Basic Chinese Sauce for Stir Fry

After an emergency involving an out of date sauce & relatives coming round for dinner, I spent the next few minutes investigating the contents of my mum's cupboards & then every chinese cookbook we had to find a sauce that I could make in a couple of minutes. In the end, I found that the following ingredients were common to most recipes. If I hadn't been feeding my dad as well, I would have added something from the following - garlic, ginger, spring onion or chili pepper. As it was, I added the sugar instead to richen the sauce. I used the medium-dry sherry that my mum "cooks" with - although the recommended alternative for rice wine appears to be dry sherry.

• Ready In: 7 mins
• Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 2  tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 1  tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1  tablespoon rice wine or 1  tablespoon dry sherry
• 1  teaspoon dark brown sugar
• 2  teaspoons cornflour
• 2  tablespoons water
• 4  teaspoons  stock or 4  teaspoons water (I used the meat juices that came out when I fried the meat before adding the sauce)

Directions

1. Mix cornflour and water together to form a smooth paste.
2. Add everything else to the paste and mix well- it will take a little while for the sugar to dissolve.
3. Add to meat and/or veg after stir-frying& heat until the sauce has thickened.
4. Serve immediately with rice or noodles.