General Tso’s Chicken again? Yes, cuz this time I’m doing it right

A year ago, I did a post titled ‘General Tso’s Chicken in a Bag’ (you can click here to read it).  My sister berated me when she saw it:  “You did a cooking blog about a frozen skillet meal??”  I responded it wasn’t a cooking post, but a Food Review—for single guys like me, who don’t do a lot of cooking!  But I knew she was right.

Heck, it wasn’t even that great.  The frozen chicken niblets included in the bag weighed all of 1 ounce, and were the size of fingernails.  Fingernails!   I made a promise to myself that someday I’d cook this dish from scratch & redeem myself.

So a couple weeks ago when my friend Corinne posted a recipe for General Tso’s Chicken on Facebook I KNEW IT WAS TIME.  I actually didn’t follow it word for word, I omitted the Homasin sauce, used lemon juice instead of lime, Hot Chili Oil instead of red pepper flakes & doubled the sauce ingredients.  (I like my General Tso’s with SAUCE.)  So here we go!

ApacheDug’s General Tso’s Chicken

Canola (or vegetable) oil, chicken broth, onion, soy sauce, 2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, Hot Chili Oil (or red pepper flakes), minced garlic, lime (or lemon) juice, honey, broccoli florets, sliced carrots, flour, cornstarch—and don’t forget the rice

I cut up 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts into one inch cubes, dredged them in corn starch, shook ‘em off, dredged again in flour then sprinkled on a little salt & pepper and sizzled them in a pan with 1/2 inch of canola oil for 10 minutes until golden brown.

Draining the first batch of chicken on a paper towel… I think a taste-test is in order…

The original recipe says to drain the pan, add a tablespoon of vegetable oil & some red pepper flakes.  I DIDN’T DO THAT.  I drained, then added 3 tablespoons of Hot Chili Oil, let it sizzle, then stirred in 3 cloves of minced garlic and let it cook for 2-3 minutes until you can really smell that garlic.

Next I stirred in: 1 cup chicken broth, 4 tablespoons lemon juice, 6 tablespoons soy sauce & 6 tablespoons honey. I let that simmer for 10 minutes. It looks like hellfire in there!

Now you have to thicken the sauce; blend 3 tablespoons of corn starch to 3 tablespoons of cold water, slowly pour the milky liquid into the pot, stirring all the while.

(Meanwhile in a separate pot, I cooked 1 cup rice with 2 cups water for 15-20 minutes, it looks like it’s done.) 

Back to the big pot—now that my sauce has thickened, I stirred in 2 cups sliced carrots, 2 cups broccoli florets & one onion, quartered.  (The original recipe doesn’t call for the onion, but I’m telling you—it makes all the difference!)

I cover & let cook on medium heat for 5 minutes.  Add the cooked chicken pieces, mix it up & let it heat thru for another 3-4 minutes.

Put down a nice bed of rice on your plate, spoon the mixture on top.  You’ve got some real General Tso’s Chicken from scratch!

Bon Appetit!

Picture of the Day: You know what they say about karma...

The hardware store up the street from my apartment got in some hanging baskets today, so I walked up there this morning to get one. They had them all lined up on the sidewalk, geraniums & poppies and each wrapped in plastic.

I’m going down the row, hunched over & looking down into the tops of each basket to see which one looked the nicest when.... BONK! Shelly, the blind woman with a cane (that I once blogged about here) walked right into me from behind & knocked me on my butt. SHE DIDN’T EVEN STOP TO SEE IF I WAS ALRIGHT, SHE’S A HIT & RUN PEDESTRIAN.

One of my friends said she probably could see—if so, I guess I had it coming.  I got a nice plant for my patio though! 

Be back soon…

A brief history lesson on the death of a nation: some things need told & told again

For a thousand generations, the American West belonged only to Indians—millions of them.  The Kalispel and Clatsop and Tonkawa... the Tewa, Paiute, and Pawnee... the Hopi, Mojave, Caddo, and Chinook.... the Umatilla and the Ute.  They lived in houses atop the tallest trees on Earth, and in towering cliff-top cities, and on the ground below in domes of earth or in skin tepees. 

 

Montezuma Castle, an ancient five story dwelling built by the Sinagua

Hundreds of tribes, many with their own language, politics and customs.  Indians from California painted themselves white and wore robes of clam or seashells, while midwestern tribes wore feathers and buffalo hides. 

They traveled by foot on ancient paths and bartered for food or animals or other goods.  Some Indians farmed the land and ate no meat, because they believed all life was precious—while others considered the earth sacred, and fished or hunted buffalo & other wild game.

And it was the way of things, a millennia before the rising of far-off civilizations like Greece or Rome... until the 15th & 16th centuries A.D., when Conquistadors arrived and declared this ‘New World’ and it’s people the property of the Spanish Empire.  Early Indians believed these white men galloping across the plains could fly, as they’d never seen horses before.  Tens of thousands were slaughtered of course, by sword or disease brought from across the globe.  Then the missionaries came to save the heathens with the word of Christ, a religion the Indians considered fanciful & childish—only to be tortured or killed for refusing to give up their own beliefs.

And it was only the beginning of the end…

Hey Doug, what’s with the history lesson?  I know, I know--I couldn’t help myself.  I recently finished watching Ken Burns 1996 saga “The West”.  A little over 12 hours long, it was exciting, exhausting, horrifying, fascinating... and as much as I thought I knew of this era, was surprised at how much I didn’t.  We’re told how Europe and an anxious, early United States “tamed the West”, and made it their own, and (along with the American Buffalo, reducing their number from 10 million to 1 thousand in a couple of decades) virtually erased an entire race of North American people.

There’s so much more, of course… the Gold Rush, early Mormons settling into what’s now known as Utah, thousands of freed slaves and Americans hungry with the promise of free land, the great railroads that connected the East Coast to the West…

But it was the Indian’s stories that captivated me the most.  Time after time, they wanted to believe in the United States earnest efforts to ‘make things right’ and signed treaty after treaty, only to see each one broken by a fickle government.  One such treaty gave the Sioux the Black Hills, until gold was discovered and the Indians were told to leave.

I admit it, I cheered for Chief Sitting Bull when a grandstanding George Custer rode his troops into Indian territory to kill them all, only to be taken down by the Lakota Sioux & Cheyenne, who’d had enough.  Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn was one of the Indians rare victories; I wish there’d been more of them.

So why root for them?  Would I even be here if the Indians had prevailed and kept what was theirs?  Would any of us?  Of course I feel very fortunate for mine & my family’s existence and all that we have… but dammit it doesn’t make any of this bloody history lesson right.

My parents; while Dad can trace his roots back to include a Native American heritage, my mom’s was European all the way

“Old Hollywood movies painted us as savages, and now history tells we were a proud & noble race...” says one Native American in the modern era.  “We were ordinary human beings.  We grieved and hoped and loved and fought like any other.  But it was the white man’s government and religion that slaughtered us. The white man’s God was to be feared, he was a great wolf, and we were his prey.  My great-great-great grandfather taught his children that... and I will teach it to my children as well.”