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In the terribly unlikely event that I need reminding: remind me never, ever, ever to go to China and become a chef.
I have just attempted to cook sweet and sour chicken for one, on the grounds that if I can't get it from a Chinese restaurant ever again then it might be a good idea to learn to cook the stuff myself.
I was entirely prepared to produce something totally inedible and be forced to fall back on the portion of frozen stew I had standing by for emergencies. What I wasn't expecting was to produce something so absolutely awful and yet not actually inedible; I had assumed that at even half this level of culinary incompetence I would produce a complete write-off. To have so many things wrong with a dish without committing any of the faults that would make it unsafe or impossible to eat must take a certain level of skill in itself.
Ideally I ought to do a post-mortem and try to work out at least some of the mistakes I made for next time; but after the stressful cooking process, the exercise of willpower involved in eating it, and the sheer hard work of clearing up the unbelievable mess in the kitchen afterwards, I really don't have the energy.
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No idea how authentic it is, but it works
One of my colleagues claims to know about this kind of thing and says that sweet and sour sauce is very much a make-it-up-as-you-go-along sort of thing, so it wouldn't be surprising to find that no two recipes agreed even slightly :-)
It uses white wine vinegar because malt vinegar doesn't work. I don't believe I've ever owned red wine vinegar.
1 can pineapple chunks in juice
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp vinegar (malt vinegar works fine for me)
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp cornflour
about 1/2 inch chopped ginger
salt and sugar to taste if necessary (depends how sweet the pineapple chunks are, really)
Prepare in advance in a bowl; mix in the cornflour fully. If I add ingredients gradually while cooking, it goes lumpy and doesn't come out right. Cook the sauce at the last moment, in a hot frying pan with oil. Stir it constantly until it changes colour and goes thick. Then serve it straight away (with battered deep-fried quorn chunks, if you're me!).