Chicken and vegetables in garlic oyster sauce

Sometimes a simple concept is a delightful one. So it is with this one, combining marinated chicken thigh with vegetables in oyster sauce.

Chicken thigh meat*

1 spring onion

2 cloves garlic

1 dsp soy sauce

1 dsp Chinese rice wine

Vegetable oil

5 chestnut mushrooms

1 large carrot

1/2 stick celery

4 - 5 Chinese leaves

2 dsp oyster sauce

1 tsp cornflour

Water

*If meat is on the bone, salvage bones and simmer gently with some fresh ginger root, spring onion, a few slices of chilli and a pinch of seasalt. By the time everything's ready you'll have a chicken broth to serve alongside the main.

Dice chicken, and place in a bowl. Add finely chopped spring onion, one finely sliced clove of garlic, the soy sauce and rice wine. Mix well and leave to marinate.

Mix cornflour with a little cold water to form a watery paste, and set aside.

Slice up the mushrooms, carrot and celery on a slight diagonal, and optimally about 3-4mm thick. Slice the stem parts of the Chinese leaf into 1" wide pieces, place apart, and then slice up the green leaf part.

Heat up some vegetable oil in a wok to medium-high heat. Add chicken, and stir fry until just cooked (a tiny bit of pink can remain.) Remove to a bowl, wipe clean wok, and return to heat with some more oil.

Stir fry mushrooms for 1-2mins, then carrot for 30secs, then garlic and celery for another minute or so. Return chicken to pan, heat through, and then stir in chinese leaf stem pieces. Add oyster sauce to taste (approx. 2 dsp), and mix thoroughly. Add remaining green chinese leaf, stir fry until that is just done, and remove pan from heat.

If the sauce is a little watery, scoop contents of wok to one side and add cornflour paste to the sauce. Stir sauce over heat until thickened, then stir contents of wok thoroughly.

Serve chicken and vegetables over fragrant thai rice, with a little pickled daikon and soy sauce.