Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry with Spicy Mustard Sauce

I'll preface this post by saying that my cooking style tends to be pretty lenient. Obviously. So this recipe kind of evolved from me just throwing things into a pan until it tasted good; in no way is this supposed to be authentic Asian cuisine. So now that I'm off the hook, here's what you need for some tasty authentic Asian stir-fry:

• 1.5 c rice
  
• 1 chili (I used jalapeno)
  
• 1 tbsp chopped ginger
  
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  
• 2 carrots
• half an eggplant
• half a yellow onion
• about 4 stalks red chard
• 1 c sliced mushrooms
• a few sprigs cilantro and lemon juice for garnish

 For the Spicy Mustard Sauce:

• 1/3 c spicy dijon mustard
• 1/4 c olive oil
• balsamic vinegar (nothing fancy)
• soy sauce
• garlic salt and pepper 

Whenever I make this, I make a ton of it so I have leftovers for days. Because, you know, reading and stuff takes up time. Anyway, I start with the rice. Put 1.5 c brown rice into the rice cooker. If you don't have one, I suggest a trip to Target to make that purchase. I can never make rice right on the stove, and these are cheap and foolproof. The rule with brown rice is two parts liquid to one part rice, thus 3 c water (or chicken broth if you're feeling dirty). It takes about 45 minutes, so you might want to start this a little ahead of time. Set it...and forget it.

Next, it's time to cook the chicken. I use a big, heavy skillet on medium-high heat with a little olive oil drizzled in. Cook the chicken for, I don't know, 7 minutes on each side, until it gets that nice golden brown color.

Juicy

Take the chicken off and set it on the floor for now. Just kidding. Use a plate. Lower the heat to low-medium and add a pretty generous amount of oil in the bottom of the pan for the vegetable sautee that's coming next. Peanut oil would probably be pretty tasty if nuts don't make your throat close. I like to use olive oil because it infuses really well with the garlic, chilis and ginger, plus I always have it. Speaking of, add those to the oil. It's on low because this allows the flavors to seep into the oil without cooking everything too fast, giving you time to chop up everything else.

I usually chop up the vegetables that take longer to cook first. That pretty much means the carrots, onions and the eggplant. Dice them how you like and stick it in there. Give it a little stir and turn your heat up to medium to medium-high so you can cook it all.

At this point, my pan was pretty crowded, so I put these veggies and the chicken into the oven in a 13x9 casserole dish at 350 degrees. That helps cook the chicken and the eggplant a little further. It was only for a few minutes while I sauteed the other ingredients.

Here, I added more oil to the pan and sauteed the red chard and mushrooms. Be careful, since the chard just got washed off there's guaranteed to be some water on it and it will splatter when it touches the oil. Cook these until the greens wilt and the mushrooms get brown.

At some point, you'll want to make your sauce. Start with the spicy dijon mustard in a bowl. Add to that the olive oil, a couple glugs of balsamic vinegar and about 2 tbsp soy sauce. Totally authentic. Sprinkle in some garlic salt and pepper and whisk it all together. It's really good, I promise. You can make it as thick or thin as you like, but it will thin out when you add it to the veggies in a second. Now take your casserole dish out of the oven and slice the chicken. Combine the chicken, all the veggies and the sauce in the pan and mix it up real nice.

Brown food tastes good

 Spoon the rice into the bottom of the casserole dish, and layer the stir-fry mixture on top of it. Sprinkle some fresh cilantro on top and hit it with some lemon juice. Eat it, it's delicious. And healthy. Excellent.