Yum!

[varjohaltia]

Two notable events from the weekend:

1) moonwolf made some General Tso's chicken. From scratch, from a recipe found on 4chan. I chopped the fresh ginger and garlic for the sauce. I thought I had tasted some pretty good General Tso's before, but this was really, really good. I think fresh ginger in particular is something no Chinese food should be without; it makes an amazing difference.

2) I finished Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk Trilogy, consisting of Pashazade, Effendi and Felaheen. It's an alternate history semi-cyberunk noir detective kind of trilogy. Mr. Grimwood apparently hangs out in a group with China Miéville, and there are some similarities. The prose paints places that do not exist rather well, and the language is colorful and vocabulary-building. The aspects of North-African and Ottoman culture seem both well researched and intentionally fake at the same time. Regardless, unlike Miéville, I rather enjoy Grimwood's books, and can recommend these ones as well.

Comments

[dmnkttn.livejournal.com]

Dude, I seriously want the recipe. :)

General Tso's Chicken

[playfuleye.livejournal.com]

Here's to the both of you, from a good anonymous on 4chan!

Meat/Breading:
3 chicken breasts
60ml soy sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 egg
236ml cornstarch (or rather, enough for dredging)

This part is simple. Cut the chicken into chunks (cut off any undesirable bits, like veins or ligaments). The pieces should be bite size or a little bigger. Mix the soy sauce and the egg, dip the chunks of chicken into that, then dredge it in a mixture of the cornstarch and the pepper. From the cornstarch, put it immediately into some hot oil to fry it.
I don't have the means to deep fry, so I shallow-fried them in my frying pan. Even though I knocked the excess cornstarch off before putting them in the oil, the oil soon became very saturated with cornstarch. I therefore fried the meat at a lower temperature, so that the starch in the oil wouldn't burn before I'd done all my chicken. You may not have this problem, though.
When the meat is all cooked and crispy, set it aside. I popped mine into the toaster oven because (1) some pieces weren't fully cooked yet, so I wanted to heat them more and (2) I wanted to keep them warm. :D

On to the sauce!

Sauce:
120ml cup cornstarch
60ml water
1 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 1/2 teaspoon minced ginger root
180ml sugar
120ml soy sauce
60ml white vinegar
60ml cooking wine
350ml hot chicken broth
dried hot chilis (to taste)

I started by mincing my ginger root. (You have to peel it, yeah? Just a heads up.) I used more ginger root than this. Maybe like... a chunk of ginger the size of a walnut, minced. But really, use as much as you like. Make your chicken stock (I used knorr stock cubes, just add hot water), and then add your ginger and your garlic (I used minced garlic from a jar, but you can mince fresh if you like; again, I added more, but you can adjust to your own taste) to the measuring cup. Add your chilis (I used sliced dried chilies, so it's just like, rings, but you can use flake, or whatever you have handy). After stirring that up, I put that into my frying pan (I'd washed it in the meantime, so there was no more oil and starch in there). Over a low heat, just let it start to mix and mingle.

Next, put the soy sauce (I used Kikkoman, but use whatever you want, probably the less salty the better though) in your measuring cup. Add the vinegar, and the cooking wine (I used the stuff you can buy at any supermarket in Japan -- it's like undrinkably harsh rice wine, so if you can't find it properly at an Asian market, just buy some cheap sake and use that) to the soy sauce, and then mix it up and add it to the frying pan.

Now add the sugar to the frying pan, and stir it well It should dissolve fairly quickly, but keep stirring it once in a while so that it does.

Now, mix the water and the corn starch. This, of course, is our thickener. Once you've got a smooth liquid, add it to the frying pan. The liquid in the frying pan at this point should be steaming, but not boiling. Stir your corn starch mixture in, and then crank the heat. Very quickly, you'll see your sauce start to thicken. Stir it a lot, to make sure it doesn't burn and stick.

Now, get your rice or noodles (I used very nice Koshi Hikari rice), and put your chicken pieces you've been keeping warm on top. Then, top it all with the sauce. As you can see from the original pic, I made more sauce than was needed, yet used it all anyway. Just keep in mind that this makes a lot of sauce, and you may want to keep some for another time, or make more chicken and rice to offset that.

It's very delicious! It's very spicy, and sticky. I quite enjoy it. You should try it!