There Are Times

When I think "God, I'm Good!" and do a sizzling finger mime in thin air. When the mood takes me I can really cook well, I'm not masterchef because I go for taste and enjoyment over presentation and poncerati-ness, I also avoid spending huge amounts on ingredients because it's just not affordable for me, but within those confines when I'm on my game I can whip a storm in the kitchen.

I would like to think that today was such a case. I thought I would do something inspired by a bath time read of the Wagamama cook-book we didn't have all the ingredients for an exact recipe from the book but we also have miso paste, mirin and fish sauce as well as soy and teryaki marinade in the cupboard as standbys.

I marinaded two large chicken breasts in a healthy splosh of rice wine vinegar, one finely chopped red chilli pepper and some crushed dried chillies (as I only had the one fresh chilli), one large finely chopped garlic, a healthy splosh of soy sauce, a slosh of fish sauce and a good dollop of honey, the sweetness counteracts the sourness of the vinegar so that's why I put it in, the last marinade I made was a bit too sour because I didn't put enough honey in. It doesn't make the marinade "sweet" it balances the savoury and makes it a bit more sticky.

one thinly sliced red onion and yellow pepper some more garlic and cos I remembered we had it about 1 cubed centimetre of fresh ginger sliced.

I cooked some noodles up before hand, enough for two, so they were ready to grab when the moment came.

So in the heavy iron griddle pan I heated up a little oil when that was almost smoking I put the chicken breasts on, cooking on both sides for roughly 4 mins each, in the mean while I made up about 150 ml of miso from one of the packets.

When the chicken was cooked I put it to one side to "relax", in the wok I quickly stir fried the chopped onion, pepper, garlic until the onions began to look translucent at that point I bunged in what was left of the marinade and the miso soup as well as the cooked noodles. Once that was cooked through, I let the miso reduce down a little the noodles mix was served up on to two plates. Finally I put a chicken breast on each plate and sliced them through for ease seeing as we were eating with chop sticks.

And it rocked even if I said so it was spicy and flavoursome and we both cleaned our plates.

I hope you don't mind but I've blogged this mainly as a reminder to myself of what I did for the next time I come to make it.