Thai basil chicken

Before you start

• a wok or your widest pan, and everything chopped before it is lit
• holy basil if the shop has it — Thai sweet basil is a different plant and a different dish

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 300gchicken mince — coarse, or thigh chopped by hand — fine mince goes pasty
• 170gjasmine rice
• 2eggs
• 1½ tbspoil
• 2 large handfulsholy basil
• 6garlic cloves
• 6chillies
• 100ggreen beans
• 2 tbspfish sauce
• 1 tbspoyster sauce
• 1 tspsoy sauce
• 1 tspsugar

Method

6 steps

1. boil · 15m walk away

   Rice rinsed and on, lid, lowest heat, so it is waiting rather than being waited for.

2. chop · 9m

   Garlic and chillies pounded together to a rough paste in a mortar rather than minced — the bruising is what gets the heat out of them. Beans cut short, basil picked. All of it beside the hob.

3. fold · 2m

   Fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy and sugar mixed in a cup with a splash of water.

4. fry · 8m

   Pan as hot as it will go, oil in, garlic and chilli for ten seconds, then the mince spread out in a thin layer and LEFT for half a minute before it is broken up. Cooked hard until there is no pink left anywhere in it and some of it has caught brown. Beans and sauce in for the last minute.

5. fry · 5m

   Eggs fried separately in a good depth of very hot oil, spooned over rather than turned, until the white is brown and blistered at the edges and the yolk still runs.

6. finish · 2m

   Pan off the heat, then the basil in and stirred once — it should wilt in the residual heat and no more. Cooked in, it goes black and tastes of nothing. Over the rice with the egg on top.