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Friday, February 06, 2009
well, at least it's not a meme.
Only six days into my attempt to post every day for a month and I am already out of things to write. Hey, I know! I'll post the recipe for the supper I just made!
It was very nice of you to roll your eyes where I couldn't see you just now. Thank you.
The kids earned a massive reward a couple of weeks ago when they did about a million tons of laundry for me. I promised them that for one of our Twilight Zone nights they could have whatever they wanted for supper, and they decided on a Chinese-themed night. C wanted beef with broccoli (which I make with some regularity, and it's OK, but not fabulous), and LT wanted orange chicken, which is a rarer treat. (When we go to Panda Express, he gets a two-entree plate with double orange chicken. I don't think he's ever eaten anything BUT orange chicken at Panda Express.) Making the two things at the same time is a huge amount of work and creates a ginormous mess, but they certainly earned it.
Without further ado (even though excessive ado is pretty much my trademark):
Rachel's Attempt at Orange Chicken
(also known as: It's Not PAN-DA!, But It's Not $8 A Plate Either)
Start oil heating to 375º-400º in the deep fryer. (What? You don't have a deep fryer? Buy one that doubles as a steamer; you'll feel much better about yourself. $25 at Wal-Mart. You might even use it as a steamer occasionally.)
Whisk together in a large bowl:
1 egg
a blort of oil -- 2T maybe? 1/4 c? (Not olive oil because it has to be able to handle really high heat.)
about a teaspoon of black pepper
about 2t of salt
a good sprinkling of cayenne
Add to the above and mix well:
2lb boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
Then add:
1/2 c cornstarch
1/4 c flour
and mix well again. Mix it even better.
Deep-fry chicken pieces in 3 or 4 batches for 3-4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels.
Make a sauce with:
juice of two oranges (I reduced the orange juice this time, just as if I were a Real Chef, but then I added water to the sauce. Oops. Don't bother with the reducing, I'm thinking.)
Add about equal parts vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce -- you want about a cup of sauce total. Maybe less sugar than the other things. I didn't measure this.
Set aside a small amount of sauce to be used as a thickener with:
2t cornstarch
Stir-fry over high heat in a wok or large skillet, until fragrant:
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 t fresh ginger, minced (I didn't have any tonight so I used a tiny sprinkling of ground ginger instead)
Add sauce and bring to a rapid boil; then add chicken and toss until coated. Combine reserved sauce with cornstarch (you want it runny, not pasty); stir well and then add thickener to pan. Toss until the sauce is thick and everything is nice and glossy and OH MY GOSH so tasty. Serve over hot, cooked rice. Serves four if you're moderately hungry but not going to gorge yourselves.
(P.S. That same deep-fried chicken recipe is really delicious with buffalo sauce -- I make mine with a partial cube of butter melted into maybe 3/4 c of Frank's Red Hot. Usually when I'm making that I slice the chicken into strips instead of bite-sized pieces, and I dip the besauced strips in ranch dressing, and I go around bloated to twice my usual size for a couple of days because do you have any idea how much sodium is in Frank's Red Hot? TONS of sodium, that's how much. Not to mention all the salt in the batter/breading/goop that goes on the chicken.)
See? There. Not only have I powered through to keep up with my blogging promise, but I've done my part to contribute to obesity and hypertension among my vast blogging public. My work here is done.
