Choko...

On mother's day, Lynn's mum gave me some chokos. It made me laugh a little, I have to confess. Where I grew up (Maleny), chokos were so plentiful - and considered so horrible - that people would leave boxes of them beside the road, free to a good home.

Nonetheless, these little guys make a regular appearance in Vietnamese cuisine, so I decided to adopt a traditional Vietnamese dish that you probably won't have had; it's rarely on the menu in restaurants, and isn't full of flavours that we typically associate with Vietnamese food.

Vietnamese spicy choko.

• two or three free range chicken thigh fillets, cubed
• vegetable oil
  
• a leek, believe it or not, but any type of onion-y thing would work
• three birds' eye chillis, or six/seven if you like it hot like me!
  
• a few pinches of good vegetable stock powder (i.e. Vegeta [quite salty] or Massel) or salt
• some garlic cloves - at least three
• two chokos, cut into strips.
  
• a can of chopped tomatoes
  
• some bok choy, or Asian greens.

Heat the oil in a medium high wok, add the leek and stir fry for two minutes. After that, throw in the chicken, stock, garlic and chillis. Stir fry for another three minutes.

Add the chokos. One thing with chokos: the skin is edible, but it's noticeably tougher than the flesh, and not totally pleasant. I would recommend peeling, unless you're addicted to nutrition or something (pfft!).

Stir fry that for another two minutes or so, and then add the tomatoes, and maybe 70mls of water, depending on how juicy it is, and some stock/salt to taste, if necessary.

Put a lid on the wok, turn the heat to low, and let it simmer for around ten minutes. After that, crank the heat back to medium, add the bok choy, and stir it in. Serve it on rice, yum!

Provided you don't overcook the chokos, this is a really nice dish. When they retain some crunch, they're surprisingly tasty: infinitely superior to the buttery mush I remember eating as a kid. Also, Vietnamese tomato dishes are almost all delicious. A more traditional meal involves a pork meatball embedded in tomato halves, and the same sauce. It's fantastic, and one of Lynn's favourites.