General Tao's Chicken - 左宗棠雞

Update for my wisdom tooth trauma.

So I went to the dentist the day before Thanksgiving,

Yes, smart me,

What a way to avoid a feast, an opportunity to munch on roasted turkey by visiting the dentist right before Thanksgiving.

I even brought Sprinkles cupcakes to the clinic as a way to "bribe" the nurses there,

Hoping that my journey of popping out the wisdom tooth will be less painful,

Did it work? Well, I hope so.

To make long story short,

Basically, in order to get rid of my stubborn tooth, the dentist had to knock it into 3 pieces.

All that hard work is because of my crooked tooth,

It shapes like a little hook on the bottom,

Think about Captain Hook, get the idea?

Ended up I was on the bed/or on the sofa the whole day on Thanksgiving.

But I'm glad that everything is over,

I can't wait to chew on some meat after eating days of soft food,

Let's have General Tao's Chicken for dinner!

Ingredients?

1 lb of boneless chicken thigh meat (cut into bite sizes)

Few red chili peppers (remove the seeds and cut into slices)

*I use 5 small chilies, spicy food rules!

5 to 8 cloves of garlic (peeled, sliced)

For the marinate:

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine

2 teaspoons of corn starch 太白粉

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

2 tablespoons of ketchup

1 teaspoon of sugar

2 teaspoons of black vinegar

2 teaspoons of Chinese cooking wine

How?

First let's marinade the chicken for at least 30 minutes.

Heat up some frying oil in the pan,

Wait until it turns very hot, toss in the chicken,

Fry the chicken till the sides turned slight brown, remove the chicken and set aside.

Pour out some oil from the pan, but make sure there's at least 3 tablespoons of oil left,

Toss in the chili and garlic, cook till the aroma comes out,

Make sure you don't burn the garlic!

So before that happens, pour all the ingredients for the sauce into the pan.

About 10 seconds then pour the chicken back to the pan,

Cook till the sauce is reduced to half,

This dish is done!

Cindy's Rating: 7