Stir – fried chicken, mushrooms and peas

November 19, 2009 • Hello. I am currently out of the country and unable to respond to comments and e-mails. Rest assured, however, that future posts have been scheduled so new recipes will go live almost everyday during my absence. I'll be back soon with lots of stories and photos. Ciao for now! ~ Connie
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Stir-fried chicken, mushrooms and peas

When I first learned to stir-fry the Chinese way, I always added a little sauce thickened with cornstarch or tapioca starch. That was the way Stephen Yan did it in his Wok with Yan. It was from that 1980s TV show that I learned about stir-frying.

Stir-fried Chinese style dishes are meant to be consumed right after cooking. They are not designed for reheating. But, sometimes, we cook too much and there are the inevitable leftovers. This is especially true when the stir-fried dish calls for too many ingredients in small quantities. If the recipe says, 1/2 c. of broccoli florets or 1/2 c. of diced carrots, well, the tendency is to use an entire head of broccoli and one whole carrot because, otherwise, we accumulate bits and pieces of cut vegetables in the fridge which, most often, becomes wasteful. The result is that we cook more than we can consume for one meal and we store the excess in the fridge as leftovers.

Reheating stir-fries is especially problematic when the dish’s sauce is has been thickened with cornstarch or tapioca starch. If I heat it in a saucepan, it gets too dry. If I steam it, the vegetables get overcooked. Reheating in the microwave, covered, seems best.

Great, but not everyone has a microwave oven. To be honest, we never had much use for our microwave except for reheating leftovers. I never could get the hang of cooking in it. I’ve wasted enough money buying all those microwave cookware and I still find my trusty old stove much better for cooking our meals. The microwave has become an “ornament” in the kitchen until we finally decided to put it in storage. Whenever we have leftover stir-fries, I recycle them into something else instead of simply reheating them.

Still and all, I wanted to try some other solutions to make stir-fries just as good after reheating as it was when it was cooked. Just for kicks. So I thought I’d try creating a stir-fry dish without the usual thickened sauce. Problem is, I never did get a chance to reheat this chicken-mushrooms-peas stir-fry. We had no leftovers.

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June 2, 2004  Print This Post   
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Comments

2 Responses to “Stir – fried chicken, mushrooms and peas”
  1. Charie Watson says:
    August 1, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    i always forgot the oyster sauce hehehehe…ill use toyo na lang, ang hirap kc maghanap dito sa USA…anyway way back when i was 8 or 9 im a fan too of wok with yan kakaaliw kasi cya magluto ang galing-galing…i never close your site since i found it, im cooking almost all of your recipe and its really a hit, like beef caldereta, it was my first time to cook it but it turn out fine, nagustuhan ng american husband ko, and since pregnant ako i really want to eat filipino dishes (i just arrive here last month june 28), your site is really heaven sent a million thanks to you…Mabuhay!!!

    Reply
  2. Connie says:
    August 2, 2007 at 2:09 am

    Naglilihi ka sa Filipino food? hehehe At least you can cook. Some pregnant women find the smell of cooking too much. :)

    Reply
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