I should count myself lucky. I’ve heard enough about teenagers indifferent to food, but we have an active and amiable 15-year-old who enjoys eating, likes variety, and can usually identify the ingredients on her plate. While she’ll eat almost anything when we’re out, at home she’s intolerant of food made without a spark or flourish. The visual appeal matters—“aesthetic,” as she calls it—but she’ll abandon presentation entirely if the food truly tastes good. Conversely, if something looks promising but the flavour disappoints, she makes her feelings sharply known. This much I’ve learned over the years.
I cook almost every day for my daughter, a process that keeps me challenged and thinking. Often, when I’m in the shower, running, driving or trying to fall asleep, some part of my mind is occupied with recipes to create, tweak or rediscover. And nearly everything I make has to be quick because there’s always so much else to juggle, including my day job. Quick, creative cooking has been this column’s credo for 16 years (yes, it’s been that long).
On weekends, if the mood strikes, I’m willing to abandon the “quick” bit. But on school days, there is little alternative. After years of experience, I can safely say that Chinese—at least my version of it—is the best route to achieving the quick-and-creative goal before or after the day’s defining moment: the departure and arrival of the schoolbus.
I’ve devised more versions of quick Chinese-ish food than I can remember, but all of them circle around two sauces: oyster and soy. Of the two, oyster sauce is the prima donna. I use it primarily with chicken, but it works just as well with shredded pork or beef, all excellent for five-minute stir-fries. Add finely chopped vegetables and rice, and you have a whole meal ready for tiffin, lunch or dinner.
Whenever I make Indian food, the teen may quibble about the spice level or boycott the dish entirely if it contains her two bugbears—cardamom and clove (don’t ask)—however cleverly I have camouflaged them. But I have never heard her criticise a stir-fry.
In India, oyster sauce may or may not actually involve oysters. Many versions are mushroom-based, for instance. The core of the original, though it may not contain actual shellfish, comes from oyster extract—essentially the liquid in which oysters were boiled. Most versions include flavouring agents: corn starch for thickening, plus sugar, salt and soy.
My favourite, when I can get it, is Lee Kum Kee, a brand around since 1888. We use their light and dark soy regularly, and their Panda brand oyster sauce is available on Amazon. The best of all is the world-famous “Boat Lady,” though it’s harder to find in India. Still, any decent brand will keep your stir-fries going strong.
And so, the stir-fries keep rolling along, tweaked with varied meats, vegetables and other ingredients but always anchored by oyster and soy. The recipe below is a little more elaborate than my usual weekday fare because I toss the chicken and mushroom separately before combining them with the rice. You can also try the smoked-red-chilli-powder variation.
I should add that if the mood strikes and she has the time, the teen is entirely capable of turning out a top-quality meal, as she does for us now and then. The best part is that she knows how fastidious her parents are about a clean kitchen, so she willingly reins in her tendency to cook like a mini hurricane and actually washes up and scrubs down.
I have mixed feelings about girls learning to cook. It is vital, of course, that every young person learns to prepare healthy, delicious food—life is too short to eat oily rubbish and risk cutting shorter by doing so. Yet, in a country so hostile to women’s ambitions, a country that still expects them to put hot chapatis on the table no matter what else they may accomplish, I am wary of a young woman being defined or trapped by her culinary abilities.
SCHOOL FRIED RICE
Serves 3
Ingredients
300g chicken, diced
100g mushrooms, sliced
3 whole red chillies
1 tsp sugar
3 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tsp dark soy sauce
4 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp smoked red chilli powder
3 tbsp chopped garlic
3 spring onions
3-4 mugs cooked white rice
3 tsp sesame oil
Salt to taste
Method
Marinate the chicken in smoked red chilli powder, 2 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tsp dark soy, 2 tsp light soy, 1 tsp sugar and the sweet chilli sauce. Set aside for an hour.
Clean the spring onions. Separate and slice the bulbs; chop the stalks for garnish. Clean and slice the mushrooms.
Heat 2 tsp sesame oil in a wok until smoking. Sauté 1 tbsp garlic, then add mushrooms. Sauté briefly, add 1 tsp each of dark and light soy, and cook until nearly done. Remove and keep aside.
Add the remaining 1 tsp sesame oil to the wok. When smoking, sauté 2 tbsp garlic for 30 seconds, then add the spring-onion bulbs and sauté another 30 seconds. Add the chicken and toss until cooked through. Add rice—according to how chicken- or mushroom-heavy you like your fried rice—and toss well. Adjust with more dark or light soy if needed. Add the mushrooms and toss again. Garnish with spring-onion stalks. Add salt only if necessary; remember that soy, oyster and sweet-chilli sauces already contain salt.
Our Daily Bread is a column on easy, inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar is the author of The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures. He posts @samar11 on X