Szechuan Chicken

By: Tyler Cuddeback '14
Sorry this one is getting to you guys so late. I’ve been really sick the past couple of day and the last thing I wanted to do was do anything that resembled work. You know what that’s like, right? Also, because I’ve been so sick, I’m probably not going to make a new recipe this week. Tragic, I know. Speaking of recipes, let’s dive into last week’s.

So for the very first recipes I made for this project I chose things that I never would have thought would go together, but somehow they did. Being on a college budget means a lot of things, but in the food world it means not always being able to cook what you want. I ended up making Szechuan Chicken, Green Bell Peppers stuffed with a vegetable medley couscous and Spaghetti Squash.

I know that I promised I would have a breakdown of how much everything cost per person, but since I’m not feeling too hot right now, I’m going to save that for the end of the month. I’ll put all of the breakdowns for the entire month’s recipes in a blog. I promise not to make a habit out of it.

First, let’s take a look at the Szechuan Chicken. The chicken is served over a bed of rice. Everyone knows how to make rice. 2 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice, bring the water to a boil, pour in the rice, cover the pot and let simmer on medium heat for 15 to 25 minutes depending on how much rice there is and how done you wish for it to be.

The actual chicken recipe calls for:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast that has been cut into 1 inch cubes
3 Tbsp cornstarch
4 cloves of garlic
and
4 green onions (I used half of a sweet Vidalia that I chopped finely)

This all gets mixed together in a bowl until everything is evenly coated with garlic and cornstarch. Then this mixture is cooked in a skillet, or in my case a wok, until it is lightly browned.

Then, the recipe calls for:
1 cup of water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1/3 cup of soy sauce (low sodium if you can because there is already enough salt from the bouillon cubes)
and
1 ½ Tbsp of White Wine vinegar

This is mixed together until the bouillon cubes have dissolved and the whole mixture looks more like a soup than a chicken dish. This is then covered and simmers on medium heat for 5 minutes or until that soup has reduced slightly into a syrup.

Finally add:
1 cup of sugar snap (or snow) peas
1 (8-ounce) can of sliced water chestnuts
And finish it off with crushed red pepper flakes to taste.

My party and I found this dish to be delicious, but not worth the effort that went into making it. In a college setting, on a college budget, buying a knife to chop up chicken or buying already cubed chicken breast fillets is just not practical. On top of that, actual work of chopping all of the chicken, onions and garlic with a butter or steak knife was far too time consuming. It was a delicious dish… just not practical. Only make this if you have the equipment or the time to do it.



The side dishes to this were Spaghetti Squash and Green Bell Peppers Stuffed with a vegetable medley couscous. First up to bat is the Spaghetti Squash.

There are many different ways to cook and serve Spaghetti Squash. I like to bake it and then serve it with a little butter and brown sugar. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any brown sugar lying around so I only did butter. Now… in order to correctly bake the squash it has to be baked on 400◦F for about an hour and a half (or until the outside is a golden brown color), left out to cool, cut in half and then the inside is scraped out with a fork into long strips, like spaghetti. However! Do not let the squash cook for anything more than 90 minutes or this may happen…

Try explaining this to your RA.

Finally, there is the Green Bell Peppers stuffed with Couscous. They’re simple enough to make. Make couscous by following the instructions on the box, and then clean out as many peppers as there are people. Mix in a few of your favorite vegetables (for my group we decided on carrots, peas, corn and garlic) then spray the peppers with canola oil, apply a liberal amount of salt and black pepper to the outside and bake on 350◦F for 40 minutes.