Welcome to meals in minutes, the section that provides a selection of easy to follow recipes at affordable prices which can be served up within half an hour. 

This week, John talks us through how to make the Senegalese dish Yassa, Annie tells us how to make the perfect omelette and Andy prepares a sweet and spicy stir fry. Those with a sweet tooth can also follow Caz’s chocolate brownie recipe.

Sweet and Spicy Stir Fry

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Serves up to 4

Ingredients:
1 Large Onion
1 Tin of Pineapple Chunks
A pack of Diced Chicken
1 Small Tin of Sweetcorn
1 Pepper
10-15 Green Beans
4-5 Small Mushrooms
Boil-in-the-bag Rice
Salt
Pepper
Peri-Peri Sauce
Tomato Ketchup
Vegetable Stock

Preparation:
1. Start by chopping up all your vegetables. Try and make your onions and mushrooms as small as you can- there’s going to be a lot going into the stir fry so if you make them too big you run the risk of overcrowding your wok!

2. If you’ve never chopped peppers before then the easiest way to cut them is to start by cutting a circle around the stalk. Then pull and discard the stalk bit and cut the remainder of the pepper in half. Remove the seeds by scraping them out and then cut the pepper halves in halves again. Then turn the quarters horizontally and cut the pepper into nice bite sized chunks.

3. Simply cut the green beans into halves and buy the ones where the tips have already been cut off to save yourself the time and bother.

Cooking:
1. Add some oil to the wok and ensure that it is distributed evenly throughout the pan. Once the oil’s heated, add the onions and stir periodically, making sure to turn the onions to cook both sides.

2. Once the onions begin to go a golden brown colour add the diced chicken chunks.

3. Constantly turn the chicken chunks over and over to ensure that they are cooked on both sides and do this on a medium rather than high heat as we want the chicken to cook throughout and not just on the outside.

4. After the chicken’s been cooking for 3 or 4 minutes and both sides have begun to turn a whitey brown colour, add the mushrooms and the pineapple chunks, including the pineapple juice as this will provide the sweeter element to the stir fry.

5. Stir thoroughly and add salt and pepper to taste.  Allow to simmer for a minute and then add the green beans, pepper sand sweet corn.  Keep turning the contents to ensure that it all gets cooked properly.  Cook for 2-3 minutes.

6. The stir fry is now almost complete but at this stage is lacking the key ingredient- peri-peri sauce! Now is the time to add the sauce to the mixture but be very careful with peri-peri sauce as it is very spicy and an acquired taste. If you don’t like things too hot then be cautious in the first instance as you can always add more. Again, you should stir the stir fry thoroughly so that the peri-peri sauce can spread throughout the mixture.

7. If you feel that you’ve added too much peri-peri sauce then don’t worry too much as you can add some tomato ketchup to sweeten the mixture up.

8. Once the stir fry is of a satisfactory sweet/spicy level to your taste buds, add the rice and stir it into the stir fry. Leave for 2-3 minutes. NB the rice should absorb much of the sauce which can be quite watery.  If it is still too watery then add a teaspoon or so of vegetable stock and this will help thicken up the sauce.

9. Leave to simmer for a further minute et voila your stir fry is ready for serving! Bon appétit.