The Sweet and the Sour
After more than 20 years of hard use, my recipe collection was as appealing as the paper lining a kitchen garbage pail. You could easily pick out the most popular recipes by the number of tomato-sauce blobs and chocolate smears obscuring the instructions. I must have collected a lot of the still pristine ones while drunk. Did I really think I’d bake a 10-tiered wedding cake — and decorate it with homemade marzipan figurines? I’m no Martha Stewart.
Flipping through grimy pages is no fun, so I stopped doing it. But since I have trouble recalling recipes with more than 3 ingredients and 2 steps my family was subsisting on the same half-dozen recipes I remember by heart. Naturally, these meals were greeted with yawns and pleas for take-out pizza.
It was time to get organized. I tore apart, very literally, my old cookbooks and then collected all my index cards, scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, and magazine tear-outs. Next, I purged all — well, most — of the recipes that require16 hours and a scullery maid to prepare. I also jettisoned circa 1970s entries that call for ingredients like canned mushroom soup and (oh the horror!) green jello. The surviving recipes I typed up in nicely formatted pages, which were printed and encased in sheet protectors before being filed, by category, in a big, pretty loose-leaf notebook. Martha would be proud.
One of the “keeper” recipes is Chinese Sweet & Sour Chicken, which I hadn’t made in years, ever since I’ve become obsessive about cutting down on sugar. And fats. And carbs. But most of the sweetness in this dish is from fruit juice. And if frying oil is kept at the proper temperature, very little is actually absorbed. Am I rationalizing? Is this actually junk food disguised as a main course? Maybe. But when I served it last week, this was the first time in ages that a meal was devoured by the picky eaters in my family.
I don’t remember where I got the recipe. Although it can be prepared in a wok, it’s probably as authentically Chinese as I am. No matter. The chicken bits are crisp on the outside but very juicy and tender within, the vegetables mellow but still bright, and the thin glaze of savory sauce imparts just enough zing.
What To Do:
Use an electric skillet or a candy thermometer to help keep the oil at the optimal temperature (350-375ºF) and don’t crowd the pieces.
What Not To Do:
Try to “save time” by filling the pot with more oil. Half full is too much for frying multiple batches. The oil foams up like a science experiment gone wrong, cascades down the sides of the pot, and splashes a lot of kitchen territory. (Don’t ask me how I know this. However, I can now tell you that a coating of oil makes vintage Hebron marble shine like new.)
Chinese Sweet & Sour Chicken (serves 6)
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 800 gr), cut in 3/4″ cubes
Flour
4 egg yolks
2 T soy sauce
Oil
3 firm tomatoes, in 1″ chunks
2 onions, in 1″ chunks
1 green pepper, in 1″ chunks
1 c pineapple chunks, drained
1 c Sweet & Sour Sauce (below)
Mix egg yolks with soy sauce and a bit of water. Roll chicken in flour, egg, flour. Deep fry in batches for 2-3 min till done. Remove. Drain out oil.
Stir-fry onion and pepper approximately 1 min. till tender but still crisp and brightly colored. Add tomato, pineapple, and sauce and heat thoroughly. Pour mixture over chicken and mix gently. Best served immediately while the chicken bits are still crisp.
(Sweet & Sour Sauce: Mix in a saucepan 1/2 c vinegar, 1/3 c sugar, 1/2 t salt, 1/4 c orange juice, 1/4 c pineapple juice, 1/4 c tomato paste. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. Blend 2 T cornstarch in 1/8 c juice; add to mixture and cook till thickened.)