Night 2 02/01/10 Chicken Stir Fry in Peanut Sauce

Hello blog readers! So tonight was the second night of the Hart's Cove Supper Club and tonights meal was a little more complicated than spaghetti and meatballs! Tonights recipe came from a classmate and dear friend Kyle K. who cooked this stir fry for us as a dinner party.

This meal was quickly cooked after leaving studio at 4, only to return again at 6 to do some beloved group work. The whole meal took about 30 minutes to cook. So here is the recipe:

Stir Fry:
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 bag of broccoli florets (I wouldn't recommend frozen broccoli for this one)
1 container of pre-slide baby portabella mushrooms
2 chopped green onions
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Sauce:
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon minced garlic
small dash of cayenne pepper

In a large skillet or wok, heat olive oil and minced garlic. Add the chicken and mushrooms together. (I found that if I add the mushrooms and then the chicken, the mushrooms are overcooked by the time the chicken cooks.) After about 5 minutes of the chicken and mushrooms cooking, add the chopped green onions and cayenne pepper. Keep stirring! Once the chicken is cooked through, add the broccoli and a small drizzle of olive oil. Keep stirring everything together to combine the stir fry. Let the stir fry all cook together for another 4-5 minutes.

While the stir fry is cooking, begin making the sauce. Combine the peanut butter, soy sauce, water, and garlic together and mix until it is a sauce consistency. You may need to add more water or soy sauce, depending on how thick or thin you want the sauce. I ended up adding about 2 tablespoons more of each. It also helps to pop the mixture into the microwave for 20 seconds to soften the peanut butter so it is easier to mix. After its all mixed into a sauce, all the salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste. I'd go easy on the pepper, as I always seem to add too much (but my roommate Pat thinks its got just enough heat.)

Once the sauce is made, add it to the stir fry and stir it all together. We ate it served over rice, but Kyle recommends it with lo mein noddles, which we will do next time.

TWO WORDS OF ADVICE:
1. Do not add the cayenne pepper to the oil while it is heating. This was suggested to me and somehow it stunk up the whole kitchen. It was hard to breathe without coughing because of how aromatic the pepper got. Pat literally walked in the door and started coughing. Don't do it.

2. Unless you are good at making stove top rice, microwave it. We at the Harts Cove Supper Club will be microwaving rice from now on, cause I suck at making it on a stove top. I got a little too ambitious with the stir fry, but now I humbly retreat back to microwave rice.

Tomorrow I won't be cooking because we have a night class on building economics! But I'll be back again Wednesday night! Don't know what we are making yet, but we just got a casserole and slow cooker recipe book, so get excited! Also, this weekend the Harts Cove Supper Club will be hosting its first annual Superbowl party, which will be a appetizer pot luck. I'll post my recipes and also some pics and details on what everyone else brings!

Cheers till then!