Trying to Make my Own Chinese Food

Since I had off of work for Christopher Columbus Day, I figured I had time to try a new recipe. Around here I've been making the same dinners for a while now. So I figured since Kyle was out of town that night, I'd experiment.

I figured if it passed my taste test then I'd make it for Kyle. Mostly because I made him eat dijon mustard curried apples and chicken over rice once before and after tasting it myself, I still feel bad about that one... he was such a trooper.

So I hopped on Pinterest and found this post for a Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe.  Seemed easy enough. People commented on the recipe and said it was good. I'm all about Chinese food, and all about a recipe that doesn't call for super-fancy-expensive ingredients if I don't even know if I'm going to like it yet...

So I figured I'd try it and well, it almost lead to a grease fire which is pretty darn crazy. When I say 'almost let to a grease fire' I mean that after heating the oil I decided to toss in a few drops of water to see if it was hot enough, and we had some crazy crazy popping and smoke. (Which is why you never, ever try to put out a grease fire with water...) But I was there ready with my cornstarch/flour to dump it all over the pan and put out the fire as needed. No fire... no dumping needed. Oh well.

I followed her recipe and then took into consideration some of the comments. Like her recipe says to dip the chicken in the cornstarch then the egg, but everything I've ever done has had me dipping the meat in the egg first then the flour/cornstarch/etc. So I did it my way. Commenters also said to cut the white vinegar so I only used 2 tablespoons. Seemed to work out okay...

Looking yummy yet?

Then I figured that adding pineapple would be great, and I love broccoli. So after baking everything in the recipe together in the baking dish for the first 15 minutes uncovered, I added some chunks of pineapple (from the can) and fresh pieces of broccoli and covered it with foil for another 15 minutes in the oven.

Put it all over brown rice and it was wonderful.

My kitchen looked like this afterwards, but for a girl living in a town with only Chinese buffets (no little to-go places) I think I did pretty well. My stomach was very happy. And I had plenty of leftovers...

Go ahead, try actually doing something you pinned on Pinterest. Funny how it takes forever to try something new around here...