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Jewish Chinese Chicken Recipe
By Aviva Goldstein
What? You think it is ludicrous that there can be a Jewish Chinese dish? Well, why don't you wonder about Hungarian Jewish foods or Arabic Jewish foods too?
We Jews have been pushed around from town to town, country to country in the two thousand years that we have been in exile, we have picked up cooking from each nation in which we lodged. We took what they had, saw what they did and we modified it to meet our dietary needs and our particular taste buds. OK, I will grant it to you that we did not sojourn in China, but what the heck, with todays world, Chinese food comes to the Western world and we Jews see it and we like it. So, we take it and modify it a bit to our tastes and, walla, we have something tasty to serve.
Below is a recipe that I have served to my family for quite a while. I do not serve it often, not because it is difficult to prepare; it is not! I like to space out my really good recipes so that they remain special. Something good served too often loses it specialness.
Oriental (or Chinese) Celery and Chicken
Ingredients:
- 2 cups raw chicken breasts, pounded thin and cut into long thin slices
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 4 tbsp. soy sauce
- 1 1/2 cups fairly thinly sliced celery
- 1 large onion, sliced into long thin strips
- 1 large red pepper sliced into long thin strips
- 1 small can mushrooms
- 1/4 cup toasted almonds
- Osem brand flavored breadcrumbs
- one or two eggs beaten thoroughly
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Before beginning to cook, dip the chicken slices into the beaten egg mixture and then coat them thoroughly with Osem brand flavored bread crumbs. Mix the just the broth and soy sauce in a small container and hold on the side for later use.
Next sauté the onions in large frying pan with a small amount of oil until they are nearly golden brown then add the celery, red peppers and mushrooms and continue to sauté.
Now add the chicken slices and contine to sauté until chicken gets of a bit of a golden brown look and then add the broth and soy sauce mixture and mix it together well. Continue to cook, turning over chicken and cooked vegetables frequently to avoid sticking and burning!
Before serving, add the almonds and let them cook for a few moments, long enough to be warm.
This dish is best served with rice and a commercial sweet and sour sauce. I use long grain rice since it looks really nice and is a bit out of the ordinary. It compliments this almost exotic Jewish Oriental Chinese chicken nicely.
Enjoy
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from the January 2011 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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