I have a happy secret. I get as excited about cooking with colorful veggies as my Little Samurai. You should have seen him beaming while choosing ALL the colors of the rainbow when we bought these bell peppers. He later helped me cut them with his knife, solemnly tasted each one of them and decided that the red peppers are sweet, the orange are like oranges and the yellow smells like lemonade. Yep, the lad has a nose for food just like me. The orange bell pepper does remind me of mandarins and the yellow is certainly citrus like! And I can obviously go on and on. So before I do that let’s get back to the recipe at hand, Three Pepper Sticky Stir-fry!
That does look tempting doesn’t it? If you are the stir-fry kinda person like me, you should be officially drooling by now or at least mentally rummaging through the vegetables in your refrigerator!
Ingredient prep is fairly simple. Chop up your garlic and ginger and juice the lemon. Slice the bell peppers into halves lengthwise, de-seed and cut them into squares. neatly trim off the stalks bok choy from the bundle and wash thoroughly; leaving the leaves whole. Measure out the soy sauce and the Kecap Manis or sweet Indonesian soy sauce if you prefer to call it that. By the way, this is not as exotic as it sounds, you can pretty much find it in any grocery store!
Mix together the Kecap Manis, soy sauce, corn starch and lemon juice for the marinade in a large bowl. Marinade the chicken in this for at least 2 to 4 hours. Once it is ready to be cooked, coat the chicken pieces well with dry flour.
Heat 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a wok and fry the chopped ginger.
Turn the heat on high and add the floured chicken pieces to the oil, do not toss or stir-fry. You can also dip the chicken pieces into a flour batter and deep fry but I prefer to do minimum deep frying.
Once the chicken pieces are a caramel brown from the base, flip them over and brown from the other side. Since this is done on high heat, the center of the chicken pieces should remain pink and undercooked which is exactly what we want so that the chicken remains tender and juicy, especially if you are using chicken breasts. Remove the chicken onto a plate making sure the pieces are not overlapping one another and cool quickly.
Gosh! I do seem to drone away this chicken sermon in every stir-fry recipe don’t I?
Next, in the same wok heat 2 tablespoons of oil and add the garlic and fry till light golden.Add the Indonesian sweet soy sauce. Let thicken slightly and add the soy sauce and the cornstarch slurrry.
Once it starts to bubble add the chicken back to the wok.
Add the gorgeously…sigh… vivid...sigh… bell peppers into the wok.
Toss for no more than 30 seconds. You want the bell peppers to remain juicy and crunchy and NOT LOOSE COLOR. I mean, common… if you lose those stunning warm colors; it will be a sheer waste of all the effort!
Add the bok choy on low heat, toss again and remove to the serving platter immediately. You can also do this off the stove top. Bok choy is rather delicate and it shrivels up quickly when exposed to heat..
Trust me this is delicious. If you like Orange Chicken or Sweet and Sour stir-fries you are bound to love this.
Enjoy with steamed sticky white rice or with your favorite noodles!
Ingredients
500 grams / 2 Cup Chicken Cut in Cubes - Breast or Brown Meat (or Beef)
½ Cup Flour – For Coating Chicken
1 Large Red Bell Pepper – Deseed & Cut into Squares
1 Large Orange Bell Pepper – Deseed & Cut into Squares
1 Large Yellow Bell Pepper – Deseed & Cut into Squares
1 Bundle Bok Choy
1 Tablespoon Garlic – Finely chopped
1 Tablespoon Ginger – Finely Chopped
3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
6 Tablespoons Kecap Manis/ Indonesian Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Corn Starch Dissolved in ¼ cup water
5-6 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
For the Marinade
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoons Kecap Manis/ Indonesian Soy Sauce
Method
Mix together 1 tablespoon each of the Kecap Manis, soy sauce and lemon juice to prepare marinade.
Coat the chicken cubes with marinade for 2-4 hours.
Finely dice the garlic and ginger.
Cut bell peppers in halves lengthwise, deseed and cut into 1 inch squares.
Trim the stalks of the bok choy and wash well.
Once marinated, toss the chicken in the flour so that each piece is well coated.
Fry ginger in 3 tablespoons of oil on high heat and add the chicken. Do not toss.
Once the chicken pieces turn brown from the base, flip over pieces and brown from
Remove the chicken onto a plate.
Heat 2 tablespoon oil and lightly fry garlic.
Add the 6 Tablespoons of Kecap Manis and the 3 Tablespoons of soy sauce.
Add back the chicken.
Thicken slight with the corn starch slurry and reduce sauce on high heat.
Reduce the sauce till thick and glazed.
Just before serving, add the bell peppers and toss for 15-20 seconds.
Add the bok choy, toss to mix and serve immediately
Enjoy with steamed white rice or noodles.
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