One of the classical Hunanese pea recipes; and as so often with Chinese everyday cooking with simple ingredients, one can hardly speak of a recipe, it is that simple:
- Take a bowl of fresh peas (as many as you need, i.e. want to eat), and some sliced chilli and garlic. If you want to, feel free to mince the chilli and/or garlic…
- Heat up a rather thin layer of oil in the wok and fry the peas in it until they have lost quite a bit of their water and discolored from that.
- In the end, they should look somewhat as if you’d tried to dry them. Just don’t get them too hard, only getting towards crunchiness.
- Before they’ve reached that point, therefore, add the chile pepper and garlic and fry them with the peas (just don’t burn them).
- Salt as you find appropriate (which is the same principle that applies to the chilli and the garlic: vary the amounts as you wish).
Since I’m such a sucker for the proper use of chilli: This is a recipe where green chilli should be used; classically Chinese varieties with rather thin and long pods of not too high a pungency would be the recommendation for this dish (as for so many).
