Szechuan Style Wild Chili Chicken with Asparagus
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If I had to pick my favorite from the different Chinese cuisines, I would pick Szechuan without a doubt. Szechuan cuisine is all about bold and spicy flavors, you know that is right up my alley. My only issue with Szechuan is that I can’t spell it right to save my life! Spelling has always been one of my weaknesses, thank god for spell checkers! One of our favorite take-out restaurants is called Szechuan Chef. For some reason I never bothered storing their number on my cell phone. So whenever I have to order take-out I just open up the search page and type in a variation of the word scezhuan / seczhuan / sezchuan chef in the search box, Bing is smart enough to know that I am indeed looking for Szechuan Chef! (Shameless Microsoft Plug: What?? You haven’t Binged yet? You must be living under a rock!)
Talking about spelling, can’t help my typos, I am pretty sure I’m a bit dyslexic. I also don’t get annoyed when people make mistakes like there vs their . Then there are those who deliberately misspell words – the so-called SMS generation! They annoy the heck out of me! Isn’t it harder to type every single word wrong than using the correct spelling when typing an e-mail or a blog post? Most of the e-mail clients and blog editors come equipped with a spell checker, so I am sure their screen will be filled with the annoying red squiggly lines! Just the other day I got a “frenship” request from a barely twenty year old guy with the comment “kuking so nice“. At first I thought he meant to type luking so nice, but then I suddenly realized it meant cooking. Sigh… if only these people spelled out the words, there wouldn’t be any confusion! I was happy there for a minute before reality hit me. I guess those days are behind me when random strangers wanted to friend me based on the looks; at least I still have my kuking skills!
Oh how I digress! I have no idea where I was going with all these! Oh yeah, Szechuan cuisine, my favorite Chinese cuisine! One of our favorite dishes at the Szechuan Chef is called Wild Chili Chicken – it is full of green and red chili peppers and it is HOT! I tried to recreate it at home, with some asparagus added in just so that we get our veggie fix as well. It didn’t taste anything like the restaurant version, but it did turn out pretty good! Frankly how can you go wrong with that many chilies in there!
Wild Chili Chicken with Asparagus
Ingredients
- 1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs (breast will work as well)
- 10 green chilies, sliced into half lengthwise
- 15 whole dried red chilies
- 2 tbsp thinly sliced garlic
- 1lb asparagus, ends trimmed and sliced into 3″ pieces
- 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tbsp rice wine
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp Tabasco sauce
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- salt to taste
- oil
Method
Trim the fat and cut the chicken into bite sized pieces. Season with salt and keep aside for 15 minutes.
Combine the liquids, cayenne pepper, salt and 2 tbsp water to make a sauce.
Heat about 3 tbsp oil in a wok or a deep pan and add the chicken pieces. Saute on high till the chicken pieces turn white and just start to brown a bit. Remove the chicken and keep aside on a paper towel lined plate.
Remove all but 1tbsp oil from the wok and return to the stove. Add the dried red chilies and saute for a minute. Now add the garlic, green chilies and asparagus and saute on high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken and stir well to combine. Add the prepared sauce and stir fry for about 3-4 minutes till most of the liquid is gone and the chicken is cooked through.
Serve hot with steamed rice.
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Category: Asparagus, Chicken, South East Asia
I have once tastes Szechuan (copy pasted
I am with you on the spelling. if you read my comments) and was hit by the strong and hot spices. I don’t dare to try again. But Sig this looks lovely…I have not eaten asparagus till now. Your bowl wants to try some sooner.
Hahaha was laughing at the Bing plug. God knows I plug in Google and all its products wherever I can, 99% of the time its unknowingly
That dish looks amazing Sig! Asparagus and chicken! Wowzie!
call it chicken chilli please… it’s like the chilli’s have some chicken for company
aww… you don’t wanna be frenship wid him or wat?
LOL! I agree I have trouble with the sms generation. especially with apps like twitter that allow only 140 characters only encourages this style. i always find it hard to keep it to the 140 and it frustrates me!
Anyway i luv ur kuking chick. Sorry i can’t do it – I love the chicken here. Perfect flavors and hot hot hot!
U r such a gud kook,
seshuwan chiken and aaal!
And no, Sig, it’s not harder to spell words wrong, not when you’re typing out a message on the mobile and don’t know how to use the text predict function (like me).
But e-mail and blogs are a different thing, though, I agree it takes time to frame a wrong spelling and type it. But maybe it doesn’t make a difference for those who can’t type fast.
LOLZ fren! Da chikin lukin gud! U bin kukin lot huh? Not to worryz – ya kukin’ an’ lukin’ gud.
