Almond Gai Ding
Units
Temperature
Servings
Ingredients
Chicken and marinade
- 500 g chicken thigh, boneless, cut into 1.5 cm dice rounded
- 8 g cornflour rounded
- 15 ml light soy sauce rounded
- 10 ml Shaoxing wine rounded
Sauce
- 180 ml chicken stock rounded
- 30 ml oyster sauce rounded
- 15 ml light soy sauce rounded
- 10 ml Shaoxing wine rounded
- 10 g cornflour rounded
- 5 g sugar rounded
- 3 ml toasted sesame oil rounded
- 1 g ground white pepper rounded
Vegetables and nuts
- 30 ml neutral oil rounded
- 2 garlic cloves, minced rounded
- 120 g carrot, cut into 1 cm dice rounded
- 120 g celery, cut into 1 cm dice rounded
- 1 green pepper, cut into 1.5 cm squares rounded
- 100 g mushrooms, quartered rounded
- 100 g water chestnuts, from a tin, drained and sliced; see substitutions (optional) rounded
- 100 g whole blanched almonds, toasted; added off the heat rounded
Method
Method
- 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.
- Marinate the chicken with the cornflour, soy sauce and Shaoxing wine for 15 minutes.
- 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.
- Mix the sauce, cornflour last, stirring again before use.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sauce and return. Pour in the stirred sauce, boil 1 minute until glossy, return the chicken with its juices and toss for 30 seconds.
- 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.