A cross between Super Market sweep and Ready steady cook !

In the magazine Delicious they have a feature called shortcut suppers this month. So tonight I was in a hurry and decided to grab some quick products from the supermarket and see if it added up to a tasty meal at a reasonable price.
Now some people like browsing the latest fashion clothing shops and some love the DIY hypermarket but my pleasure comes from wandering the food aisles of a large supermarket looking at what they have to offer. Call me sad at this point if you want, but I can spend quite some time wandering around pushing my single mans trolley looking for love and something else tasty to nibble ! Ha ha.
I should point out that farmers shops and markets, delicatessen's, privately run butchers, fishmongers and grocers are number 1 in my eyes as a foodie holiday day trip destination but supermarkets are cool to !
So bearing in mind I could spend a while in the chosen Asda I gave myself 5 minutes only to seek out the goods needed.
I wandered in and walked at great speed hoping that something would grab my eye.
After 5 aisles I swept down the International section passing Mr El Paso and Bombay delights and was drawn to a Chinese section which was offering 2 stir fry sauces for a £1.

I purchased 4 for £2 a bog standard sweet and sour,  a lemon based sauce, a little black bean number and the spicy Szechuan tomato sauce which I used tonight.

Underneath these sauces was a picture of the mighty oriental master chef Ken Holm selling "straight to wok noodles " So I thought these must be good and brought a bag. They were £1.15 for two portions. A bit pricey I thought but this was supposed to be time saving.

As you can guess by now I was heading down a stir fry road and decided to have some diced turkey breast steaks with it which cost £2.73 which was enough for two.

I had at home already some french beans, fresh sweetcorn and spring onions which I had brought at the local co-op and worked out at about £1 per portion, so that would be perfect stir fry ingredients but as I was about to leave the orient I saw some Kingfisher tinned bamboo shoots which in my eyes is an essential component of any Chinese festival of food. They were about 35p for a 200g tin.

So that was that the ingredients sorted now just the small matter of cooking it.

I am not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how to cook a stir fry so I wont. Instead here are some pictures.

without noodles.

with noodles.

The finished dish.

I must admit it did look nice when I added the sauce and plated it up. The vegetables, the Turkey and the bean sprouts gave it a freshness that you would not get from a packaged ready meal but the sauce was in my opinion lacking the bite and burst of flavours a normal Szechuan sauce has and I have given below the recipe I use when making this kind of sauce from scratch.
However the whole meal was made in no time at all and with the addition of the noodles the dish was quite tasty and totally edible and filled a hole.
As someone who loves to cook from scratch it would be easy to slate these kind of products because its from a packet but to do that I think would be a bit harsh and not fair.

Try this recipe below with any kind of meat and see if you prefer it.

Szechuan Sauce.
5 red chillies.
1 onion.
2 tsp grated fresh ginger.
1 crushed garlic clove.
1 tsp crushed Szechuan pepper corns.
3 spring onions. (whites only)
3 tbsp rice wine vinegar.
1.5 tbsp tomato puree.
1 tbsp sugar.
0.5 tsp Sesame oil.
3 tbsp vegetable oil.
1 tbsp water.

Heat vegetable oil in pan and saute the chopped chillies, onion, garlic, and spring onions for a few minutes. Then add the vinegar, water, puree, sugar and peppercorns and cook for a few more minutes. Add the sesame oil and mix well.
It can be used as a marinade or its great just mixed with some noodles served cold.