Rasa Malaysia is the website presided over by Bee Yinn Low, a highly enterprising Californian woman who has 800 Pan Asian recipes at www.rasamalaysia.com. She is also quite the baker so you’ll also find a surprising number of recipes for all-American baked goods like Zucchini bread. I would be thrilled to have the kind of following she does: 2,000,000 ‘fans’ on social media alone! I love the ease of Asian stir-fries and their flavors. I am obviously not alone, given the growing number of Asian ingredients in my local markets. I don’t even have to go near Chinatown to find what I need for this recipe and you should not have trouble finding what you need. Bee Yinn Low has Americanized her recipes so that a walk down the Asian aisle almost always yields the ingredients needed to prepare one of her dishes. Today’s recipe is a simple Chicken stir-fry that you can get on the table in under 30 minutes…actually Bee clocks it in at 20 minutes. I’m giving extra time for chopping, mincing and dicing.
Complete prep is the key to cooking a stir fry. You need everything you’re going to use at your command before the garlic and all the other ingredients hit the pan. Because once your stir fry is started, it’s off to the races with no turning back. Bee lists the cooking time on this one as 5 minutes flat! I confess that mine stayed on the stove slightly longer so that the final addition of sauce could be absorbed by the chicken. The first time I made this recipe, I followed Bee’s admonition to rinse and drain the cashew nuts. The whole reason I made the dish a second time was because my cashews lost their crunch when I did that. This time the nuts went straight from their package onto the stove. They kept their crunch and that’s what I’d advise you to do here too. If you are a white meat chicken fan, go ahead and substitute boneless breasts for the thighs I used. It’s a personal preference but to me, thighs are much juicier and much more forgiving if they cook a little longer. Served with either white or brown rice, this should be on your cooking list. Here is the recipe:
2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
1. Heat up a skillet or wok and add the oil. When the oil is heated, add the garlic, onion, dried red chilies and stir-fry until fragrant or when you smell the spicy aroma of the chilies.
2. Add the cashew nuts and follow with the chicken.
3. Stir-fry the chicken until the surface turns opaque. Add all the ingredients for the Sauce into the wok and continue to stir-fry until the chicken is cooked.
4. Stir in the scallions, dish out and serve immediately with steamed rice.
