Quick Raisukaree

This is one of my  Virtuous dishes!

It’s been a year since we moved to France and this year is the first season of the vegetable plot. I’ve tried to focus on the produce that costs the most so one of the ‘must haves’ was mangetout. It always seems to be imported and lasts a day or so in the fridge before going rather manky. Now I’m no gardener but I like to have a go so I got the seeds and  now I have nearly six feet of pea plants! It must be a combination of the ‘canicule’ or heatwave, and the brown water we use to water them, but through no effort we have hundreds of peas.

I don’t know what it is but eating mangetout always makes me feel virtuous, and as I’m trying to be good and it’s too hot to cook much this is a quick and easy recipe. Already I have been picking and chucking them in boiling water for one minute then into ice water for a minute. Then just chuck a handful in a bag and pop onto the freezer. Then when you have a curry, stir-fry, or fish dish it’s easy to add it frozen to the pan. In fact you can substitute much of this recipe so it can be whipped up in 10 minutes. You could also use prawns or squid straight from the freezer. It also works well with a piece of salmon. Let me know what you think!

The inspiration for this dish is the fact that living in rural France you just can’t pop out to  a favourite Asian restaurant but you can make a low fat dinner which is pretty close to the restaurant version, tasty and quick. It’s perfect after a hard  days work and is great for a dinner ‘do’ as it looks impressive if you put the rice in individual pudding basins to serve.

Here’s what you need for 4 people.

• 4 chicken breast or thigh meat, about 600g sliced thinly
• 1 red onion/a few shallots/spring onions/any old onion you have – wedged/sliced
• 1 red pepper sliced/frozen sliced peppers
• Handful mangetout/frozen green beans/ asparagus/ peas/baby sweetcorn/mushrooms
• I can coconut milk light (I buy bulk Maggi Powder as cheaper)
• Handful fresh coriander/frozen/dried
• 1 or 2 red chillies sliced/ birds eyes or flakes
• 1 lime quartered
• Glug of fish sauce (optional)
• 2 cloves garlic crushed (or cheat from paste)
• 10g or size 2 stock cubes grated ginger (or cheat)

How to do it  :

• Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok/large frying pan and add the chicken stirring constantly then add the curry powder, garlic and ginger for 1 minute.
• Add the onion/peppers for 2/3 minutes.
• Chuck in coconut milk then rest of veg, chillies and fish sauce and simmer until chicken is cooked.
• Chop the coriander stalks and stir through and scatter the leaves on the top.
• Serve with 200g basmati rice with black sesame seeds stirred through or noodles in the middle of a large bowl garnished with the lime.