Freaking fantastic Chinese Orange Chicken

This is awesome, restaurant worthy, we may never have to eat out again.... awesome. Aren't you lucky? you get to see my ghettotastic nails.

Ingredients

3 lbs. Chicken, cut into bite size pieces
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of cornstarch
4 beaten eggs with a little milk
oil


for sauce:
3/4 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of ketchup
1 cup of water
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
2tsp sambal olek or chili paste
1tsp hoisin sauce
1tsp garlic powder
juice of two oranges
peel from one orange


Beat 4 eggs together and add a little milk. Mix cornstarch, flour and garlic powder together. Dip chicken pieces in the flour then egg. Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Place chicken in casserole dish.

Preheat Oven to 400 degrees
Sauce:
Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved and ingredients are blended.

Pour sauce over chicken


Bake for 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked thoroughly. Watch carefully that it doesn't overcook or burn.

Serve over rice.

Indonesian Peanut Chicken

You really must make this, it is fabulous. The kids even liked it. It was a little too spicy for them to eat too much of it, but they did eat it. Next time, I think I will tame their portions a bit more.

2 lbs chicken tenders
2TBS Vegetable Oil
1 Chopped Onion
2 smashed cloves garlic
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup salam olek (thai chili paste) I would actually cut this a bit next time just for the kids, it was perfect for me.
1 cup chicken broth
chopped cilantro for garnish

Salt and pepper the chicken and cook it in a frying pan

Then take it out, cut it if desired and set aside on a plate

put oil in the pan and fry the onion and garlic

add the peanut butter, salam olek, and chicken broth, simmer until combined.

add cut chicken back to the sauce.

Serve over rice (I used basmati) with cilantro garnish.

Ghengis got a bad rap.... Mongolian Beef

Okay, I originally posted this over at our family blog, but I wanted to move it over here too, since this where I am doing recipes now.

Isn't my sous chef the CUTEST??? This is the activity that John and I like to do together, John is fascinated by cooking!

Tonight I made Mongolian Beef. Its kinda part of our "hey can we make this at home?" restaurant tour. And really, I think this time it was better. The kids have NEVER have eaten a beef dish I made. Tonight they asked for seconds, seconds, it was like the heavens opened and the angels sung, all the planets aligned and my children ATE! So, I figured I would share. This recipe is a compilation of several different recipes. The recipes I researched called for flank steak, but flank steak has ever been my friend. Its so tough, I have never gotten it to turn out right in any recipe I have used it. So I used round steak and it turned out perfect.

MONGOLIAN BEEF

Prep/cook time: about 30 minutes

1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp ginger minced (or you can use the dried)
2 TBL garlic chopped (again you can use the dried, just use a little less)
1 C Soy
1 C water
1 1/2 C Brown Sugar
1.75-2lb Round Steak
1/2 c cornstarch
1 sliced onion


Slice your round steak into bite sized pieces. It helps if you tilt the blad of your knife to a 45 degree angle. Put slices on a plate, and cover them in cornstarch. Let the beef sit for ten minutes soaking up the cornstarch.

Heat up the oil in your wok or skillet. Let it get hot, but not to smoking. Put in your cornstarchy beef in batches. Let it cook in the oil until it gets lightly brown around the edges. Don't worry at this point about the beef being cooked through... it will go back in to cook more. Put the beef on towels to drain.

Once you have all the beef cooked, throw in your onion and start it cooking. Once the onion is translucent add in your ginger, garlic, soy, water and brownsugar, stir. Add beef back into sauce and onion mixture. Let it simmer away until the beef cooks through. As it cools the sauce will thicken slightly. Serve over rice.