Honey and Five Spice stir-fry

[highlyeccentric]

This recipe began as the Honey and Five Spice Lamb from the Women's Weekly Modern Asian cookbook. Personally I've liked it better with beef, and chicken was delicious; and in fact it wouldn't require meat at all (perhaps halve the sauce/marinade if going vego, unless Tofu is involved).


This recipe requires: chopping, using a hot wok (if you don't have a wok, use a regular frying pan), several bowls
Advantages: It's pretty quick; if you stand your noodles in a bowl of just-boiled water, you don't need a second hot pot.
Dietary notes: Could probably be gluten free or vegetarian, if you swapped out the oyster sauce for something. Mushroom based oyster sauce apparently exists.



Sauce/marinade:
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
3 tbsp oyster sauce
1/4 tsp chinese five spice powder
2 gloves diced garlic/ 2 tsp minced garlic

Protein of some sort: about 2-3 chicken thigh fillets, or 2 porterhouse steaks or 2-3 lamb steaks.
Noodles of some sort: I suggest rice vermicelli or egg noodles. 4 whorls of egg noodles should be about right.

1. Mix up your sauces and dice your meat; stir together and set aside to marinade while you chop vegetables. Marinate meat in about 2 tbsp of the sauce.
2. Boil a kettle; place noodles in a bowl; pour water over top, cover, set aside.

Vegetables:
1 onion or 2 Scallions, diced
1 medium red capsicum (bell pepper), diced
6 button mushrooms, roughly chopped
3 shoots of choy sum, shredded
1 small can water chestnuts, drained
1 tsp minced ginger (or about 1 inch fresh ginger, diced finely)
1 tsp minced chilli jam

2. Heat some oil in a wok. Lift meat out of marinade with a slotted spoon, fry in batches in wok.
3. Return meat to wok; tip in the vegetables and stir-fry for about 1 min
3b. About this point, check on your noodles. When they're cooked, drain them and set aside.
4. Tip the remaining marinade/sauce into the wok, stir thoroughly until vegetables are just tender.
5. Tip the noodles in. Using whatever utensils you have, stir and prod and poke at them until they spread out and are suitably mixed up with the vegetables.

6. NOM.

Feeds 4, or thereabouts, depending on how much stuff you put in it. Vegetables can be swapped for... other vegetables.

Note: measurements are in Australian measures; tablespoons are 20ml but I don't imagine it makes all that much difference in this dish.

Ed, June 2013: Recommend adding dry-fried peanuts to the stir-fy

Comments

[waywren]

Just what is meant by minced chili jam? I thought I was pretty knowledgable, but the only things i Find when I google for that are things like jalapeno jelly. Is it a sort of thick red chili sauce like Sriracha?

[highlyeccentric]

Um... it's basically minced chillies preserved. I don't mean the thai chilli jam, just... preserved chillies. In absence of such things, diced red chillies will do the job!

[kayloulee]

On the jar of crushed chillies that Amy's referring to, it says that 1 tsp of it equates to 1 red chilli. I think that's more likely to mean a cayenne or a Thai birdseye chilli than a jalapeno, because the crushed chillis are pretty hot.