Szechuan Pepper Stirfry

I don't like egg noodles. Not only do they taste a bit funny, but it is hard to cook a dish for three people with them as well. Especially stirfries. Nonetheless, I tried anyway with this dish. It wasn't my best dish. Oh, it looked nice enough, all colourful with the vegetables, but it tasted a bit plain. The chicken was really yummy though, very flavoursome, though that was a mistake on my part, since I added too much ginger powder. Oh well, here's the recipe, in case you want to try it:

What you need:
3 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed (I used garlic powder)
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (I used ginger powder)
3 teaspoons cornflour
500g chicken breast fillets, sliced
100g thin dried egg noodles
oil, for cooking
2 onions, sliced
1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
1 red pepper, cut into this strips
75g sugar snap peas
1/4 cup chicken stock (if you want, just dissolve some chicken stock powder in 1/4 cup water)

What you do:

1. Crush the peppercorns in a pepper mill or with a mortar and pestle if you have one.
2. Combine the soy suce, garlic, ginger, cornflour and pepper in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
3. Cook the egg noodles according to instructions, until firm. Drizzle with a little sesame oil to prevent them from sticking together.
4. Heat your wok over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of the oil (I used peanut oil here, smells nice :D) and swirl it around to coat the side. Stir-fry the chicken in batches over medium-high heat until golden brown and cooked, adding more oil when necassary. Remove from wok.
5. Reheat the wok over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of the oil ad stir-fry the onions, peppers and sugar snap peas until the vegetables are tender. Add the chicken stock and bring to boil.
6. Return the chicken and egg noodles to the wok and toss over high heat until well combined. Serve immediately.

The boys' main complain for this dish was was that there wasn't enough of it -_-; We are all big eaters in this house, so I cooked much more than 100g of egg noodles. This was probably my first mistake, as this most likely led to the noodles being not flavoursome enough. In the end, we had to add a little bit more soy sauce to our bowls. Even that wasn't enough to satisfy them though.

My second mistake was probably by not using Szechuan peppercorns. *cough*tooexpensive*cough* Szechuan peppercorns is a special Chinese spice that smells and tastes considerably different from normal pepper, as I witnessed last year when I sampled my flatmate's cooking :P Dry fry it in a pan before grinding to bring out the flavour. :D Use them if you can get them. I completely recommend it.

And although the recipe didn't call for it, I probably should've added more seasonings to the noodles. More chicken stock maybe, since there was so much more of it than was called for. Some more pepper maybe, and a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil? And maybe add in a sprinkling of chilli powder, or perhaps dried chillies, because although this dish has the name "Szechuan" I couldn't taste the spiciness at all -_-; Could have been because of the large amount of noodles, but peppers (capsicums, to those of you who know it by this name) are not that spicy anyway.

But, all in all, today's dinner was edible, most certainly. It just could've been better, is all. And I've certainly cooked better, definitely. Oh well, live and learn :D

Oh, and I'd like to send out congratulations and a BIIIIIIIIIIGGGG hug to my cousin, Kaka Nonie and her husband Abg Ady, whose nikah ceremony (wedding) was held today (well, yesterday, Brunei time). May you two have a super happy life together! :D :D :D