Quay Po Cooks: sweet sour chicken

Showing posts with label sweet sour chicken. Show all posts

Friday, January 28, 2011

Sweet Sour Chicken for CNY instead of a whole chicken? - Featured at Dishfolio on 31 Jan 2011 & at Group Recipes Best of the Week

For my Chinese New Year reunion dinner, I usually have another variation of chicken dish in addition to the steam chicken which my family likes. This is because Stitch is not crazy about the steam chicken. The past years, I have made Lemon Chicken which is his favorite. This reunion I am including this dish in my menu for a change. How about you? How do you prepare yours?

This dish was featured in Asian Food Channel (Official) Facebook page

on 25th September 2012

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 lb. chicken breast (cut into bite size pieces) 

1/2 green bell pepper, cut into pieces

1/2 red bell pepper, cut into pieces 

2 stalks scallions, only the white part, cut into 2 inch length

1/4 fresh pineapple, cut into small pieces

1 tsp garlic, finely chopped,

1 tbs vegetable oil

MARINATE FOR THE CHICKEN:

(A)

1 teaspoon soy sauce 

1/2 teaspoon corn flour 

1/2 teaspoon rice wine

BATTER TO COAT THE CHICKEN:

(B)

1/2 cup water 

2 oz. all-purpose flour 

1 oz. corn starch 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1/2 egg 

1 teaspoon cooking oil 

1 small pinch of salt

½ tsp vanilla

SWEET AND SOUR SAUCE:

(C)

1 1/2 tbs tomato ketchup 

1 tsp plum sauce 

1/8 tsp Chinese rice vinegar

1/2 tsp Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce 

1 tsp oyster sauce 

1 tsp corn starch 

1 tsp sugar 

2 tbs water

METHOD:

Marinate chicken breast pieces with (A) for 30 minutes. Mix (B) to form a thick batter and set aside. When the chicken is well marinated, add them into the batter and have them all well coated. In a deep wok, add in oil enough for deep-frying. Once the oil is hot, deep fry the chicken breast pieces until they turn golden brown. Dish out and drain on paper towels. Heat up the wok again and add in some oil. Add chopped garlic and stir fry until fragrant, followed by the bell peppers and pineapple pieces. Stir fry until you smell the peppery aroma from the peppers before adding in the (C). As soon as the sauce thickens, add the already deep fried chicken breast pieces into the wok and stir well with the sauce. The last thing to add in is the white part of the spring onion. Mix well, and transfer to serving plate. This is delicious to serve with steamed white rice.

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.