Thai Basil Chicken

If I had to name my top 5 dishes, Thai Green Curry would definitely be one of them. When I first came to London, I lived in Clapham and used to visit The Pepper Tree frequently for their Thai Green Curry and Big Tum Noodles. I went through a spell of trying everything to recreate their delicious curry. I made fresh curry paste, I found a place that sold Thai aubergines, I even found fresh lime leaves, but somehow something was missing. That missing ingredient turned out to be Thai Basil. For me, that slight aniseed hit really makes all the difference.

Nowadays, I don't often make the paste myself, and I don't often by the Thai aubergines or fresh lime leaves. But the one thing that I will always go to the effort of buying is Thai Basil. A handful of leaves right at the end of the cooking is now essential for me.

The trouble is, in the Chinese supermarket where we buy it from, the basil comes in pretty big bundles. So what to do with the rest of it? The solution that we've come to is the recipe below for Thai Basil Chicken. This is a really tasty recipe that we have with rice. It has lots of sauce and is very flavourful due to the amount of oyster sauce, basil and chillies which are added. This is a slightly adapted version as we added a pepper and some mushrooms leftover. Now I like this dish almost as much as Thai Green Curry.

Ingredients:

- 2 garlic cloves
- 3-4 skinless and boneless chicken thighs, chopped
- 1 onion

- 1 pepper
- 5 mushrooms

- 4 tbsp oyster sauce

- 2 tbsp light soy sauce

- 1 tsp dark soy sauce

- 2/3 cup water

- 2 handfuls of Thai basil

- 2-3 chillies, chopped

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Method:

Heat some oil in a hot wok. Add the garlic and fry until fragrant (20-30 seconds). Add the chicken and fry until opaque. Add the onion, pepper, mushrooms and cook for a further minute. Add the sauces, water and chillies and cook for a further 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the Thai basil and stir well. Serve with rice.