the beans: Chinese!

David went to San Francisco's Chinatown on his mission, so us making Chinese food has kind of become a regular thing around here. [Along with pizza and breakfast burritos for dinner...:)] Want to learn how to make it too?

We found a realllllly good wet batter that makes the chicken just like the restaurants do.

I'm going to let you in on one of our best discoveries of the year (that I now can't find the source for, sorry).

Here's our wet batter recipe:

½ cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg (beaten)
½ cup water (or as much as needed to make batter smooth)
3 tablespoons cornstarch
salt (to taste)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Cut the chicken into normal bite sized pieces and then put in batter.
We usually let ours sit for at least 30 minutes - usually longer.

We slice our beef really thin and coat it in cornstarch..

Let this one sit for a long time too - the beef soaks up the cornstarch and makes it extra crispy.

(Don't do the beef in the wet batter. We tried it once and it just didn't quite stick to the beef. Cornstarch is better, trust me.)

We use our smallest sauce pan to fry everything (about an inch deep with oil maybe? - we strain ours afterwards and save it for another time) and let it stay warm in the oven on a cookie sheet with a paper towel to soak up the extra oil.

We usually just pick whatever veggies we have and saute them. This time was red, yellow, and orange peppers, onion, and broccoli.

It's pretty standard from what you find on the internet but here's our tiny spicy sauce: (we only make 1/3 of it and it makes TONS)

2 tsp. sambal chili paste
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C ketchup
1 C chicken broth
6 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 C white vinegar

Place all the ingredients in a pot and cook on medium heat until sugar is dissolved stirring constantly.

We actually like to thicken it up with a little bit of the 1 Tbsp cornstarch/ little bit of cold water trick.

We also wait until we are ready to eat to put our fried chicken in the sauce so it is still crispy when we eat.

I tried to find the recipe we used last night to make the Hunan beef (it was so delicious!) but alas, David made it, so I don't even know what to look for. I'll have to save that for another time.