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Diced chicken with diced carrot, celery and pepper in a light glossy sauce scattered with whole almonds
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Main Chinese restaurant-style Chinese Dairy-free

Almond Gai Ding

Diced chicken with diced vegetables in a light savoury sauce, finished with whole toasted almonds. Gai ding means chicken cubes, and the discipline of the dish is that everything is cut to roughly the same small dice so a spoonful carries a bit of all of it. The nuts go in at the very end, off the heat, because a toasted almond that sits in sauce for even a minute stops being crunchy.

Prep25 min
Cook10 min
Servings2
Done at74 °C
Cook mode

Adapted from RecipeTin Eats' Chinese cashew chicken, rebuilt to the diced gai ding format with almonds as the western Canadian menus serve it.

Ingredients

Written for a 30 cm pan

Units
Temperature
Servings
2

Chicken and marinade

  • 500 g chicken thigh, boneless, cut into 1.5 cm dice
  • 8 g cornflour
  • 15 ml light soy sauce
  • 10 ml Shaoxing wine

Sauce

  • 180 ml chicken stock
  • 30 ml oyster sauce
  • 15 ml light soy sauce
  • 10 ml Shaoxing wine
  • 10 g cornflour
  • 5 g sugar
  • 3 ml toasted sesame oil
  • 1 g ground white pepper

Vegetables and nuts

  • 30 ml neutral oil
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 120 g carrot, cut into 1 cm dice
  • 120 g celery, cut into 1 cm dice
  • 1 green pepper, cut into 1.5 cm squares
  • 100 g mushrooms, quartered
  • 100 g water chestnuts, from a tin, drained and sliced; see substitutions (optional)
  • 100 g whole blanched almonds, toasted; added off the heat

Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.

Method

  1. Toast the almonds first in a dry pan over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking often, until they smell nutty and colour lightly. Tip them straight out of the pan; they carry on cooking in a hot pan and go bitter quickly.
  2. Marinate the chicken with the cornflour, soy sauce and Shaoxing wine for 15 minutes.
  3. Cut everything to the same dice. Carrot, celery, pepper and mushroom all at roughly 1 to 1.5 cm. This looks fussy and is the entire character of the dish; ding means cubes and a bowl of mixed shapes is a different, worse dish.
  4. Mix the sauce, cornflour last, stirring again before use.
  5. Sear the chicken and remove it. Very hot wok, half the oil, chicken in one layer, undisturbed 90 seconds, then tossed for another minute until just cooked. Out onto a plate.
  6. Cook the vegetables in order. Rest of the oil, garlic for 15 seconds, carrot and celery for 2 minutes, then mushrooms for 2 minutes, then pepper and water chestnuts for 1 minute.
  7. Sauce and return. Pour in the stirred sauce, boil 1 minute until glossy, return the chicken with its juices and toss for 30 seconds.
  8. Almonds off the heat. Take the pan off the stove, fold in the toasted almonds and serve at once.

Variations

  • Cashew chicken. Straight swap for 100 g roasted unsalted cashews. Softer and sweeter, and the more common version outside western Canada.
  • Almond gai ding with prawns. 400 g small peeled prawns, seared 60 to 90 seconds only.
  • Vegetarian ding. Leave out the chicken, add 200 g diced firm tofu fried crisp separately and 100 g more mushrooms, and use vegetarian oyster sauce.

Notes

  • Everything the same size. This is the whole discipline of a ding dish. Take the extra five minutes with the knife.
  • Almonds go in last, off the heat. They are the reason to order this and they go soft within a minute of meeting sauce.
  • Toast your own nuts. Ready-roasted almonds are usually salted and staler than they look, and toasting takes four minutes.
  • Water chestnuts are worth including. They stay crunchy through anything and are a texture nothing else provides.
  • Leftovers keep 2 days but the almonds will have softened. Scatter a few fresh toasted ones over when reheating.

Ingredient substitutions

  • Water chestnuts come tinned and are stocked by Asian grocers and most large supermarkets in Germany and Canada. Diced jicama or a crisp apple, added at the very end, gives similar crunch. Leaving them out is fine.
  • Oyster sauce substitutes with vegetarian mushroom oyster-style sauce.
  • Almonds can be replaced by cashews, or by toasted sunflower seeds for a nut allergy, which keeps the crunch though not the richness.

Sources consulted

Good with

Sources consulted

From Christoph Mayer

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