I went grocery shopping at an Asian market the other day, just to see what the produce was like, and had an eye-opening experience. Just 20 minutes from home, the Good Fortune Market in Arlington, VA, was enormous, immaculate, and full of exotic and enticing raw material for cutting-edge food. My goal was to find some Chinese flowering leeks for this chicken and leeks recipe, but I started taking photos, buying fruit, ogling the live seafood in their aquaria, and things just grew from there…
Dragon Fruit
Chinese leeks are slender little things, about the width of a narrow straw, and they have a mellow, rich flavor that makes this chicken dish sooo good (and even better served cold for breakfast the next day.) All of the produce was bursting with freshness (they must have terrific local sources), and the prices at Good Fortune Market were so much lower that I now know this is a good place to shop anytime –not just when I’m buying specialty items for Asian food.
clockwise: guava, sweet melon, asian pear, dragonfruit, and lychee
The fruits were amazing – fresh lychee, sweet melon, dragonfruit, Asian pears, guava – I’ve thrown a few photos in here, to show you how easy it is to make a mind-blowing fruit plate out of these beauties. And the seafood, well, that’s another delicious post altogether. There are Asian markets all over the country, and it’s worth a Google to find one near you and give this recipe a try, or just pop in for a look around. It was like taking an exotic vacation that lasted an hour, and coming home loaded down with delicious souvenirs to pass around. (By the way, chicken with leeks is a simple yet sophisticated dish that you can put together in well under an hour. Served on a bed of rice, with a bottle of Tsingtao beer and some fresh lychees to peel for dessert, it’s like a quick trip to Hong Kong without the jetlag.) I hope you’ll give it a try.
Serves: 4
Prep time: 20 minutes plus 20 minutes to marinate the chicken
Ingredients
- 2 chicken breasts, skinless, boneless and cut into strips
- 4 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
- 2 thin slices of ginger
- large bunch of Chinese leeks, cut into 3-inch lengths
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoons soy sauce
For the chicken marinade:
Ingredients
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar
Directions
- Mix the marinade ingredients together and add raw chicken strips.
- Marinate the chicken for 20 minutes.
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in wok or large frying pan until smoking hot.
- Add chicken and stir fry about two minutes until chicken is cooked through.
- Remove the chicken and set aside in a bowl.
- Clean the pan and heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil until smoking.
- Add the ginger and the leeks.
- Add the oyster sauce and the soy sauce, while stirring constantly.
Cook for two minutes and add the cooked chicken. Mix well.
Serve with steamed rice.
