Day 17: Sesame Chicken

Today’s Exercise: 32 minutes on Wii Fit, 10,500 steps

Today has been a bad day in terms of cravings. I guess that now I found a good low-fat/low-calorie recipe for chocolate cake (still incredibly tasty) and one for cheeseburgers that there are many things left that I need to find good alternatives for. Then again today’s main craving was for a sausage roll… and something tells me that THAT is beyond anyone’s efforts to make a good low-fat version.

A commonly recurring one is for Chinese takeaway which means that there is likely to be many MANY more recipes where I am trying to find low-calorie versions. The mango chicken is a sort of substitute for sweet & sour chicken (granted I never order that from my local but it’s nice to have now and then) and today’s is a pre-cursor for trying a recipe for General Tso’s Chicken (the original version of which stands as one of the few recipes I created myself).

Anywho, with today’s Sesame Chicken I read a few of the comments and made the following changes. Firstly I doubled the ingredients for the sauce as, seriously, when is there ever too much sauce? I also chose to add a crushed clove of garlic as many people have mentioned it as a delicious addition.

Ingredients (serves two):

• 8oz chicken meat, cut into chunks
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp minced ginger
• 2 pinches of chilli flakes
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds, lightly toasted

Whisk the honey, soy sauce, chilli flakes, garlic, ginger and cornflour together to make the sauce, then set aside.

Get a wok onto a high heat and add a few sprays of low calorie oil and then add the chicken chunks. Stir-fry them for about 6 minutes so that they are well cooked through. Now reduce the heat and add the sauce mix and the sesame seeds. Leave this to simmer for 5-10 minutes (depending on how thick you want your sauce).

Then serve with rice or whatever takes your fancy.

Adapted from here

Verdict: This really tasted like something you would get from a good takeaway, which is exactly what I was hoping for. The original recipe called for a lid to be put on the wok as the sauce simmered but if you have it on a low enough heat then you get away with it. The chicken was nice and tender and the sauce was extremely flavourful. Personally I was a bit worried about putting half a cup of honey in the sauce but it actually added a nice layer of flavour which toned down the saltiness of the soy sauce. Also the heat supplied by the two pinches of chilli flakes was enough to bring a nice warmth to the back of the mouth without being too overpowering.

The main plus was the doubling of the sauce ingredients otherwise there really would not have been any sauce left except that which had coated the chicken. All in all, this is a good start in my attempts to produce healthy versions of traditionally indulgent dishes.

Calorie Count: 210 per serving