Five or less ingredients #1

I was quite temped to buy a new cookery book last week, but luckily for my purse, and more importantly for my shelves that have run out of space, Magda has told me not to do so! Being very optimistic she told me that possibly about half of the recipes will be crap and certainly I am able to cook better dishes using my own knowledge. The book that was tempting me was about tasty food made from four ingredients.

So I sat with a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a list of dishes that require five or less ingredients to prepare. I was quite impressed with the outcome , especially when I was making this list I still did not check any of my cookery books or magazines.

Therefore I have decided to start a new series. Just to explain how it works:

I am hoping to show tasty and easy to make five or less ingredients dishes. List of ingredients will exclude salt, pepper and water, as I presume everyone has those at home at all times. Sometimes possibly you will see some fresh herbs for garnishing, but these are not included and I only use them for photographing purposes and they will not have a major or any impact on the taste of the final dish.

I will also use ready buy products such as good quality powdered bouillon (stock), puff pastry, pesto or curry paste. Anyway I do use them on everyday basis, as not always I have spare time to cook homemade stock (or I run out of the frozen one) or make my own pesto. Not even mentioning homemade puff pastry, which is gorgeous and buttery but time consuming.

Right! Lets try first recipe. It is turkey stir fry in caramel sauce served with rice. The recipe comes from "Quick & easy Vietnamese" Nancie McDermott and I have made few alterations to it.

I have tried it before with pork, which is probably my favourite one but chicken, turkey or even king prawns are fine.



Turkey stir fry in caramel sauce

Makes 2

400g of turkey, cut into bite size strips
4 tbsp brown sugar
6 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
half tsp chilli powder
rice to serve (allow 80-100g uncooked rice per person)
ground black pepper (quite a lot)
2 tbsp cold water
2 tbsp hot water

Mix the meat with fish sauce, pepper and one tbsp of sugar and set aside.

Place 3 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp of cold water in non stick pan and boil until it starts to bubble and changes colour to honey-like and it is quite syrupy. Next add 2 tbsp of hot water and leave it to erupt for a little while, then add the meat with marinade. Stir until it is all covered with the caramel sauce and keep on the heat until most of the juices evaporates and meat is quite sticky.

Serve immediately with cooked rice.