Sweet/Sour Pork for Auntie Miranda

Auntie Miranda had asked for sweet/sour chicken in the comments of my Springfield-style Cashew Chicken post.  This isn't chicken but the sauce is good. Not like our Springfield-style sauce that everyone in the take-out restaurants serves, but very good.  Less sweet and not as thick.  So you could prepare the chicken in the same manner as the cashew chicken recipe and then use this sauce...

This recipe is not authentic by any stretch of the imagination but it is good eats, as Alton Brown might say.  Mom made it for years and I remember sitting at the kitchen table during one of my college breaks at home, copying this down from her recipe box.  Mom died in '87.  One of the things I like most to do to remember her is to thumb through some of the recipe cards she wrote out and sent to me at college, or her notes in a couple of cookbooks and cake decorating books of hers that I own now. I love seeing where she's marked through and changed ingredient measurements.  I guess I come by all my tweakings honestly, right?  She also used to make little notes to herself, simply saying "very good" or "no".  Makes me feel closer to her to see her handwriting. I still make this recipe the same way she did. Okay, well, I added snow peas. I can't help it.  I can't cook inside the box, okay?    But neither could she.  We must have both gotten the "tweaking" gene.

Mom called this:

Chinese Pork Skillet:

1 lb lean pork (steak, chop, tenderloin), cubed

Sesame Oil

3 Tbsp corn starch

Salt and Pepper

1 small to medium onion, sliced into crescents

8 oz button Mushrooms, quartered

1/2 each: red and green peppers, chunked

Small handful snowpeas

1 small can pineapple chunks with juice

1 6 oz can apricot nectar

1/2 cup water

1 Tbsp soy or tamari sauce

1 tsp Chinese 5 Spice seasoning

1/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

Directions:

1.  Pre-heat heavy skillet or wok on medium.  Place corn starch, salt, and pepper in shallow bowl.  Mix in pork chunks and stir around until all of the corn starch is coated on the meat. Quickly sear meat in a Tbsp or two of sesame oil.

2.  When meat is browned, add onion and peppers.  When onions start to soften, add rest of ingredients and allow sauce to simmer and thicken for about 5 minutes.

Serve over rice.

Serves 4.

Comments

[sher]

Yummmm! That looks great. And I like that you have the memories of your mom making this. That's why family recipes are so important. The people that we loved and are now gone, live on in those recipes.

[Auntie Miranda]

You're making me cry. Can't wait to try it. I just can't imagine that my sister ever used apricot nectar or Chinese five spice powder. Did she put it on 'possum, too? She was the queen of wild game.

[Auntie Miranda]

New question - does the corn starch make a coating on the pork kind of like it's been dipped in flour? The first time I ever saw a recipe for Cashew Chicken, the CHICKEN was dipped in corn starch, not flour. PS - S&S Pork is your Uncle Paul's absolute favorite "Chinese."

[Glenna]

Sher--Thanks. I like cooking with mom, so to speak. It's no secret we didn't have the greatest of relationships but I like to think we could have found common ground in the kitchen if we'd had the chance.

Aunt Miranda--You're so funny! Yeah, who knows if that was other white meat pork, or the other OTHER white meat, rabbit when I was growing up. :-)

It doesn't really make it a true coating but it does crisp it up a bit and makes the sauce smoother.