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Saturday, October 29, 2011

Cashew Chicken ...p53

Most of you readers are probably too young to remember when Cashew Chicken was about the only Chinese cooking we did at home!  Before woks were readily available at Walmart, Target....oh, we didn't have those stores then either.

We did have local stand alone butchers where we could choose our chicken (live) and have the butcher slaughter it on the spot.  Our local Detroit butcher was Vergote's.  We kids would hide behind mom's skirt listening to the squawk as the butcher's ax fell with a thud across the chicken's neck.  Then we'd eagerly open our eyes to watch the chicken run around the little kitchen with his head cut off.  By the time we studied descriptive phrases in English, we knew what the figurative "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" literally looked like.

Compare that to this conversation between modern kids, "yeah, we went to Walmart, where mom walked the rows and rows of packaged chicken and tried to decide, 'breasts? thighs? wings? boneless breasts?' It's as if she'd never seen a chicken before!" 

The combination of cashews with chicken is still a winner.  The critic loved this simple but tasty recipe.  NOTE:  The ingredients in the cookbook don't list the rice (which from my picture, you can see I didn't have!), lettuce, green onions, and most important, cashews, or their respective quantities, so be sure to determine quantities you'll need before leaving for the store!  And there is a typo in the cookbook, Fry the chicken, don't dry it :-) 

Hardy Appetit!

CASHEW CHICKEN

3-4 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
small can Pet milk
Ah, so good!
2 beaten eggs
salt & pepper
flour
lettuce, shredded (enough to cover bottom of your casserole dish)
green onions, chopped
cashews


Sauce:
2 cans chicken broth
1 tsp. MSG
2 T soy sauce
2 T cornstarch

Marinate chicken breast in mixture of pet milk, eggs and seasonings for at least 30 minutes.  Remove chicken from milk, dip in flour and fry.  Spread bottom of casserole dish with shredded lettuce and chopped green onions.   Place chicken on top.  Pour sauce over chicken and sprinkle with cashews.
Serve over rice.

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