Chicken Yakitori

I'm revising for exams at the moment (french cinema in particular) and feel the need for mouth-watering but easy and healthy meals (Christmas had too much good but fattening food). I originally wanted something veggie to eat last night but then I spotted this recipe on delicious. and thought it looked, well, delicious. My version was for 2 people and actually includes noodle amounts - I just did a 200g pack of udon noodles and it was a bit too much so the recipe has less. Plus, buying a pre-made pack of stir fry vegetables is all well and good if the shop actually has them in stock. Waitrose, however, didn't and I wasn't going elsewhere as it was raining! Instead I made my own and personally, I think it tasted better - 'fresher'. I also used more vegetables than they recommended (which might be why I needed less noodles) because they were vegetables I liked (shock horror to anyone who knows me!). If you do your own mixed veggies then it only takes the time needed for the chicken to marinate, if not less.

If you say that 80g of vegetables are one of your five a day (it is according to the NHS) then my mix counts as just over 2 portions per person, and half a pre-bought mix is just under one and a half potions. Actually, that's quite an easy way to work out if you're eating enough veg - weigh it! I'm never sure if the amount of peas and corn that I cook is enough, so now I'll just make sure there's at least 80g per person when I cook veg.

Chicken Yakitori Recipe

Serves 2

If you don't want to make your own vegetable mix then use at least 225g of a pre-bought pack (more if you want)

Check how long the noodles take before you need them - mine took 9 minutes in boiling water so I started them off before the stir fry

Ingredients

2 medium chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips (see Chicken and Cashew nuts recipe for how)

3tbsp soy sauce

2tbsp honey (the original recipe says clear, and obviously squeeze honey is the easiest to measure but I don't have any so I just used the jar of cloudy honey from my aunt's bees and it worked well )

1tbsp dry sherry

1tbsp sesame oil (it smells so good!)

2tsp cornflour

150g dried udon noodles (I used clear spring ones bought from Waitrose)

Mix of vegetables - either 225g of a preprepared pack or your own mix, I used the below mixture and have suggested substitutions where needed, it totalled about 350g of veg:

• 1 red pepper (or any colour)
• 4 chantenay carrots (one small regular carrot also works)
• 5 baby sweetcorn (regular sweetcorn could be used)
• handful of sugar snap peas (garden peas, mangetout, okra)
• handful of beansprouts (can be left out)
• 4 spring onions
• the leaves of one pak choi bulb (handful of spinach)

Method

Mix the soy sauce, sherry and honey in a big bowl until the honey has dissolved to form a marinade.

Cut the chicken into long strips and add to the marinade, leave for 15 minutes (or do this before you go to work and leave, covered, in the fridge until you're ready for supper).

Whilst the chicken is marinading, prepare the veg if you're doing your own  - I cut the pepper and pak choi into matchsticks, spring onions, baby corn and sugar snaps into rounds, and I used a peeler to make ribbons of carrots (chantenay carrots are very cute and the perfect length for ribbons but consequently are a bee to peel into strips).

Start cooking the noodles so that they're ready when the vegetables and chicken are cooked.

Heat the oil in a large nonstick wok and add the chicken - keeping the excess marinade separate.

Mix the cornflour into the remaining marinade to make a sort of sauce (the cornflour will make it stick to the chicken etc).

Once the chicken has cooked, add the veg and stir fry for 1 minute.

Pour the cornfloured marinade into the wok and stir for 2-3 minutes until everything is coated in the sauce but the veg is still crunchy.

Drain the noodles and ladle into large bowls, adding the chicken and veg on top.

Enjoy!

Almost ready