Sweet and Sour Pork

Notice the name change this week? No more Sunday Dinner - 9 November 2008 type headlines. I found out whenever I wanted to go back and find a meal I previously cooked I had to click on every Sunday Dinner Post to find it. Needless to say it got to be frustrating so now I am starting to label my titles with the meal of the week or formally known as Sunday Dinners. Does it mean I'm not cooking a meal every Sunday anymore? No not necessarily it only means that whatever I post might be cooked on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. Or maybe I cooked it in the morning, noon or night. You see Sunday Dinners was starting to run my weekends. I felt like I had to do a dinner every Sunday and it was starting to feel like a job. There were times the wife wanted to cook something and I would say NO NO you can't I HAVE to do my Sunday Dinner today. I also felt like I had to do full blown dinners every week. There are lots of other ideas I want to do they just aren't Sunday Dinner types. I think this will help me do these other ideas.

I am also think about putting my cooking stuff on another blog much like young Shae did with her stories. They never seem to fit in here and the title Jock's Random Thoughts just doesn't fit a food blog. I think I have done enough meals in the last year to have a pretty good food blog right now. (If anyone knows how to move posts from one blog to another please share.) This blog will be left for all those family related things, sports posts, and maybe a little politics. To be honest that is what it started out to be the food thing was just an accident.

Okay enough rambling let's get on with this weeks Sund....opps I mean this weeks meal of the week.

Anyone who lives around Midland knows they have the best Chinese restaurants and if you aren't aware of that just move anywhere else and you soon will be aware of it. We have lived in both Virginia and Wisconsin and we have never been able to find any chinese restaurants equaled to he ones in Midland.

I love my chinese food and I have withdrawal pains when I don't eat it every now and then. Since we can't find good chinese restaurants around here naturally I thought maybe I should try to make my own. Most of my forays into chinese cooking so far have been disappointments but one dish I have started to figure out is Sweet and Sour Pork.



Let's introduce the cast of characters.



I think I got everything in the picture this week.

If you want to make good sweet and sour pork you first need to have a good sweet and sour sauce. Sometimes when I am making this at night I reach in the cupboard and grab this stuff....



That's kind of like cheating for todays meal so I decided to go the old fashion way and make my own. It really isn't all that hard and I actually have all the ingredients already in the cupboard.



The sauce is garlic, ginger, apple cider vinegar, pineapple juice, sesame oil, ketchup, soy sauce, red pepper, and brown sugar. Bring all this to a boil and add sherry or red wine vinegar with corn starch to thicken it up a bit. It's as easy as that and in five minutes I have a pretty darn good sweet and sour sauce.

Time to cube up the pork and start browning it.



Now if you really know your sweet and sour pork you will already know the pork is usually coated with corn starch and deep fried. Since I'm not into deep frying and really don't need any more deep fried foods than necessary I brown mine on the stove. I know it's not really classic sweet and sour pork but since I'm running this operation I will cook it anyway I find fit.



Since the pork is browned now things start to happen. I crank up the heat and add the onions and green peppers.



Mix them in with the pork and let cook for a couple of minutes.



Quickly add the sweet and sour sauce I made earlier.



Stir everything together and bring up to temperature and then add the pineapple and green onions.



Time to plate up this delicious meal, start with some rice.



Every now and then I forget to start the rice but not this time.

Now add the sweet and sour pork to it.



Mmm good stuff if you like sweet and sour pork. Here take another look....



Go ahead and smell it. Smells like chinese, probably because of the sesame oil I used.

My next chinese meal I make will be Mongolian Shrimp, my favorite. I have tried to make it before but always been disappointed. In that true Porter spirited though I will not give up, sooner or later I will figure it out and when I do you can be sure to find it here or my new blog.

Stayed tuned.