by Anna Reeser
To start this project off, here’s a recipe that is fully in the spirit of quick, random, delicious original meals. On Monday night, struck by after-work hunger of a serious kind, I appear at CJ’s doorstep. He claimed to have “enough food, a cabbage at least.” Yes. As long as there’s cabbage, with which anything can be accomplished. The candidates were lined up on the counter: half a green cabbage, a red onion, a red anaheim pepper, chinese broccoli, some frozen chicken thighs, a jar of white rice, peanuts, garlic and a lemon. Rice went in the rice cooker. I began chopping vegetables feverishly and with no real plan. “So we’re just frying all this stuff up?” CJ asked. We did exactly that, and what emerged was flavorful, slightly spicy, tinged with hot pepper and peanut: the best impromptu kung-pao-esque chicken stir fry I’ve ever had. 
Ingredients:
1 cup jasmine rice
1/3 head of green cabbage
2 small heads of chinese broccoli greens (miniature bok choy works too)
1 red anaheim pepper
1/2 red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 (or 2) boneless skinless chicken thighs
1/2 lemon
soy sauce
salt & black pepper
peanut oil
olive oil
peanuts
hot sauce (Sriracha is recommended)
1. Start the rice in a rice cooker or on the stove.
2. Chop the cabbage and greens into strips. Chop onion into small pieces. Seed the anaheim pepper and cut into thin strips. Mince garlic. Defrost chicken (if necessary) and cut into small chunks.
3. Add peanut oil to a cast-iron pan. When hot, add chicken with a generous amount of soy sauce and half a lemon’s worth of juice. When chicken starts to brown, add peppers and onions. Stir and fry, add black pepper.
4. In a separate pan, heat olive oil. Add cabbage, greens and garlic and a little water. Put a lid on the pan to steam till the greens are soft, then remove the lid so that water cooks off. Add salt and black pepper.
5. When everything is done, serve with rice on the bottom then a layer of cabbage/greens, then a layer of chicken/onions/peppers. Garnish with peanuts. Eat with chopsticks. Adjust spiciness with Sriracha, if desired.
Yield: 2 large servings.