, soy sauce & honey and set aside.

3.  Heat the oil in a wok or deep frying pan over a high heat until it’s as hot as you dare.  Then add the pork and cook, stirring regularly, until browned all over.

4.  Add the ginger, garlic, peppers, mushrooms and mange tout and cook until the peppers are demonstrably softened.

5.  Reduce the heat, then add the soy and honey mixture, stirring until the sauce bubbles and thickens – which will be just a moment or two, so don’t leave it!

6.  Add the drained noodles and toss to combine, then serve adding a sprinkling of sesame seeds at the last minute.

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