Thai Style Szechuan Chicken
Chinese-style food is popular in Thailand, often the best hotels in Thailand have wonderful Chinese food. We've created this Thai-style Chinese szechuan chicken recipe using the rare szechuan peppercorn together with very hot whole dried chiles. It's cooked using alcohol, and we were lucky enough to have a bottle of Laotian whisky distilled from sticky rice, but you can use Wild Turkey Kentucky bourbon with good results.
The result is fairly spicy, so this isn't for people who don't like spicy. Something we love about this is the way the Szechuan peppercorn make your tongue tingle. It's also tastes great a day later, as a leftover reheated.
Ingredients
2 cups chicken, cut into half inch diced
2 tablespoons tapioca starch
2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup peanuts
9 whole dried chilis, chopped into 1/2" pieces
1/2 cup spring onion, chopped
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon yellow bean paste
1/2 teaspoon ground Thai chili pepper, fried in 1 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoons whisky (Wild Turkey works great)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Method
In a mixing bowl add chicken and tapioca starch, mix well. Heat oil in a wok on medium heat, add chicken stir to make sure the chicken pieces don't stick together. Fry until the chicken turns light golden color, about 8-10 minutes, remove and drain on paper towel. Pour the oil off, and leave about 1/4 cup in the wok. Add Szechuan peppercorns and whole dried chile, fry until fragrant, then add chicken, peanuts, yellow bean paste, fried ground chili pepper with oil, whisky, salt and sugar. Quick stir fry until cooked through. Add spring onion last, stir well. Place this on a serving platter. Serve with steamed jasmine rice. Enjoy!
Fruit Tea Punch
Ingredients:
2 Bags Golden Green tea
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup honey
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup fresh fruit, crushed
1 pint ginger ale
Method:
Make tea as per instructions on the tea bags. Allow it to cool. Mix all ingredients except ginger ale. Just before serving add ginger ale and crushed ice. If the punch is too strong for your taste you can dilute with ice water or more ginger ale.
Words and Definitions
Peppercorn n.= a dried berry of the black pepper
Wonderful adj. = exciting wonder : marvelous, astonishing <a sight wonderful to behold>.
Spicy adj.=having the quality, flavor, or fragrance of spice.
Tongue n.= a fleshy movable muscular process of the floor of the mouths of most vertebrates that bears sensory end organs and small glands and functions especially in taking and swallowing food and in humans as a speech organ.
Tingle v.= to feel a ringing, stinging, prickling, or thrilling sensation.
Tastes v.=to become acquainted with by experience <has tasted the frustration of defeat>.
Ingredients n.=something that enters into a compound or is a component part of any combination or mixture : constituent
Diced v.= to cut into small cubes <diced onions> .
Peanuts n.= a low-branching widely cultivated annual herb (Arachishypogaea) of the legume family with showy yellow flowers having a peduncle which elongates and bends into the soil where the ovary ripens into a pod containing one to three oily edible seeds; also : its seed or seed-containing pod
Stir v.= to cause an especially slight movement or change of position of.
Crushed v.=to squeeze or force by pressure so as to alter or destroy structure <crush grapes>.
Alen.=an alcoholic beverage brewed especially by rapid fermentation from an infusion of malt with the addition of hops.
Dilute v.=attenuate.
Except prep. = with the exclusion or exception of <daily except Sundays>.
Instructions n.= precept <prevailing cultural instructions>.