WorldFoods Fusion of Flavours Recipe- China

As I mentioned yesterday I'm a  WorldFoods Fusion of Flavours team member part of a global (ooh I feel honoured!) blogging team  who will be on a journey around the countries of Asia and particularly their cusine.I will be using some of the products provided by WorldFoods

First stop, China and a stir fry sauce that has the three ingredients ginger, garlic and chilli known as the Holy Trinity of Chinese cooking.

I am using the WorldFoods Chinese Ginger, Garlic and Chilli dipping/stir fry sauce also. These ingredients are all regarded as having great health benefits in Asian countries (as well as being yummy).

This sauce mixes the three together; spicy green chillies with garlic and ginger, in a mouth-watering sauce that works well with seafood, chicken or vegetables.

I had to have a dip to taste its sweet, hot and aromatic. All three of the main ingredients are very evident.

I was really looking forward to the dish.

Now I can and will be making my own recipes using the WorldFoods products but as one of the Chinese recipes this week,  had some ingredients I had read about but never actually cooked with, I was keen to do the suggested dish.

I have to tell you in our city the ingredients proved elusive. namely Galangal, fresh Kaffir Lime leaves, Sweet Basil and green peppercorns.

I have used dried kaffir lots of times and was unaware I could get the fresh (well frozen) leaves and I really recommend. The fragrant lime scent as I ripped them up and when cooking made me drool.

So elusive was the sweet basil, I had to give up and I substituted for coriander as the lady in the Asian grocer said it would make a more authentic dish than using Italian basil.
It took me a few days for these fresh ingredients to come into our only East Asian grocer.

OK so here are my ingredients assembled after traipsing to town to get the ingredients and also being pretty ravenous I was  happy to see that this would be a speedy dish taking minutes.
Also for you that follow Slimming World plan the WorldFoods sauce is a healthy one too,  only 6 syns for the entire bottle so 1 and a half syns per portion. The rest of the ingredients are free foods.

Prepping the ingredients was very easy the galangal is a very strange looking food,  quite tough to chop. It has a scent that is slightly lemony almost gingery,the taste is not at all like ginger (which can be used if you have trouble locating galangal) even though related apparently.

Green peppercorns, these were selling in my shop as young peppercorns and are harvested when unripe, its amazing what you find out when you go shopping.  I added these to the stir fry at the very last minute as advised by the Chinese shopkeeper.

I found also when looking about the net that these items along with garlic ginger and chilli go to making Thai Green curry paste, so I hope to have a go at that one day soon.

I added my own green chillis from the garden and this ensured hot hot hot!!

The stir fry is so simple to make, the sauce goes into the wok, then the prawns, then the spices,its effortless. This is the best of both worlds using a great quality sauce and fresh spices too. I wish you could smell the aroma from the picture above it was a dish cooking that brings the family into the kitchen asking when its ready!

I really recommend using Jasmine sticky rice, it just harmonizes the meal so well.

So this is the finished dish, I love the look of it and with the decoration of the green peppercorns it looked fabulous, this recipe serves 4 but 4 very small portions, I divided between three and if you are a hearty eater two servings would be good.

The flavours are amazing, its really fragrant, lemony, gingery and very hot. I am not a fan of sweet and savoury and this is slightly sweet, but the lime, galangal and peppercorns made this dish so tasty the sweet was not so much of an issue.

Here is the recipe I followed if you want to give it a go try and source the fresh spices, it really lifted this meal into authentic Asian cuisine>

My next stop on the Fusion of Flavours is Thailand, I can't wait!

Prawn ginger and chilli stir-fry (serves 4)

Ingredients:

1 jar WORLDFOODS Chinese ginger garlic chilli sauce

250 g prawns

20 g sweet basil leaves (I used coriander)

5 leaves kaffir lime leaf, coarsely ripped

5 clusters fresh green peppercorns

20 g chillies, diagonally sliced (if you want to add extra heat)

4 stems galangal, julienned

Instructions:

1. Heat WORLDFOODS Chinese ginger garlic chilli sauce in the saucepan.

2. Add in prawns and stir until they are cooked. Follow by other ingredients, stirring occasionally until the sauce thickens.

3. Serve with jasmine rice or rice noodles
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