Cilantro-Forward Chicken

As we contemplated upcoming meals over yesterday morning's Nicaraguan coffee, I mentioned that we had received some local chicken in our dairy delivery and that I would find a way to prepare it using some ginger that remained from a soup our son had prepared during a recent visit. Before I could say "una nueva receta cada semana," Pamela had found several options on her now-favorite cookbook: NY Times Cooking on her iPad.

I chose the first one she mentioned: ginger-scallion chicken sounded both simple and tasty and (spoiler alert) indeed it was. I started to thaw the chicken, which had arrived frozen just a couple hours earlier, in the usual Hayes-Boh way (note below).  

The recipe was, in fact, similar to what I was thinking of doing without any recipe, but I am glad we had Melissa Clark's adaptation of a recipe by Lan Hing Riggin. The ingredients were something I might have come up with on my own, but the technique was a delicious improvement on my usual approach to stir-fry, which is to brown the meat and then add vegetables, sauces and seasonings. 

They suggest a more nuanced approach, which I followed almost to the letter. One exception: we usually keep only one kind of oil in the house (proving we are not really foodies), so I used EVOO instead of the lighter oils suggested. First, though, I started cooking some brown rice, because I knew that this recipe would be ready pretty quickly. If I am going to serve something with rice, I usually start it early and I use a technique that has worked well for me recently: I heat some oil (or butter) in a small saucepan while rinsing 1 cup of rice in a sieve. I then put the rice into the medium-hot pan, stirring vigorously with a fork and perhaps adding some seasonings (in this case black pepper and oregano). After just about 2 minutes, I add 2-1/4 cups of water and bring to a boil. I then cover and lower to a simmer, where I can forget about the rice while making the rest of the meal.

I prepared all of the ingredients before I started any cooking, because this does indeed go quickly. I trimmed two large scallions and then separated the white from the green. I cut each lengthwise into quarters and then into one-inch little sticks. This was a little tedious but the texture at the end did seem to benefit. I tossed the green pieces together with one full cup of chopped cilantro (leaves and fine stems) and set aside. I put the white pieces on a plate with some finely chopped ginger and a finely chopped hot red pepper.

I cut the chicken into one-inch pieces and heated the oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet.  I stirred frequently and followed the recipe's guidance to remove the chicken to serving plates as soon as it was cooked through, not browning it as I usually might. I put the mixed cilantro and green scallion on top of the chicken and the rice alongside it on each plate. I then lowered the heat in the pan and added the ginger and pepper, which I stirred for just about a minute. I added the scallions for a half minute more and then stirred in a tablespoon of sugar and a glug of soy sauce. I stirred this just long enough to reduce it slightly and then poured it over both the greens and the rice.

Voilà! This was an easy, delicious, healthful meal. And the red peppers helped make it look as festive as it tasted.

Thawing note: I put the frozen package in a bowl full of water. This is both faster and safer than simply leaving the package out on the counter. If the kitchen is warm enough that thawing is achieved early in the day, we will return it to the fridge; if we start the process a day early, we can just thaw things like this in the fridge itself. In any case, we avoid microwave thawing, which always seems to result in some uneven pre-cooking.