New Recipe #6: Sweet and sour chicken

I am pleased to report that the recipe binder welcomed a new addition to the dinner ranks with my sixth new recipe of the year: sweet and sour chicken, courtesy of Cooking Light. This homemade version of a take-out classic has a straight-forward process and relatively short time frame, and the ingredients are readily available. The process of cooking the dish went smoothly, almost eerily so, and I was nervous to try it out. What if it didn’t taste good? It looked pretty similar to what we’d get at our local place, but you never know when those cooking imps will dash in and spoil things. I tentatively took my first bite.

Yowch! Hot! Hot! Molten lava hot!

I fanned my mouth wildly and gulped down water. Needless to say, the sauce holds its heat very well, straight out of the pan. Once my tongue recovered, I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty the dish was. It was actually sweet! And sour! And just a tiny bit spicy from the dash of red pepper flake. It was a satisfying dinner that wasn’t too heavy, and I felt good about avoiding the extra calories and MSG that our neighborhood Chinese place throws in for free.

It must be noted that it took me about an hour to put together this dinner, and my poor knife skills are solely to blame. I spent half an hour mincing two cloves of garlic; chopping up a red bell pepper, two stalks of celery, and half an onion; and rendering three chicken breasts into half-inch pieces. I doggedly pushed through all of it and emerged with my fingers intact — reward, please! It irks me that I struggled with the prep, but the cooking was a breeze. What is that about? Next time, despite my good intentions to become knife competent, I may ask JG to be my sous chef (i.e., chopping slave).

Also, I have an issue with buying ingredients that have a low probability of being used again, like the “ground fresh ginger (such as Spice World)” mentioned in the recipe. Spices are expensive enough without having them languish in the pantry, taunting me all the while. Plus, I wasn’t about to go out and buy sherry for a mere two tablespoons, and cashews are full of fat, so I omitted those entirely. I followed a suggestion from another cookbook and substituted chicken stock for the sherry in the sauce, and just before I spooned out servings of chicken, I shook in regular old ground ginger, to taste. JG was a member of the Clean Plate Club, so I think it’s safe to say that it all worked out just fine.

P.S. Happy Pi Day!