I need to put something food related up so I’ll go with this evening’s dinner.  I was thinking sweet and sour for the chicken I had thawing.  Found this recipe and the sauce looked interesting. I used the recipe for the sauce and made my own marinade and batter.  I didn’t follow the sauce recipe in other than broad strokes.  I took the liberty of adding some more heat with some red pepper flakes and some Szechuan peppercorns.  I used too much tomato paste I think, the sauce was too “red” and opaque.   At any rate I will use less in the future.  Pretty sure I used more than the 3 tablespoons the recipe mentioned.  I may use chicken stock rather than water next time, and I think less brown sugar may work better for me.  I used some of the frozen diced bell peppers I put back earlier in the summer-about 1/4 cup or so and instead of dicing the carrots I grated a few tiny baby carrots with a pretty aggressive grater.  Maybe will go ahead and mince them next time.  It needed more veggies in the sauce.   Thought hard abut adding some pineapple  but was talked out of it by Mrs J.

I marinated the chicken in Chinese cooking wine and corn starch and when it came time to fry the pieces I just added flour and more corn starch, and a half teaspoon of baking soda.  Mixed that all about with my hands.  The batter was on the thin side.

I waited until late in the afternoon to eat because I was waiting for the UPS guy to deliver a new rice machine.  I really wanted to give it a try first thing.  More on that later, another gadget post perhaps.  Just a few pics, I was really starving by the time the rice machine finally beeped “done”.