Clockwise from top : vegetarian kidney, ginger, spring onion, dried chillies, onion and capsicum
Over at the Flickr group, we share some recipes once in a while. It is rather fun because the members come from all over the world and we learn something new about each other foods.
Few days ago, we discussed about kungpao, which is a spicy Szechuan recipe. The above is a photo of the raw ingredients. This is a very versatile dish because you can substitute the main ingredients with anything you like. I made mine with vegetarian ‘kidney’ which is a mixture of yam powder and konyaku powder.
RECIPE FOR KUNGPAO VEGETARIAN
One onion – quartered
Thumb size ginger – sliced
Two stalks spring onion – Cut the white part and green, separate them
One small capsicum or any type of vege*
5-8 dried chillies (soak in hot water, remove seeds)
300gms of main ingredients ** (choices will be provided later)
Sauce
3 tablespoons thick soya sauce
1 tablespoons light soya sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
Optional (if you have them in your kitchen, use them. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter)
1 teaspoon Shao Hsiang rice wine
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
Few dashes fish sauce
3 tablespoon oil
Method :
Heat oil in wok until smoking hot. Put in onion, ginger, white part of the spring onion and dried chillies. Fry for a while until the whole house is sneezing and the onions begin to brown! Serious, that’s how kungpao stir fry is suppose to cause.
Add in the main ingredients, add the sauce and fry until cooked. Taste and add more sugar if it is to your liking. Just before dishing out, add in capsicum and green leaves of the spring onion. If you like, you can add in cashew nuts (I got mine but my kids finished eating them before cooking)
*Choice of vegetables – You can substitue capsicum with one stalk celery or some cauliflower or any type of vegetable. You may also omit this.
**Choice of main ingredients – Chicken meat cubed, squid rings, soaked brown squid, any type of vegetarian food like vege. prawn, gluten balls, shell fish like mussles or even shark’s meat or any type of firm flesh fish. If using seafood or meats, it is always good to sear them before adding to fry. This will remove all the water. Otherwise, the kungpao will turn ‘watery’ and will not taste as good. Just heat pan and drop the meat/seafood to fry for less than a minute.
fish fish, This is for you!
