Chinese snow Peas and Chicken Minced Stir Fry

Stir fry is one of the best weeknight meals to make, you can cook everything from start to finish within 30 minutes. This is one of the recipes I head to if I am at lost with what to cook for the night, and it's so so good with rice.

Snow Peas and Chicken minced Stir fry

Serves: 3-4 people with rice

Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

What you would need 

200 grams of snow peas, trimmed and halved 

250 grams of chicken minced 

50 grams of dried shiitake mushrooms,rehydrated and sliced

3 cloves of garlic, minced 

1 bird eye chilli (optional), sliced

2 cm piece of ginger, finely sliced 

Splash of vegetable oil

salt and pepper 

Sauce 

1 tablespoon of soya sauce 

1 tablespoon of Chinese rice wine 

1 tablespoon oyster sauce 

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon sugar 

splash of fish sauce 

2 teaspoon of cornflour, mixed with cold water(to thicken sauce)

1. Premix the sauce in a bowl excludes the cornflour

2. Heat half the vegetable oil in the wok, stir fry the chicken minced season with salt and pepper till lightly golden brown. Remove from the wok and set aside.

3. Heat the remaining oil in the wok and toss in the ginger, garlic and chilli. Fry for 1 minutes or until garlic is lightly golden but not brown. 

4. Add the snow peas and fry for 2 minutes, return the chicken minced to the wok and add the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, stir to combine. Add the sauce mixture and stir fry for another 2 minutes.

5. Add cornflour and stir till sauce thickens. Dish up and served with rice.

Balsamic Baked Chicken

Here's an all-in-one dish, no fuss no mess dinner that you can prepare in a jiffy. It's so simple you just have to cut the vegetables, arranged them as neat as you wish. 

I love zesting the lemon then slicing the lemons and leaving them on the chickens and as they bake, the lemony juices will seep into the pan and combined with the balsamic 'dressing' it makes an awesome awesome sauce.

While the chicken is getting baked, the vegetables get marinated in the juicy, lemony, balsamic sauce. You can easily put this together and pop it into the oven for and hour and voilà! 

Balsamic Baked Chicken 

Serves: 4-6 
Cooking time: 1hour 15mins

8 chicken thighs 
400g of potatoes, quartered 
1 medium red onion, cut into this wedges
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
4 medium sized carrots, cut into wedges
1 whole lemon, zested and sliced 

Dressing 
1 tablespoon of dry mix herbs
1 teaspoon of dry thyme 
1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoon of olive oil
2 teaspoon of sugar
salt and pepper 

Preheat oven to 220°C/200°C fan-forced. Arrange chicken, potatoes, onion, garlics, carrots. In a separate bowl, whisk balsamic, oil, sugar and dry herbs until sugar had dissolved. Drizzle over chicken and vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. 

Bake for an hour and serve. 

Chicken mushroom

I love simple recipes like this, it's for weekdays when you come home from a hard day of work and you can whip this baby up in less then 30mins tops. You can easily cook a larger batch up and save it for later days when you feel lazy.

This recipe is really flexible, if you wish to omit white wine, go right head and replace it with the same amount of chicken stock. No fresh herbs? Dry works well too. It work well with rice, mashed potato, bread, pasta, anything to your fancy. 

What is your favourite weekday meal?




Chicken Mushroom


Sprinkle of flour
500g of chicken (I use breast but thigh would work wonders too)
Salt and pepper
2 eschalot
4 cloves garlic 
1 Teaspoon of dry Oregano (if fresh use 1 tablespoon)
1 Tablespoon olive oil
3 Tablespoon unsalted butter
500g Mushrooms, trimmed and sliced 
200ml of white wine 
250ml of chicken stock 
fresh parsley 

I like to put the chicken in between cling wrap and give a good pounding to flatten it out. A great stress reliever.




Season chicken with salt and pepper on both sides, coat chicken with flour and shake off the excess. 

In a large skillet, heat oil and butter over medium high heat. In batches if needed, cook chicken until well browned on both sides. About 3 mins per side, remove from heat.

Reduce heat to medium, brown eschalot and add garlic stir for 1 min before adding mushrooms. Sweat the mushrooms before adding dry oregano, cook until soften about 5 mins 

Add wine and broth and cook, stirring until reduce by half about 3 mins. Taste to season. Return chicken to the pan and simmer for another 2 mins, top with parsley.