South East Asian food has now become a main stay on the Indian menu. Here is a fantastic dish with loads of tips to help you make a mouthwatering dish. Remember that south east Asian dishes are cooked for the table and not some curry that can be made in the morning and eaten for dinner.

Ingredients 

Chicken – 500 grams, boneless breast

For the batter

Egg – one

Corn flour – two table spoons

Pepper powder – 1 teaspoon

Chicken stock seasoning (Maggi cube) – 1 large

For sauce

Garlic – three tablespoons finely chopped

Green chillies – four large, sliced at an angle

Ginger – one teaspoon

Star anise – four

Sugar – one teaspoon

Soy sauce – one and half tablespoon

Oyster Sauce – One and half tablespoons

Capsicums – two large, diced thumb nail size

Spring onions bulb – five large

Spring onion greens – ten stalks, chopped fine

Corn flour – one tablespoon

Basil leaves – fifteen large leaves

Flat Noodles – one packet  

Salt and oil – as desired

Clean the chicken breast under water. Place it on a board with the narrower section facing you. Take a knife and at an angle cut thin slices with the knife cutting towards you. Place this in a bowl and add the ingredients for the batter as mentioned above and give it a good mix. In a pan, heat oil till it is really hot (not smoking but hot). Shallow fry the chicken but with a clear objective to sear the meat and not cook it completely. Do not add too many pieces to the pan or it will start poaching rather than frying. Set this aside. For 500 grams of chicken and a medium sized pan, you should be frying the chicken in three batches. Reserve any oil and fried residual in the pan and don’t wash your pan (Big mistake if you do). To the oil and residual bits in the pan one cup of water and give it a boil and set aside.

Now for the sauce

In a fresh large wok/ pan or pot add oil and fry in the garlic, ginger and green chillies. Now add the spring onion bulbs and capsicums. Give this a good stir while quickly adding the soy and oyster sauce. Drop in the pan fried chicken and quickly stir it in with the sugar adding the pan juices which you set aside. At this stage you may also have to add a cup of water to allow the chicken to cook for the next two minutes only on high heat. Make slurry of cold water and corn flour and add this in to thicken the gravy. Now add the basil leaves whole along with the chopped spring onion greens. Turn off the gas.

For the flat noodles

Boil the noodles in a pot of hot water which has salt and a little oil. The oil prevents the noodles from sticking. Noodles made of refined flour cook faster than semolina noodles (which I used). Once done, drain and lay the noodles  in a nice round dish or plate.  Spoon the chicken mixture on top of it or simply toss the noodles and the chicken with the sauce together.