Quick American Chinese style chicken

90% of the time when I cook, I don't use any recipe and just improvise. Some of the factors that I need to consider are: what ingredients I already have in the fridge and pantry, taste and flavor, how healthy is it ( if not what can I do to make it a little bit more healthy without sacrificing the flavor too much), food group balance and how much time it take/ how simple it is. I don't mind spending a lot of time making some elaborate dish however when your stomach is hungry, it's more important to get something ready in 20 min then making a gourmet meal.

This is the reason that you will see a lot of my recipes takes only 20 minutes. I usually put the rice in the rice cooker and use that 20 minutes to prepare the main meal. You can take some of the ideas and substitute with ingredients that you have at hand and create something completely different. Here is tonight's improvised American Chinese chicken with a subtle citric note.

1) chop some green onion, garlic, and fresh ginger. Sliced and julienne 8 square of dried firm tofu. Wash 1 lb of skinless boneless chicken breast and dry it. Cut it in 1/2 inch cubes ads salt and pepper and mix it with one egg and 1 tablespoon of corn starch. Open 1 can of bamboo shoot. Peal 1/4 orange peal.

2) mix the sauce in a bowl with 5 table spoons of water, 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoon of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil and 1 tablespoon of any kind of sugar. Also in another bowl mix a table spoon of corn starch with 2 tablespoon of cold water.

3) put 1 tablespoon of oil in the pan and when the oil is hot put the chicken in it. Cover it. After one minute turn the chicken pieces so it cook evenly on all sides. When the meat turns white, put it aside.

4) add on tablespoon of oil and stir in the garlic, onion and ginger until fragrant. Add the tofu and bamboo shoot and stir it for a minute then add the half cooked chicken and the sauce. Cover it and let it cook I'm high heat until the meat is done may be one minute. Then add the corn starch water to thicken the sauce.

5) add some green onions as garnish.

Sorry I forgot to take photo until we all finished eating.  I was hungry :) I think this sauce will work well with p tofu may be add some wood ear mushroom. I'm not too crazy for the chicken breast. I don't think I will buy them in the future. This is organic from Costco but the meat is dry. In the future for chicken I will only get them from whole food free range level 5 or from farmers market. The taste and texture is worth the extra price tag. The sauce turned out yummy though.