Sweet and Sour Chicken

This week's challenge was 'food you hated as a kid'. I had to go to my husband for this one, because personally, I continue to hate cauliflower and scallops, and in fact find that there are more tastes that have gone the other way for me - i.e. I used to like them and now do not - dark chocolate, Hostess snowballs, etc. So, after Dan failed to convince me that he really used to hate chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes, we went for Chinese food. That is, I made it - not that we called it a night and went out for Chinese food. That wouldn't have been bad either, but less conducive to cooking blogs.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe that I used:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Batter
3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup lager beer

Sauce
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tbsp. cold water

4 chicken breasts, cut into small pieces for dipping
vegetable oil, for deep frying
1/2 cup flour
2 tbsp cashews
1/2 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
6 green onions, chopped
1/2 cup canned pineapple chunks, drained

To make batter, sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the center, add 1/2 cup of beer and whisk, gradually adding the remaining beer. Let stand 30 minutes.

To make sauce, stir sauce ingredients except cornstarch in saucepan over low heat until honey is melted. Stir in dissolved cornstarch and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring often, until just thickened.

At this point, the sauce refused to thicken for me, and I put in a little flour. Unfortunately, I put it in too quickly and it formed lumps, which I had to strain out later. Don't do that.

Preheat oven to 200F. Fill a wok halfway with oil and heat it. Place the flour in a bowl. In batches, toss the chicken in the flour, then coat in batter and add to hot oil. Deep fry for about 3 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a baking sheet lined with paper towels and keep warm in the oven.

I didn't have as much cooking oil as I expected, and ended up pan frying instead of deep frying, which took longer. Also, the coating got a little flaky, and some of it fell off. As a result, my husband and I purchased a deep fryer that night, so next time we can do it in style, and hopefully make chicken that tastes just like a Chinese restaurant. Or closer, anyway!

Assuming you deep fried in a pan, pour all but 2 tbsp of oil from the wok and return to high heat. (Or, if you have considerably less oil in the pan, as I did, leave it there) Add the cashews and stir fry 30 seconds. Transfer to baking sheet. Add red pepper and stir fry 2 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Add green onions and pineapple and stir fry 1 minute.

I served the sauce on the side, but put the cashews and veggies in with the chicken, because we wanted Chinese restaurant sweet and sour chicken, which you dip in the sauce. It turned out like this:

 What do you think, readers? If you were forced to cook something now that you hated as a kid, what would it be? How have your tastes changed as you've gotten older? Do you love more things you once hated, or hate more things you once loved?

Cranberry Cookie Crumble - brought to you by the letter C

Today's recipe is not actually one of the 'recipe of the week' posts. Or at least not one of the current ones. I am all caught up on my recipes for this year, but less so on my blogging, so I decided to work my way backwards from last year's list, since they are all new to me too, and having a surprise ingredient/theme is a little like being on Iron Chef and thus makes cooking (more) fun. So, today's ingredient is cranberries.

I just so happened to have some cranberries in the freezer, from Thanksgiving, of course, so I rescued it from the shelf and looked through a few cookbooks in search of the favorite Thanksgiving recipe. I said no to anything too Thanksgiving-y, and to cranberry bread, muffins, scones, etc. - which are similarly ubiquitous and uninspiring. That led me to this recipe, from Nancy Baggett's book Simply Sensational Cookies: She calls it Shortcut Cranberry Crumb Bars. I don't, because for me, at least, it didn't really resolve itself into bars. That leads me to today's cooking lesson.

If you think that what you are cooking may be at all gooey, waxed paper is never, ever a good substitute for foil. I've made this mistake before, but that didn't stop me from making it again today. Unless you enjoy your cookies/crumble with a thin paper shell that is as hard to separate from the final project as the rind on a wheel of brie, leave your ingredients on the counter, hop in your car, and go buy foil. Or grease the pan and go without. Don't use waxed paper. You'll regret it. Having said that, if you consider the finished product a crumble, write off one end that you have to decimate to properly get at the middle, and dig it out slowly with a metal spatula, you can manage to separate it from the paper. It's just not what I would recommend to the more informed reader.

Cranberry Cookie Crumble

2 1/4 cups fresh or frozen (thawed) cranberries, chopped
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup orange marmelade
1 16-18 oz package of refrigerated sugar cookie dough (Bigger is better here. If you can, go for the 18 oz)
1 1/3 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup butter, melted

1 tsp ground cinnamon
confectioner's sugar for garnish

Heat oven to 350F. Line a 9x13" baking pan with foil. Or don't line it and use nonstick spray.

Mix berries, sugar and marmalade in a medium, nonreactive saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until it boils. Lower the heat and boil gently for three minutes. Set the filling aside to cool.

Break up the dough into a large mixing bowl. Mix with oats, butter and cinnamon, using mixer on lowest speed. Spread half the mixture into the baking dish. Lay a piece of waxed paper on the mix and press down firmly all over to make your layer nice and even, making sure it covers the entire bottom of the pan. (This was a very good use of waxed paper. I'm going to do this to all my cookie bars in the future.)

Bake about 10 minutes (or 13 to 15, presumably if you don't live in a high altitude where things cook faster) until the dough is just browned at the edges but not baked through. Let cool 15 minutes.

Spread the filling over the dough evenly. Put the rest of the crumb mixture evenly over the top, and pat it down lightly. Bake about 22 minutes longer, or until the filling is bubbly and the crumb top is lightly browned.

Set aside on a wire rack and let cool. Refrigerate for one hour before cutting if you plan to try to make them into cookie bars. Otherwise, why wait? Dig in!

Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar before serving.

52 Weeks of Cooking start now!

Inspired by Reddit's subreddit 52 Weeks of Cooking, I plan to post a new recipe here each week, as my blog lies fallow and sadly neglected. Actually, I plan to post more than one recipe each week, as I have wanted to do the 52 week cooking challenge for quite a while now, and may try to catch up on last year's posts in between waiting for this week's.

This week, the theme is egg. Eggs are not a favorite of mine, although I suspect they may be like ham - something that I hate in theory but love in several forms (chip chop ham, for instance - though if you are not in Pittsburgh, good luck finding a deli counter guy who knows what that is and doesn't give you a really weird look when you ask for it!). I love eggs benedict, and 'dip eggs', which may be sunny-side up, but which I think of as being cooked on the second side just a bit also, all the better to dip your buttery toast into.

After extensive 'research' (looking through cookbooks for a recipe that is not something I do everyday, seems reasonably photogenic, and most of all, tasty), I settled on The Flavor Thesaurus' egg and coconut entry recipe, with a few variations. Here is what I did, in a nutshell:

Coconut Egg Custard

4 eggs - whisk them. 1/2 cup sugar - whisk it in. 1 cup coconut milk - whisk it in. Sprinkle a little flaked coconut in. Put a little more on top.
Bake it in a 300 degree F. oven, in ramekins inside of a cake pan or similar, with ramekins sitting inside of cake pan with water about halfway up the side of the ramekins. (in the cake pan, outside of the ramekins)
Recipe says it takes 40 minutes, but it took me about 50.
When it finishes baking (you can insert clean knife into top of ramekin), sprinkle a little more coconut on top for garnish. My husband liked his with whipped cream, I didn't put any on mine. It's best slightly warm.

Do you have a favorite egg recipe? Or are you, like me, a little on the fence about eggs?