What most Americans know as Chinese food would be more properly termed American Chinese food, a category that includes chop suey and lemon chicken, dishes born in the U.S. Given, as Lee points out, that there are about 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., “more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined,” Chinese food might be our national cuisine. “Our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie,” she writes. “But ask yourself. How often do you eat apple pie? How often do you eat Chinese food?”

Source: West eats East — chicagotribune.com

This is a simple meal that tastes great every single time. You can vary the ingredients - making it spicy, if you like - and it still comes out great. And you can hyperfocus on other activities for thirty minutes at a time and this meal still comes out great.

INGREDIENTS

• Approximately 3-4 lbs of chicken parts such as breasts and drumsticks. Rinse them off in cold water
• 3 tablespoons of oil (vegetable oil is fine)
• 5 tablespoons of soy sauce (I use low sodium Kikkomann Soy Sauce)
• 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
• 2/3 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of chopped garlic
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in water
• Optional: 1 tablespoon of hot chili sauce (I like to use Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce…warning…use sparingly)

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat up the oil in your wok. Add the sugar and stir until it turns into an almost syrupy consistency.
2. Stir in the soy sauce.
3. Using a pair of tongs, grab a piece of chicken, roll it around in the sauce and place it on one side of the wok. Do this with the remaining pieces so that they have a light brown color.
4. Add the water and garlic. If you like, you can add that tablespoon of hot chili sauce.
5. Bring it to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer. Cover and forget.
6. Total cooking time is approximately 1 hour. At least once during the cooking process, move the pieces around in the wok so that they all get a chance to be immersed in the sauce.

NOTES

After about 45 minutes the meat will start to pull away from the drumsticks. That’s good! Keep it cooking…give it the full hour.

Take out the chicken parts and turn the heat back up so that the remaining sauce starts to boil. Let it boil at least 3 minutes. Then add the cornstarch/water mixture, stir till the sauce thickens and pour it over the chicken parts.

You might want to serve this with white rice so that you can pour that sauce all over the rice.

If you ever struggled to make Chinese food that tastes just like the food you eat in your local restaurant and failed at the attempt, then you MUST purchase The Shun Lee Cookbook by Michael Tong. So many of the dishes that we have come to know and love - Dry Sautéed String Beans, Sliced Chicken with Broccoli, Kung Pao Shrimp - are in this book and were created at the Shun Lee restaurants in New York. When I purchased the book, the very first recipe I tried was Sliced Chicken and Broccoli, the ONLY thing my younger daughter will eat in a Chinese restaurant.¹ I had tried numerous times to try to cook this dish and I failed miserably. I could not duplicate the silky melt-in-your-mouth texture of the chicken until I got this book.

Sliced Chicken and Broccoli Cooking in the Wok

If you’ve ever wondered how to create this seemingly simple dish or something a bit more exotic, like Kung Pao Shrimp, then you need this book!

1. To be accurate, she eats only the chicken…not the broccoli. [↩]

(From left to right) Sesame Oil, Bean Paste, Pocky, Chinese Dumplings

At another time…we’ll find out what I did with these ingredients (except for the Pocky…my kids eat it as soon as they see it).

I’m not sure if the first Chinese chefs were A.D.D. but I can tell you that nothing satisfies my A.D.D.ness like cooking Chinese food. First, it has many small, manageable tasks: chop up this, cut up that, measure out a quantity of that liquid. Second, it uses some special tools: wok and cover, cleaver, special serving plates. Third, it requires some esoteric knowledge: where to purchase ingredients like Shao Shing Cooking Wine and how to stir fry vegetables so that they are soft and firm.¹ The best part is that all of these ingredients and tools come together in a three-minute lightning round that is centered on the all-mighty wok.

Heat up the wok. Add the oil. Is it hot? Good! Add minced garlic. Do you smell the aroma? Beautiful! Now add your cooking wine/salt/sugar mixture. Listen to that sizzle! Can you detect the wine’s fragrance? Excellent! Add more ingredients. Grab the bowl of marinating chicken. Scan the kitchen for the broccoli. There it is. Toss it in. Stir it together. Watch the sauce thicken and the broccoli turn bright green. One more minute and….that’s it! Three minutes have passed and you are done! You’ve created order out of chaos,² a/k/a Sliced Chicken and Broccoli. You’ve satisfied your A.D.D. need for multiple activities while fulfilling your other A.D.D. need: sharing the food - and fun - with friends and family.

1. That only seems like a contradiction but if you’ve eaten broccoli or snow peas that still retain a small crunch and are deliciously soft as you chew them, then you know that this is not a contradiction after all. [↩]
2. However, see: Conservation of Chaos [↩]