Stir Fry Long Bean and Chicken

Yesterday, Hub bought a bunch of long beans. I am so so so terrified of snake even if it is an image of a snake in books or on TV. So I don’t really like to cook long beans. But whenever I have to cook them, I would get my son to cut it for me.

Buy the one that have no black spots, flexible but not limp and do not look dry. I am thinking of growing them when we move to our new house in Tuaran in June. Yes, we're moving again! After spending 5 years in Kota Kinabalu, we've decided it's time for us to pull up our roots and to take the next step. A decision that was not easy to make.

When we moved to Kota Kinabalu five years ago, our plan was to stay here for just one or two years then move back to Kuala Lumpur. But one year became more than five as we got comfortable in Kota Kinabalu. My daughter is not excited about moving there though.  

I will be sure to document our whole moving experience. I’ll miss living in Kota Kinabalu dearly since it has been home to us for so many years but this is not a goodbye as I’ll still be working here and my daughter will still be attending the same school. 1 hour commute to work and school! My current commute is about 10 minutes by car as my workplace is about 10 miles away from where I live. At my old job we had a girl who commuted three hours both ways. 

If it's all highway then I guess an hour is no big deal but inching through heavy traffic for an hour, I don’t know……

Stir Fry Long Bean and Chicken

Ingredients

½ skinless and boneless chicken breast - cut into strips
5 slices of ginger - cut into thin strips
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon palm sugar / sugar

1 tbsp fermented soy beans

10 pieces of long beans – cut into 1½ -inch length
4 tablespoons cooking oil
1 clove garlic – peeled and chopped

5 tbsp water
½ tsp light soy sauce

Directions

Heat up 2 tbsp of cooking oil in a wok and sauté the ginger strips until aromatic. Add in the long bean and light soy sauce. Stir fry for about 30 second. Add 3 tbsp of water, do a few quick stirs then cover the wok. Cook for 1 minute or until the long beans is half cooked. Dish out.

Heat up another 2 tbsp of cooking oil in the same wok and sauté the garlic until aromatic. Add the chicken strips and the fermented soy bean. Stir-fry until the meat is fully cooked.

Season with oyster sauce, sweet soy sauce and palm sugar. Stir and toss all ingredients together then add in about 2 tbsp of water. Stir and cook until the sauce is thickened then dish out and serve hot with steamed rice.

Simple Pandan Chicken (Chicken Wrapped in Screwpine Leaves)

I just love everything with pandan. This is my favourite way of cooking chicken. Moist and tender. I prefer to enjoy this thai inspired dish without any dip. Quite an easy dish to prepare and the only arduous work is wrapping the chicken one by one. It doesn’t matter how you wrap the chicken actually, just cover most of it.

Simple Pandan Chicken (Chicken Wrapped in Screwpine Leaves)

Ingredients

600 gm boneless chicken 

2 tsp turmeric powder

2 tsp fennel powder

2 tsp chili powder

2 tbsp oyster sauce

½ tsp salt / fish sauce

2 tbsp sugar

4 - 5 shallots – peeled and blended

4 lemongrasses (white part only) – blended

Pandan leaves – use the broad and long pandan leaves for easy wrapping

Directions

Cut the chicken into bite pieces. Set aside.

Blend the shallots and lemongrass. Do not add too much water in the blender so that the paste will not be too runny.

Marinate the chicken with all the ingredients for 1 hour.

Wrap each piece of the chicken with pandan leaves by folding the leaf to form a pocket to hold the chicken. Then insert the tip of the leaf through the gap between the leaf and the meat to fasten the pocket. This is how I normally do it. My sister finds this method tricky and she would just roll up each chicken pieces with the leaf then fasten with a toothpick.

Deep-fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towel.

Serve.