Darn, those red squiggly lines do annoy the heck out me. I’m with you on Sichuan food. There’s a Sichuan restaurant here that serves a similar chicken dish, if you replaced all the asparagus in your dish with red-chili, it would look just like the one they serve! Super-hot but super-tasty.
I want to try the dish, Sig. I really do. But those 15 red chillies are staring at me. Maybe I’m staring at them.
But I guess the dish without that many chillies won’t be Szechuan anymore?
Mee too prefer Szechuan cusine in chinese as for the spicyness.
Never mae with green asperagus.
Looks so yumm.
Ditto here. I just can’t stand that style of writing
But, that’s such a prety looking bowl of food with the reds and greens; though, I must admit that the chillies will scare me off a bit. So,I’ll look at it and admire; Dinesh, however, will absolutely love it
Hymmm !!!that dish is full of colors…should taste gr8…
Yummy spicy colourful dish!
Oh and I thought I was the only person to get bugged with ..’wen u cme, c m, bibi..’ language!
Loved the ‘DISH’ fabulous picture.
I was laughing at that kuking so nice – maybe he did mean luking so nice – that would definitely be applicable too
I don’t understand how saving one letter (cooking vs kuking) is so cool/efficient.
Love spicy schezuan and that dish sounds wonderful.
I totally agree with you in regards to the spelling thing! Texting can be a real pain in the you know what. I’ve always been a bit anal when it comes to spelling in general, but that’s another story.
Chicken with asparagus looks phenomenal! I have a bunch of asparagus in the fridge and I think I’ve found the perfect use, Sig. Thanks, girl!
ohhh…same here! love szechuanese food…the spices and the flaours in it..mmm..im thinking of going out for dinner after thinking about it..have never been to szechuan chef, ive only been to sichuanese in bellevue/redmond – yeah a dingy place and gresy food but i love that place
Chicken and asparagus in this looks great. Surprised you did not add any szechuan peppers in this? I just got some from Market spice and have been waiting to make some with it
thats why i asked 
I am with you in spelling & writing.. & Sig this chicken of yours look WAAAAAYYY better than mine.. I love those red chilies in there, but i have to think twice before i add them, for my kids.. sometimes i just fry them & add them to our plate only.
Just wanted to mention that the young generations in India speak greek these days! their spellings, short cuts & language are just beyond my intelligence..
Hey Sig,
Thanks for sharing this amazing recipe…. My husband is gonna love this one…. Thanks once again. Will try this weekend..
Remya
Me and hubby love love love Sichuan/Szechuan cuisine – and we are forever trying to find something more authentic than the blasted Chinjabi cooking this city has to offer!
That is one awesome looking dish and i’m definitely going to be trying it soon.
About the sms language, I have people writing in with their resumes and using sms language on email – they are certainly not bothered about first impressions is all I can say!
Miri
You are right, I mess up spellings in comments too. But how I hate SMS style language especially ‘frenship’, maybe I am from a prev generation or something
The chicken looks mighty goos
Just how old are we all here, we all have similar views on frenship!
Miri – Chinjabi’s an awesome expression!
damn
spellos…hmmm…something that i really cannot relate too
…the friggin dish looks great…will try it perhaps with tofu of course!!
LOL @ spell checks, I agree! I must say you do “luk” very nice in your profile, my dear “fren”!!
Dish looks very pretty and delicious. I ate Babycorn Manchurian in B’lore and I hooked on it now. But I do feel the urge to lose wt for the first time in my life now, I feel bloated. Ordered some Yoga dvds, I will be on it soon along with very small meals.
Yeah, blog mafia is here for all of us to stay but we always have the choice of getting affected by it or eliminate them from our Psyche, I am doing the second one! Thanks God for few beautiful bloggers like you and others I know and my blog roll will be shorn short when I come back.All toxins will be out of my life.
We are busy with kids’ school stuff these days, Tushar has 8th grade dance today and Trisha is in Chapel Hill for orientation with dad.
Hugs to you, enjoy the Summer.See you in Fall. I will keep in touch now and then!
Everyone out there, Imagine yourself in this situation:
You go visit your son’s house after a gap of several years. You have a great time there. You come back home, write a post about your visit to their house. You talk about the wonderful time you had there, the love & affection showered on you by your son,his wife and kids. You also talk about what a great cook your D-I-L is. All the great dishes she made. Talk about the fun you had when you went shopping with them.
But then you also talk about how dirty their house was, how much mess the kids made, how much noise they made when they played, walked around the house with dirty shoes, the kids didn’t get regular head baths and hence smelled bad. You had to pay for the meal when you went out at the restaurant because you had more money than your son. You end the post with this sentence “Beautiful or ugly, smart or dumb, clean or dirty, sane or insane, they are our kids after all, can’t help but love them regardless, can’t disown them but we don’t have to live with them once they are adults!! Thank God for choices! My next visit will be when my grandchildren are in college
”.
