Chinese Entree

ORANGE CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

RICE BED

1½ cups rice
3 cups water (1½ cups more later in SAUCE)
1 green pepper

MARINADE

2 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar (⅓ cup later in SAUCE)
1 green pepper
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1 tablespoon cornstarch (3 tablespoons more later in SAUCE)
4 chicken breasts

SAUCE

1½ cups water
⅓ cup orange juice
⅓ cup rice vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon ginger
1 clove garlic
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons cornstarch

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

hammer (If brown sugar is brick hard.)

PREPARATION OF RICE BED

Cook rice according to instructions on accompanying bag. This should take about 30 minutes. Add diced green bell pepper to top of rice while cooking.

PREPARATION OF MARINADE

Cut chicken breasts into 1-inch cubes. This is best done when the chicken is partially thawed. Mince garlic. Dice green pepper. If the brown sugar in its box is as hard as a brick, pound the box until the sugar fragments into little bits or individual granules, or until it cries, “Uncle.”

For the marinade, combine the rice vinegar, flour, salt, poultry spice, and cornstarch in large bowl. Mix thoroughly with whisk or fork. Add chicken cubes to bowl. Mix the chicken cubes with ingredients already in the bowl with your hands until the cubes are thoroughly coated. (Your hands will be considered icky for handshaking, so wash them before greeting anyone except door-to-door salesmen.)

PREPARATION OF SAUCE

Combine the 1½ cups water, orange juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce, pounded-into-submission brown sugar, ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, and sesame oil. Cook over medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Bring to boil.

Gently-–to avoid being splattered by heated sauce–add the coated chicken cubes until the saucepan is full. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until the coated cubes are golden brown and the chicken is no longer pink inside. Remove cubes with a spoon with holes in it so as to keep the sauce in the pan. Add remaining chicken cubes until all are cooked.

Add 3 tablespoons cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water to sauce remaining in pan. Stir thoroughly with fork or whisk.

Put rice in bowl. Put cooked chicken cubes on top. Spoon sauce over everything. This is great.

TIDBITS

1) Chickens are eaten all over the world because they are tasty and can be found on all continents except Antarctica.

2) Penguins are only found on one continent, Antarctica. Nobody on the upper six continents eat penguins. Perhaps penguins are protected because they come from a continent that since 1959 has been claimed by no nation.

3) After the British-Argentine war over the Falklands, British fighter pilots flew patrol after patrol over the retaken islands. To relieve boredom, they would fly back and forth over penguin colonies. Thousands and thousands of eyes followed them. After a few minutes of this, the jets would rocket straight up into the air. Thousands of penguins would tilt their heads farther and farther back to follow the jets until they all fell over like bowling pins.

4) I’d bet chickens would like to move en masse to Antarctica where they too would be protected.

5) Of course, that assumes that chickens have the brains to think up such a scheme, could cooperate enough to pull it off, and have enough money to book passage for all of them to Antarctica.

6) As of publication, chickens have shown no such abilities.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.