Macanese Stir-Fried Chicken | Wok Wednesdays

According to Grace Young, the author of Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge, Macanese food is a fusion of southern Chinese, Portuguese, and Southeast Asian styles, as well as other European and Indian cultures.

This dish is super easy to prepare, even though it calls for 17 (se-ven-teen) ingredients. Not including the rice.

Amazingly, I had most of the ingredients on hand. The only two ingredients that gave me a challenge were Spanish Chorizo and canned coconut milk. Spanish chorizo, which is a cooked and cured meat, is not the same as Mexican chorizo (found everywhere here), which is uncooked. It's sort of less spicy and more smokey than pepperoni, and more spicy than smoked kielbasa. It's the sausage that is usually used in paella.

Seventeen ingredients you say? Try chicken, garlic, cornstarch, two kinds of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, coconut milk, chicken broth, vinegar, oil, shallots, the chorizo, turmeric, sweet paprika, tomatoes, and salt.

The orange "look" of this dish comes from the turmeric. My only hiccup on pulling this recipe together? The instructions say "sprinkle on the turmeric..." and I took that to mean that I should use my fingers to really "sprinkle" it. Turmeric is also used as a dye, a factoid I did not know. I now have orange fingernails. Oops.

The orange manicure not withstanding, we loved this dish. I texted my son that I was doing a stir fry and "feel free to stop by" and he did. He loved it too and took home all of the leftovers. (He also cracked up watching me take pictures of my bowl prior to dinner. My secret life exposed.)

I am participating in Wok Wednesdays, a group of individuals cooking their way through Grace Young's Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. We've all agreed not to publish the recipe in order to support book publishing. I encourage you to get the book and try this amazing, amazing dish. I've not been disappointed with any stir fry I have tried from the book. Join the group and wok along!