Maybe you know the feeling: You walk into a Chinese restaurant and open the menu. What do you order? You make a stab, but somehow, the dishes flowing to nearby tables of Asian families look a lot more enticing than the chicken warming your plate. The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of years.
When I was in college, my first real boyfriend came to home to meet my parents. He wanted to cook a stir-fry for the family (his first of many mistakes) filled with exotic vegetables and spices. While everyone politely pretended to enjoy the meal, I could see the wheels turning on how they could make it their own. On my next visit alone, my mom was excited to showcase her version of his dish that she been making twice a week. It included chicken, white rice and plenty of soy sauce – viola the Salty Chicken was born! It evoked some quite strong feelings from me. As far as I’m concerned, the idea of changing an international recipe because you don’t like an ingredient or want to make it more palatable is an abomination. There should be food police that can revoke your kitchen privileges as the crime sees fit.
When it comes to cooking ethnic food, Americans follow 3 rules of recipes: modification, diversification, and bastardization. The last is when we’ve hit the bottom and are scraping the barrel. You’ll have to excuse me if a raging torrent of vitriol exudes from the page because I get quite annoyed about this. Bastardization is the taking of beautifully time-honored recipes, techniques and traditions, then modifying them without taking ownership of them. It’s through this process that lovely, simple, powerful foods are taken and demolished into over-complicated and under-flavored pastiches of their original selves. Yes, I’m looking at you, America. You don’t need to omit spices and ingredients to make it ‘better’, you just need good food to start with.
Bastardizing dishes of an original, sacrosanct recipe is to debase it and betrayed its culinary intent. To utterly ignored the soul of it and then passed it off under the name is criminal. But just like my boyfriend, I traded his dish in for an improved and definitely more loyal version of authentic stir-fried rice and General Tso’s chicken. Tonight, I made my mother take a wok on the wild side, and she knows there is a cell in a nursing home waiting for her if she changes it even one little bit.
General Tso’s Chicken
INGREDIENTS
Chicken
- 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs cut into 1inch pieces
- 2 eggs lightly beaten
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup corn starch
- vegetable oil for frying
- 2 teaspoons sesame seeds
- 2 tablespoons green onions sliced
Sauce
- 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 3/4 cup chicken broth
- 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
INSTRUCTIONS
- Place the eggs in a bowl; add salt and pepper to taste.
- Mix together the flour and corn starch and place in a shallow bowl or on a plate.
- Heat 3 inches of oil in a deep pot to 350 degrees F.
- Dip each piece of chicken into the egg mixture, then coat in the flour mixture. Repeat the process for all of the chicken pieces.
- Fry 8-9 pieces of chicken at a time for 5 minutes or until browned. Repeat with all the remaining chicken.
- While the chicken is cooking, make the sauce.
- Heat the 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper flakes and cook for 30 seconds.
- Whisk together the chicken broth, hoisin sauce, brown sugar, soy sauce and corn starch.
- Add the liquid mixture to the pan and bring to a simmer. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until sauce has thickened.
Stir-Fried Rice
INGREDIENTS
- 3 tablespoons butter, divided
- 2 eggs, whisked
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 1 cup frozen peas and carrots
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- salt and black pepper
- 2 packs Uncle Ben’s Ready Jasmine rice, refrigerated
- 3 green onions, thinly sliced
- 3–4 tablespoons soy sauce, or more to taste
- 2 teaspoons oyster sauce (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
INSTRUCTIONS
- Heat 1/2 tablespoon of butter in a large sauté pan* over medium-high heat until melted. Add egg, and cook until scrambled, stirring occasionally. Remove egg, and transfer to a separate plate.
- Add an additional 1 tablespoon butter to the pan and heat until melted. Add carrots, onion, peas and garlic, and season with a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Sauté for about 5 minutes or until the onion and carrots are soft. Increase heat to high, add in the remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter, and stir until melted. Immediately add the rice, green onions, soy sauce and oyster sauce (if using), and stir until combined. Continue stirring for an additional 3 minutes to fry the rice. Then add in the eggs and stir to combine. Remove from heat, and stir in the sesame oil until combined. Taste and season with extra soy sauce, if needed.
