What's For Dinner Wednesday
This year, my challenge to myself is to make our restaurant favorites at home, since we can't afford to go out and get them. That's part of the inspiration for the Gyros from a few weeks ago.
With a picky kid, there isn't really much that we can agree on when it comes to dining out. Typically, when we would go out for Chinese, Gameboy would ask for rice. Just rice. It was a little sad to me and Ed that the child who stole pieces of General Tsao's with szechuan peppers on it off my plate when he was a tyke didn't want anything to do with it or anything else Chinese. Until a few months ago, that is.
Finally, all four of us had one meal that we all enjoyed. Chef Jr will eat just about anything, with his favorite probably being Orange Chicken, but Tsao's is a very close second. Okay, it's time to figure this one out.
A few years ago, I learned how to make it at the meal preparation kitchen and that was a delicious dish-baked, using Panko breadcrumbs. Alas, I don't have that recipe anymore. A search of various recipe sites didn't have a sauce recipe using the ingredients I remembered (fish sauce and OJ among them). Instead, Ed was kind enough to print out about a dozen different recipes and I looked through them to see which seemed like the most likely to taste like our favorite
This one actually took one hour from start to finish, but there are quite a few steps: making a sauce, a slurry, frying the chicken:
flash frying the onions, then heating the sauce:
keeping the fried pieces warm and crispy:
Tossing the chicken and sauce together:
And then preparing it for consumption:
The sauce was missing the peppers, but other than that it was spot on-the right flavor and consistency The only thing to remember for next time is that when I plate up Gameboy's that I should deonionify his portion, because he balked at the green flecks.
I think the best part of it is that it cost about 10 bucks to make 25 bucks worth of yummy goodness, if we'd dined out AND I've got enough of everything but the cornstarch to make a couple more batches of this.
Yay!
With a picky kid, there isn't really much that we can agree on when it comes to dining out. Typically, when we would go out for Chinese, Gameboy would ask for rice. Just rice. It was a little sad to me and Ed that the child who stole pieces of General Tsao's with szechuan peppers on it off my plate when he was a tyke didn't want anything to do with it or anything else Chinese. Until a few months ago, that is.
Finally, all four of us had one meal that we all enjoyed. Chef Jr will eat just about anything, with his favorite probably being Orange Chicken, but Tsao's is a very close second. Okay, it's time to figure this one out.
A few years ago, I learned how to make it at the meal preparation kitchen and that was a delicious dish-baked, using Panko breadcrumbs. Alas, I don't have that recipe anymore. A search of various recipe sites didn't have a sauce recipe using the ingredients I remembered (fish sauce and OJ among them). Instead, Ed was kind enough to print out about a dozen different recipes and I looked through them to see which seemed like the most likely to taste like our favorite
This one actually took one hour from start to finish, but there are quite a few steps: making a sauce, a slurry, frying the chicken:
flash frying the onions, then heating the sauce:
keeping the fried pieces warm and crispy:
Tossing the chicken and sauce together:
And then preparing it for consumption:
The sauce was missing the peppers, but other than that it was spot on-the right flavor and consistency The only thing to remember for next time is that when I plate up Gameboy's that I should deonionify his portion, because he balked at the green flecks.
I think the best part of it is that it cost about 10 bucks to make 25 bucks worth of yummy goodness, if we'd dined out AND I've got enough of everything but the cornstarch to make a couple more batches of this.
Yay!
Comments
You do realize I am perfecting the list of Donna's favorite meals, right? What am I missing?