And, in the end you call this post as a “simple observation” of the situation there during your stay.
SO, what does this have to do about all the drama going on in the blogging world?
We would never ever in our dreams think about publishing a post like that, or would we?. Even if we do, our friends would not refer it to as a “simple observation”.
How different is our love towards our birth-as-well-as-adopted-country from the way we love our family?
Very different right? Why do we try to be very diplomatic when we talk about the people we love in front of others? Because they have feelings.
So, why can’t we think about what we write about our country in the same way?
Everyone born in India and who have been to India know what India is: both good and bad. So writing about the good things– feel happy to come after several years to enjoy time with family, eat good food, buy gold & kurtas, But then also writing about the bad things and saying it was just a “simple observation” and feeling so happy to be not living in India because of all the bad things there, how will this come across to people who are still living in India like me who goes through all the pollution/bribery/corruption/sweaty men who brush their groins against my back in crowded buses/had to pay shit load of money for tuition in addition to college fees because lecturers refused to teach properly in college urging us to attend their tuition classes/have to put up with the choking cigarette smell while waiting in the bus stand etc etc…??????????
well it comes as mocking!!! yes, plain mocking!!!!
A day might come when I might fly away from all this. But I wish such a day might never come where I publicly say that I am so lucky to not live in that country anymore, knowing that people who still live there might read it. In the same way where 99% of you people out there do not make “simple observations” of your family, knowing that they might read it.
This is what went through my mind. Please do not take this as a personal attack against anyone, because is my “simple observation” too, of all the things happening in the blogging world.
Thanks for sharing your views LuckyDesi, but isn’t there something called Freedom of Speech? Can’t someone make a fair observation about a place without having mud thrown at her for speaking her mind? And look at what you have done here! You have said some really bad stuff about India in this comment, so it is okay for you to say all that just because nobody knows who you are?
Sig,
I must say you are gracious enough to publish my view. Not everyone are like you who can tolerate both views of an argument.
I agree about the “freedom of speech” and everything, It’s not just the “fair observation” that hurt me. Like I said before everyone knows about both good and bad in India.
You say I have said some really bad stuff about India. I am living amidst the “bad stuff” and I believe I have the “freedom of speech” to write about what I am going through on a daily basis. But I atleast am not mocking people who go through worst situations than me, by saying “I am lucky to be not in your situation”.
What hurt me most was not the “observation of the bad stuff” but the mockery by saying “I am so lucky to not live there attitude” knowing that we who still live here are going to read it.
And then the attitude that by paying “property taxes,sending money, buying stuff from here, paying autorikshawalas more money, I am doing more for India than Indians who are living in India” attitude that hurt me most.
If you are living in a high-rise building that is right next to a slum, happen to visit the slum, come back,you are bound to talk about the dirtiness of the slum with your friends and family, there is absolutely no harm in that.
But if you post a sign on your balcony saying “I am so lucky that I don’t have to live there”, what is this going to say about such a person? That person’s neighbours might say its “freedom of speech”. Yes, it is. But what will a person still living in the slum, struggling to get away from it feel?
If you think there was something wrongly written in my earlier comment, I sincerely apologise. I might have written some bad stuff in a fit of rage. I am ready to accept my mistake.
And I do not want anybody to know who I am because I do not want to be a part of this blogging world for long. Reading several blogs, the comments and things like that for the past several days, I have felt that people who claim to be “friends” , “mature”, “experienced”, “rich”, “middle-class”, “NRIs”, “RIs”,”Opinion Police” etc etc just care how famous their blogs are, how many comments they get for their posts, how many people follow their blog etc.,
If only all these people, people who give their opinion about India and also the people who oppose such opinions, came together, spent as much time in a constructive way to help get the “badness” away from India, it would be a better place to live.
People who consider themselves lucky enough to not live here in India, teach us how to make India a better place; a place just like the place where you all live now.
Kuking so nice
What really gets me is when people tell me to cum online..oh my!
The SMS gen & the twitter 140 get o me too, but I gotta say I love twitter…& I hate it when the hub picks out my spelling mistakes…LOL! I love this chicken Sig. This is seriously good looking Szechuan. Will have to wait until the kids increase their of chili intake…YUM!
Hi,
The dish looks yummy. However, I was a little surprised on seeing worestershire sauce and tabasco sauce in the list of ingredients for a sichuanese dish. I have been living in Mainland China for the past six years and my live-in helpers have been from Sichuan. Their food really is oh-so-divine but I have never seen my helpers using the aforementioned ingredients in any of the dishes they have cooked for us over the years.