It occurred to me that I could set the tabletop burner that I use for hotpots in the winter in the yard to heat up a pot of oil and fry my heart out without leaving a trace of smell in the house. Brilliant, isn’t it? Why didn’t I think of it earlier?!
For my first frying experiment, I made Jason’s favorite Chinese dish – General Tsao’s Chicken. Ask any real Chinese and they’ll tell you that General Tsao’s chicken is the type of quasi-Chinese food invented to suit the American palate. I’ve never seen it on any menus in restaurants in China, or any country outside the United States for that matter. But hey, if that’s what my man wants, that’s what I’ll cook.
This dish being an Americanized Chinese invention actually has its merits: I was able to find an English recipe with exact quantities for all the ingredients (none of the vagueness of “some”, “the right amount” that are so typical of Chinese recipes). So on a hot summer day I set out to make General Tsao’s chicken. The recipe is pretty much self-explanatory except you do not need to mix in so much starch. Being a frying novice, the hardest thing for me was trying to determine when the chicken was done, but it was nothing a few pokes with a chopstick wouldn’t solve.

This was the finished product and it was a huge hit if I might say so myself, well worth the frying trouble. Not only did Jason eat loads of it and brought the leftover to lunch, he talked about if for the next couple of days. The only thing I would change when I make it again is to coat the chicken in the starch after dipping it in the marinade, instead of mixing the starch in from the beginning. I think this will give the chicken a crispier outer layer and make the dish perfect, just the way they serve it in restaurants.
Fueled by the success, I fried up some sea bream a couple of days later, and topped it with a sweet and sour sauce. I also made fried tofu in lemongrass sauce. Believe me when I tell you it tastes so much better than the soggy pre-fried tofu you get in stores. When I come back from my trip, I’m making spring rolls! Oh yeah!
Thanks Linda, for hosting this event and taking my early entry!
13 comments:
Hey, looks very yummy!!! How about General Tsao's chicken the next time we meet up???
Sure thing! Let's have a Chinese night when I come back. Just have to check weather and make sure there isn't a typhoon!
I love General Tsao's! The sweet, artificially red, hot, sticky, deep fried, crispy stuff I get from the local "Chinese" Restaurant (Chinese has to be in quotation marks because the restaurant is run by a Korean family LOL). Maybe I shouldn't admit it but I like Almond Chicken too. The kind with the brown gravy over it that you never really know exactly what it is made of.
Lynn, I was just looking through your photo gallery on allrecipes.com and I am soooooooo hungry now! You take absolutely beautiful photos and should be proud of the lovely food you make. Are you always shopping for plates and other servingware? So many of the photos posted by others on Allrecipes make me shudder because the dishes they are on are so unappetizing or the food itself just looks so tired and unappealing. I don't know how you do it!
Your batch looks better than most of the I've ordered General Tsao's chicken I've had. And I'm sure it tasted better. Great entry!
Oh no wonder I don't recognise the name. Hahaha! But it does look scrumptious Lynn!
Ooooh! Yummy looking chicken! I love fried-things-with-sticky-sauce dishes :-)
That looks wonderful! General Tsao’s Chicken is _so_ good when it's good and _so_ bad when it isn't.
The dish looks wonderful, and I love your writing
OK, it is making me crazy, I want my blog http://tuckerthecairn.blogspot.com/to have expandable post summaries with the "read more" link instead of the whole thing on the main page. Lynn, were you able to accomplish it on yours with *just* the instructions blogger provides? CSS wasn't invented when I took web programming LOL, so I'm struggling!
Thanks everyone for you kind comments. Sorry for the late reply, just got back from my trip. It was really yummy and besides all the dirty dishes it generates, it really isn't that hard to make.
Karen, like I said, it's not "real" Chinese, but hey, if it tastes good =o)
Michelle, I'm an equal-opportunity dish buyer. I buy my dishes from Tiffany's as well as 100yen shop. I think I might have an addiction. (re: the read more thing, I'll write you later with details, gotta unpack first)
Oh you're back! You're back!
Do get some rest and I promise to be patient - waiting for your vacation stories and photos. ;-)
Thank you Lynn, I really appreciate any pointers or links on the "read more" issue. You can leave me a comment about it on my blog http://tuckerthecairn.blogspot.com/ so I won't clog your comments up with my questions. Or you can email me. I'm a little scared to publish my email address on my profile for fear of a spam flood but I'll post it here with the puctuation spelled out to avoid email harvester attention. To get the real address just change back to @ and . (And maybe delete my comment once you've read this). The email is mbuenzliatcomcastdotnet Thanks again!
WOW (impressed look). Your version looks so yummy.
Here I bought a sauce pack for mapo tofu so as to skip all the seasonings! and i will try this friday after work.
http://yummiexpress.freetzi.com
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