Skip to main content

thai chicken with basil




 
Thai chicken with basil is one of our favorite Summer dinners.  I use a small harvest of my garden grown patch of sweet basil; it's green and lush when the weather turns warm.  I like to grow an Italian variety of sweet basil but I've also grown Greek and Thai basil.  It's  basically whatever I find at the nursery or farmer's market and it's early in the season so I will most likely add a few more herbs into the garden.  I like to make this dish medium spicy so I use one jalapeño pepper for two people, which is what the following recipe serves.  I also use steamed Basmati rice because it's our favorite and I make it in a small rice cooker, which makes it easy to hold if my timing is off when preparing the Thai chicken with basil.



Thai Chicken with Basil

2 cups fresh sweet basil leaves, plus a few extra sprigs for serving
1 Jalapeño pepper, stemmed and sliced
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced thin 
1 T Fish sauce
2 t Oyster sauce 
2 t sugar
1 t white vinegar
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into small 2 inch pieces
2 shallots, sliced
1 T vegetable oil
Chopped fresh sweet basil and lime juice for serving
Steamed basmati rice, for serving

Place 2 cups of sweet basil, jalapeño, and garlic in a food processor, pulse until finely chopped, about 15 times, scrape down as needed.  Transfer a Tablespoon of the sweet basil mixture to a small bowl and stir in the fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and vinegar, set aside.  Transfer the remaining sweet basil mixture from the food processor to a 10 inch skillet.
Add the cut up chicken to the food processor, pulse chicken until meat is coarsely chopped, about 6-8 pulses, scrape down if needed. Place chicken in a small bowl and refrigerate about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile back at the skillet, add the shallots and veg oil to the basil mixture, heat on medium high and stir until shallots are cooked, about 5-8 minutes.
Stir in the chicken, cook and stir about 2-4 minutes, until slightly pink.  Add the small bowl of reserved basil fish sauce and continue cooking and stirring until no longer pink.
Serve over served Basmati rice with fresh limes and chopped fresh sweet basil.












Comments

Popular posts from this blog

pear jam with saffron infused honey and cardamom

  Pear Jam with Saffron Infused Honey and Cardamom The summer after high school I worked sorting Bartlett pears at the Scotts Valley Fruit Exchange in Lake County California.  I thought I would never touch or eat another pear again in my life. But, here I am years years later making pear jam in my kitchen with pears, honey and saffron grown in Lake County.  A few weeks ago My husband and I went to visit friends in Kelseyville at their finca, they generously supplied me with the pears from their orchard-Finca Castelero- for my jam.  I will never forget getting up early in the morning and riding my bike across the valley from my cousin's house to work a long hot day sorting pears.  I remember thinking whoever came up with the idea of creating a cooperative to sort, pack and send pears from family farms, including my cousin's family farm on what is now called Hendricks road, to markets all over the country really had a good idea!  I never looked at pears in the grocery store the s

alfajores de tarragon and chives

 well here we are again Christmas 🎄 and covid. This time with a side of alfajores on a fish plate.  Do you have a favorite Christmas cookie or cookies?  As long as the flour, butter, eggs, vanilla and sugar keep flowing- I will be baking Christmas cookies, might even slide over the December 25 cutoff and into January this year. We moved in October.  After a week long getaway to Bandon Dunes, Oregon.  We came back to a new one level, slightly smaller inside and outside new to us home in our same town of Novato.  I think we have electricity gremlins though.  I'm ready to invite my electrician to Christmas dinner since he's here every week.  The latest problem a doorbell chime that almost melted down after continuous buzzing for a day, he's looking for a short in our wiring-don't like the sound of that.  He found it and fixed it, hoorah. We have a ton of unpacked boxes in our new big white garage.  My husband Scott ordered a backyard studio shed for his home office and on

springtime chamomile tea cake with strawberry icing

 Good grief, Easter is in the rear view mirror and we are deep into this new year.  And once again it's tea time at my house.  This chamomile tea cake is a beautiful sweet addition to any tea ritual, especially my favorite, chamomile tea, which I rediscovered in my hotel room in Carmel earlier this fast moving year.  I highly recommend a slice of chamomile tea cake with strawberry 🍓 icing with a cup of chamomile tea to just take a moment and slow this year down.  Baking with tea is both creative and fun.  Earlier this year I made Earl Gray sugar cookies which are made using the same method of infusing the butter with loose tea.  For my tea cake I also rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar -another way to lend a pop of citrus to your baking. The strawberry icing is made using freeze dried strawberries, I pulverize them in my spice mill and then they are pressed through a fine sieve into the confectioner's sugar.  In addition to using lemon zest rubbed into the sugar for the cake