Add the cashews last of all. Cooked along with everything else they go soft, and scorched they leave only bitterness.
2 servings25 min
Cut the chicken into 2 cm cubes and marinate for 10 minutes with 1/2 tbsp of the soy sauce and 1 tbsp cornflour.
Toast the cashews in a dry pan over low heat for 3–4 minutes and set them aside. They must not take on colour here — they meet heat again later.
Cut the pepper into 2 cm pieces, slice the garlic thin, cut the spring onion on the diagonal.
Heat the pan until it smokes, add the oil, and lay the chicken out in a single layer. Do not touch it for 2 minutes.
Turn and cook 2 minutes more, until cooked through. Lift it out.
In the same pan cook the garlic and spring onion 30 seconds for aroma, add the pepper and cook 1 minute. It should stay crisp.
Return the chicken, pour the remaining 1 tbsp of soy sauce around the rim of the pan, and toss 30 seconds.
Turn off the heat, then stir in the cashews.
Adding the cashews last, off the heat, is the whole dish. Two reasons.
First, they go soft. Stir-fried in a pan with sauce, cashews take up moisture and lose their crunch. Their job here is textural contrast; soft, there is no reason for them to be in the pan.
Second, they burn. Cashews are 43.8% fat. In a hot pan, thirty seconds takes them past colour, and after that only bitterness remains.
That is also why the pre-toast takes no colour. Three or four minutes in a dry pan over low heat is enough to wake the aroma, no more.
Dusting the chicken with cornflour is the Chinese technique of velveting. The starch forms a thin film that holds moisture in. For chicken breast, which is lean and dries out easily, it is close to essential.
Laying it in a single layer and leaving it 2 minutes follows the same logic. Turned often, the steam is trapped, the temperature stays down, and the meat boils instead of browning.
Pouring the soy sauce around the rim is about evaporation: hitting hot metal, it flashes and the aroma lifts. Poured into the middle it only drops the temperature and leaves saltiness.
On the numbers, 60 g of cashews across two servings is 30 g each — exactly one handful. That brings 0.66 mg of copper (73% of the requirement) and 88 mg of magnesium. The cashews alone are 166 kcal per person, so go easy on the rice.
Use unsalted cashews. Salted ones stack on top of the soy sauce and double the sodium — which rather defeats the point, given that blood pressure is where cashews have their evidence.
Nuts & seeds
Moderate evidenceA meta-analysis pooling 392 randomised trial participants found no significant change in total cholesterol, LDL, HDL or triglycerides. Only systolic pressure fell, by 3.39 mmHg (95% CI −6.13 to −0.65). Not all nuts are the same food.
Meat
Moderate evidence31 g of protein and 3.6 g of fat per 100 g. Almost no everyday food beats it on protein per calorie.
Vegetables
Moderate evidence128 mg of vitamin C per 100 g of red pepper. The Cochrane review, though, found no reduction in colds.
Vegetables
Moderate evidenceThe evidence for garlic points to a modest drop in blood pressure and cholesterol. The trick is to crush it and wait ten minutes before it hits the heat.