Chicken Chow Mein

Chow Mein - This should be a staple of everyone's cooking repertoire.  Chow Mein is easy to make and you can practically use anything you have in your fridge.

The recipe follows after the jump...

Here's what I used.

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 garlic cloves (depending on size, and how much you love garlic)
• 1 carrot 
• 1 large onion
  
• 1 bell pepper
• 1 head of brocolli
  
• 2 large chicken breasts
• Asian Noodles (preferably soft)
• Oyster Sauce
• Soy Sauce

*Living in Japan, it's pretty easy to get the noodles.  In other countries you should be able to find them in the Asian section of your supermarket.

On to the cooking.
1. Begin by chopping the vegetables.  We'll julienne them in about 3-4 inch strips. We do this so it's easier to eat them with chopsticks.

2. Roughly chop up the clove of garlic.  Add about 2 Tbs of oil to a frying pan and saute the garlic until it just start to turn slightly translucent.

Let the garlic fry in the oil a bit.  This will flavor the oil and cook the garlic at the same time.

3.When the oil and garlic have cooked a bit, add the onion and carrot.  Cook until onions start to turn translucent.

4.At this point, add the peppers and cook until they just start to look cooked. Don't cook them too long. 

5. Now we have this lovely little tree.  When you cut the broccoli, try to take your time and cut each piece off at a stem.  That way you don't have a lot of little bits of broccoli crumbs everywhere.

6.  Throw all that broccoli in and cook until just beginning to turn bright green.

7. Next, cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and toss all that in.  

8. Cook everything until the chicken is just slightly still pink inside.

9. Add the noodles now continue cooking.

10.Now add a good dash of soy sauce (I never measured it.  Just put some in there) and a good bit of oyster sauce until everything has a good color.

Stir it all up until everything looks delicious.

You can serve as is, or sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds on top.  Either way, this is a good quick dinner.

AFTERTHOUGHTS- 

The good thing about this dish is that you can substitute pretty much any vegetable for the ones I used here.  You can also use pork or shrimp instead of chicken, or if you like, use firm tofu, as long as it's solid enough.

Also, try to keep all the vegetables and meat in long pieces rather than small chunks.  This just makes it easier to eat with the noodles.