Chinatown style kung pao chicken with vegetables

Today Miriam, author of El Invitado de Invierno , brings us a recipe for chicken with vegetables, prepared in a traditional iron pan and seeking the appeal of the recipe in the way the vegetables are cut: with the help of spirelli , she obtains these spirals that make the recipe original and remind us of the noodles that are also typical of Asian cuisine. With its spicy touch, it is a delicious recipe that you cannot miss!

Today we're going oriental with this delicious chicken and vegetable stir-fry recipe, for which we've allowed ourselves to make some really cute zucchini spirals. This kung pao stir-fry is one of those sweet and sour and spicy dishes that is characteristic of certain areas of China, as it contains soy sauce, rice vinegar and chillies.

This recipe is taken from one of my favorite websites, Serious Eats , in particular from Mr. J. Kenji López-Alt, a theorist of good cooking who writes very interesting articles. In English, sorry. For the quick stir-fry as if in a wok I used my De Buyer frying pan , because it transmits the heat so well that they peel off.

The Sichuan dish is considerably spicier than the one we prepared because it has tons of Sichuan pepper and chillies; this is the milder version, adapted to North American tastes, that is sold in Chinese take-away restaurants in Chinatown, New York. This way you can feel like when our friends from Friends ate with their chopsticks from those characteristic little boxes that appear in all the American series and films. And they are all skinny. Oh, the magic of celluloid.

De Buyer Mineral B cast iron pan and Emile Henry Pavot Blue ceramic plates

Ingredients (for 4 people)

For the kung pao sauce:

• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp. grated fresh ginger
• mild oil (sunflower oil, for example)
• 240 ml dark soy sauce
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 115 ml rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsp. cold water
• crushed chillies to suit everyone's taste

For the chicken with vegetables:

• 500 g chicken meat (boneless breast or thighs)
• 1 bell pepper
• 1 medium zucchini
• ¼ of a spring onion
• 1 good handful of raw peanuts

Elaboration

1. We start by preparing the sauce: crush the garlic and grate the fresh ginger. Put the cornstarch in the water so that it hydrates. Crumble the chilli pepper, if you add it. If you don't like spicy food, adding one chilli pepper is enough.
2. Coat the bottom of a frying pan with a little mild oil and sauté the garlic and ginger mixture over high heat. When the seasonings begin to brown, add the soy sauce and deglaze.
3. Then add the sugar and rice vinegar, mix briefly and heat over medium heat until boiling. Add the cornstarch and mix vigorously as lumps will begin to form. Cook for a couple of minutes until thickened. Set aside.
4. We cut the chicken meat into not very large cubes and put it in a bowl to marinate with a couple of tablespoons of the sauce, for about 20 minutes.
5. Cut the pepper into small squares and the spring onion into strips. Cut the courgette into long strips using a spiraliser (if you don't have a spiraliser, cut it into thin strips), as if it were long pasta. Put the courgette in a colander with a little salt so that it releases water and doesn't water down the final dish.

Spirelli 2.0 spiralizer, Pallarès carbon iron knife and Emile Henry ceramic plate

Coat the bottom of a cast iron pan or wok with a little oil and heat over high heat. Sauté the chicken until it changes colour on the outside, but not on the inside. Remove it.

Add a little more oil and do the same with the pepper and spring onion, until they start to turn golden. Then add the zucchini, which takes less time to soften, and continue sautéing until the vegetables are a little golden but still crunchy. Also add the peanuts to sauté.

We lower the heat, return the chicken to the pan and add the sauce; mix well, turn off the heat and let it cook covered for a couple of minutes with the residual heat. You will see how the chicken and vegetables are cooked to perfection. Enjoy your meal, my dears.