Sweet & Sour Pork and Chicken & Vegetable Stir-Fry

Almost every Chinese restaurant on Earth serves Sweet and Sour Pork. And Vegetable Stir-Fry or Chop-Suey. They are simple fare and tasty to boot.

My version of the Chop-Suey contains no ''Chinese'' vegetable except Chinese Shitake Mushroom. Though I love Chinese Cabbage and Baby Kai-Lan too. Anyway, it's asparagus season and I have decided to do my stir-fry with them.

Basically you can make a stir-fry with whichever vegetables you fancy. You just have to put them into the frying pan or wok according to the time it'll take for each type of vegetable to be cooked. Not over-cooked.

1 large onion
1 thumb-sized Ginger
2 cloves Garlic
1-2 stalks Celery
Green and White Asparagus
Zucchini
Carrots
White and Brown Button Mushrooms
Chinese Shitake Mushroom
Red Capsicum
Chicken filet

I would marinate my chicken filets in salt, pepper, 2 Tbsps of Sherry, 1 Tbsp of Oyster Sauce and 1/2 Tsp of Sesame oil for at least 30 minutes. Then pan-grill them in some oil in a non-stick frying pan and put them aside when nicely-grilled.

Wash, peel and slice the vegetables, onions, garlic, ginger etc. In the same pan, heat up more vegetable oil and brown the onions, garlic, ginger and celery. Add in the carrots, mushrooms, capsicum, asparagus and zucchini in this order. Stir-fry.

In a bowl, mix half a cup of chicken stock, 1 Tsp of Sherry, 1 Tsp of Light Soya Sauce, 1 Tbsp of Oyster Sauce, 1 Tsp of Sugar, 1 Tsp of Corn Starch and a few drops of Sesame Oil together. When the vegetables are almost cooked, pour the mixture over them. Stir-fry for another 2 minutes, add in the grilled chicken filets.

Just before serving, beat an egg in a bowl and pour it in the sauce stirring it all the time to thicken the sauce further (optional).

Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.

My Sweet and Sour Pork is a hit with my children. They prefer it to the Veggie Stir-Fry, of course.

I always use Pork Filet Mignon. Expensive but tender and juicy. I slice the meat (around 500g) into 1cm-thick slices and just use the knife to tenderise it with chopping motions. Then I marinate it with salt, pepper, 1 Tsp of sugar, 1 Tbsp of Sherry, 1 Tbsp of light Soya Sauce, 1 Tbsp of corn starch and a beaten egg.

Heat up some oil in a non-stick frying pan. Coat the pork slices lightly in corn starch and slide them into the oil. Brown on both sides. Remove and drain on absorbant kitchen paper. It is of course better if one could deep-fry the pork to have it really crispy, but it's too oily and I've decided to do it the shallow-fry way. I also do not go for batter-coated pork which tend to be too heavy.

Next, in a bowl, mix 5 Tbsp of brown sugar, 3 Tbsp of Chinese rice vinegar or white wine vinegar, 2 Tbsp of concentrated tomato purée, 1 Tbsp of Worchestershire sauce, 1 Tsp of Light Soya sauce, 1 Tsp of Plum Sauce, 1 Tsp of Oyster Sauce, a few drops of Sesame Oil, 2 Tbsp of Sherry, 100ml of chicken stock or water, salt, chilli powder to taste, 1 Tsp of Corn Starch, a little red food colouring (optional) together. Boil over low heat till the sugar is dissolved.

Back to the frying pan, brown some sliced onions, 1 garlic finely diced, 1 thumb-sized ginger julienned, 1 stalk of celery sliced into 3. Add in half a red capsicum cut into 3-4cm pieces and 1 carrot thinly-sliced. Also some peas and sliced fresh tomatoes. Pour in the Sweet and Sour Sauce when the vegetables are almost cooked, stir in the pineapple slices from 1/4 - 1/3 of a pineapple. Thicken the sauce with 2 Tsp of cornstarch blended with 2 Tbsp of water.

Just before serving, add in the pork, toss with the sauce and garnish with spring onions. Or you could actually just pour the sauce over the pork in a serving dish and mix the dish at the table.

PS : And the good thing about cooking at home is that you could be sure that no MSG has been added into your food. I apologise for all the photos in my Blog, I'm afraid that I'm no good at taking pictures.

PS 2 : This is the Prawn version of the dish.