Cashew Chicken

If you multitask well, this meal can be made in about 30 minutes. Read the entire recipe and decide if you want to try to chop chicken and make the sauce while the onions and peppers are cooking or if you'd rather do those things first before turning on the heat.

Ingredients

jasmine rice
3 Tbsp vegetable or canola oil, divided
24 chills (red cayenne, or similar)
2 medium Mayan sweet onions, 1.5 lbs
4 cloves garlic, more or less, minced
1 tsp finely chopped ginger (optional)
1.5 pounds chicken breasts
1 Tbsp hot chili oil
3 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp oyster sauce
3 Tbsp fish sauce (sub. less soy sauce)
6 Tbsp soy sauce
6 Tbsp brown sugar (not quite packed)
3 to 6 green onions, cleaned & washed
1/2 to 1 cup whole salted cashews
1 tsp corn starch (optional thickener)
 

Start rice cooking, about 4 cups dry, preferably in a rice cooker. I use a little more than 1.5 cups water for every cup rice.
Get sauce ingredients and bottles out and ready.

Peel and cut off top and bottom of 2 medium (~1.5 lbs) Mayan sweet onions. Cut in half from pole to pole and then into strips like a beach ball, about 1/4" at the thickest part.

Heat 1 Tbsp vegetable or canola oil in wok or pan on medium-high heat and fry onions until soft and brown, about 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes. Turn off heat if they get done before other ingredients are ready.




Coat ~24 chills with 1 Tbsp oil. Less chills need less oil. Broil chills (at 500 F) in oven on center rack for ~15 minutes, or ~10 minutes if oven is pre-heated, on foil-lined cookie sheet,
pie plate, etc.

Stir every 5 minutes or so. They should get partly black, but not completely burned. If you want to do them ahead of everything else, you can broil them on the top rack for about 5 minutes, but you'll have to watch them more so they don't burn and smoke. Alternately, if you don't care for the charred BBQ flavor, you can just throw them in raw with the onions.

Finely chop 4 cloves garlic. Optionally, also finely chop or grate fresh ginger to yield 1 tsp.

Cut 1.5 lbs chicken breasts into bite-size pieces. I usually cut the thick part of the breast in half to make it thinner and then cut into thin strips. Try to keep one hand clean and chicken-free to stir onions and peppers as needed.

Re-heat wok or pan with onions, if not still hot. Move the onions to the outside and add 1 Tbsp oil to the center.

When done cooking, chop some of the roasted/broiled peppers into tiny pieces, more or less to taste. I chop 3-6 peppers. Leave the rest whole or cut in half if really long.

Add chicken, peppers, garlic and optional ginger to pan or wok. Cook and stir for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently.

 

While chicken cooks for 2-3 minutes, mix sauce in a small bowl or cup that can hold 12 ounces or more:

1 Tbsp chili oil
3 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp oyster sauce
3 Tbsp fish sauce (or sub. 1-2 Tbsp soy sauce)
6 Tbsp soy sauce
6 Tbsp brown sugar (not quite packed)

Add sauce to pan or wok and continue cooking a few more minutes until chicken is cooked thoroughly.

Add a 1-3 Tbsp water to rinse out sauce container. Add 1 tsp corn starch if thickening is needed. Add cornstarch water to pan or wok and mix in.

Cut 3-6 green onion (white and or green parts, your choice) into 2-inch pieces and add to wok.

Add 3/4 cups whole salted cashews, give or take 1/4 cup to taste, and stir.

Taste sauce. Add sugar or soy sauce to taste. The amount of salty cashews can make a difference.
Serve with jasmine rice.

Additional Notes

You can pick out the red peppers if you don't like extreme heat. You can omit them altogether, but they do add a nice smokey flavor. You can also use red bell pepper or another mild pepper and cut them into strips before broiling. You can use dried peppers re-hydrated with boiling water, but you might not want to eat any.
If you don't plan on eating much rice, you can cut the sauce ingredients by 1/3; 2 Tbsp instead of 3, 4 Tbsp instead of 6, etc.
If you want to cut out the canola/vegetable oil, you can use the other oils to fry, but watch frying with sesame oil as it tends to smoke when too hot.
This dish is very forgiving with amounts. Don't be afraid to experiment.