Hearty chicken breasts, sliced thinly, was our starting point this evening by tossing the strips into a peanut oil-lined skillet and letting them gain a bit of color. Fresh garlic, serrano chiles (to taste!) and a heaping scoop of trimmed snow peas join the chicken, along with a splash or two of broth (or water if you don't have any broth handy) to give the ingredients a little room to groove. No serrano chiles? Swap in a jalapeño instead, and with either, feel free to remove the ribs and seeds - however, then you won't get the heat as the title suggests! As this point, the skillet only needs to stay over the heat to finish cooking the chicken through and take off the raw edge of the peas, leaving them crisp-tender.Not bad, but it could come across a touch flat as is, so to bring the stir-fry to life, fresh lime juice, salty peanuts and a few torn leaves from our basil plants in the garden (use 'em if you got them!) were thrown in at the last second. Done in what felt like the blink of an eye, this dish was in and out of the skillet in just about 10 minutes! We often serve stir-frys over rice or noodles, but since I knew there wasn't going to be a ton of sauce happening here, I opted to forgo that this time. After eating, we both agreed this was a good thing for us as this was quite light, yet still filling enough with the chicken and peas, that we both felt satisfied and content without being weighed down.
Serving two as is, what's nice about this recipe is the ease of scale - halve the ingredients if you'd like to make a single portion, or double it for more! Life is getting crazier around here (more on this soon... and if you've been reading our site from the beginning, you can probably guess what is happening), so snappy dishes like this, that don't require much time to prepare and leave me little to clean, are a definite plus nowadays!
This was sooo delicious and so easy! I didn't have any basil, but it seemed perfect without. Thank you very much for the recipe and for the blog. I also tried the "big pot of water" method for cooking brown rice, and the grains came out tender and fluffy just as you said they would.
ReplyDeleteHi Fran! Thanks for the feedback - glad to hear it came out well!
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