The sweet and sour pork
(咕嚕肉)
I made the
other night was pretty good.
Here's the
RasaMalaysia site
where I found the recipe I didn't exactly follow.
Since I only used half of the pork tenderloin,
I decided to make sweet and sour pork again,
this time adhering more to the letter of the original recipe.

OK.
So I added in baby corn and water chestnuts.
But for the marinade,
the batter, and the sweet and sour sauce -
To.The.Letter.

I diced my pork into bite-sized pieces
and got out the ingredients for the marinade:
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp corn STARCH
I had used corn flour before because that's what the
recipe called for, even though I wondered at the time.
But I started reading the comments
on RasaMalaysia's site
and found out that corn STARCH,
not corn FLOUR,
was the proper ingredient to use.

Ingredients for the sweet and sour sauce:
1 1/2 TB tomato ketchup
1 tsp plum sauce
1/8 tsp Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
1 tsp oyster cause
1 tsp corn starch
1 tsp sugar
2 TB water

Mix all together and blend until smooth.
To.The.Letter. I tell ya.

And this time I followed the recipe for the batter:
1/2 cup water
2 ounce flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 egg
1 tsp oil
1 pinch of salt

I mixed it all together except for the baking soda.

When I was ready to fry,
I mixed in the baking soda.

I was out of the required peppers
and I wanted some new flavors in there
so I'm thinking 1/2 onion, coarsely chopped,
3-4 garlic cloves, minced,
some baby corn, drained,
and water chestnuts, drained.
Not.To.The.Letter.

I did have the rice, pineapples, and peppers left over
from the other night's dinner
so I heated that up.

Pork into batter.

Coat well.

And fry.
In batches.
Drain on paper towels.

I'm really liking this batter
although I'm not feeling the love for 1/2 egg.
I ended up tossing the other half
since I knew I'd forget about it in the fridge
and end up throwing it away anyway when I found it
next month.

Onion into the wok.

Water chestnuts and corn.

And I like to add in about a tablespoon of sugar
for a little sweetness and for extra caramelization.

Fried pork joins the party.

A quick toss.

When I add a sauce/thickener
to a stir fry dish,
I try to move the food out of the way
and slowly pour it down the side of the hot wok.

Like I said,
I'm really liking this batter.

Pretty darn good.

And you gotta admit -
it looks better than the first batch I did.
But then, this is in daylight
with no flash.
And Mr. Hawthorne said he liked this better.
Could it have been the corn and water chestnuts?
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