I’m so doing it again!!

I fancied noodles last night. Ken Hom was in Saturday Kitchen recently, making some chicken and telling the viewers that back in his restaurant days the Chinese chefs would serve chicken breast to the Europeans and the thighs to the Chinese customers. Well, for me it is always a thigh, unless I’m making chicken kievs. So much more flavour in a thigh! So it was only natural to go with Ken’s recipe.  The putrid shrimp paste has not made appearance in my pantry since that awful prawn dish, but that was a one off, there’s no doubt this boy knows his Chinese.

2  chopped boneless thighs sat in the marinade made of 2 tsps of soy sauce, same amount of Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp of sesame oil, 1/2 tsp of salt, quite a lot, and the same of white pepper.

Noodles cooked and drained sat drizzled with sesame oil, while I quickly stir fried the chicken, then removed it and threw 3 minced garlic cloves into the wok. Quite a lot of lovely, crunchy mange tout, chopped spring onion, noodles into that. Then a nice little sauce- exact same ingredients like for the marinade, plus a tsp of sugar and some extra sesame oil, just because I adore it. Chicken back in, a good toss of the wok and that was that.

The white pepper that I hardly ever use in my cooking was a revelation here. As was the rice wine. This is getting done again fairly soon!