Thursday 10 September 2009

Sweet and Sour Sauce

This is the sweet and sour sauce I use to make sweet and sour fish. You can also use it for pork and chicken. For the fish, I use my salmon fingers recipe.

Sauce
1/2 cup ketchup
juice of 1 lemon
water
brown sugar to taste

Ingredients
1 small yellow onion
1 small japanese cucumber
1 small yellow or red pepper or both
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup pineapple chunks (fresh or canned)
1 tomato
corn starch (about 1tbsp of corn flour disoolved in 3-4tbsp water)

1. Slice the yellow onion into slivers. Chop the cucumber and peppers into chunks (skin on) and slice the tomato into segments. As for the pineapple, I prefer to use canned ones so that I can also add some of the syrup in the sauce to give that hint of pineapple.
2. In a hot wok, heat about 1 tablespoon of oil and add the onions.
3. When the onions are slightly brown and the fragrance comes through, add the cucumber, peppers and pineapple.
4. Add the sauce mix and stir in the corn starch till you reach the desired consistency. Bring to boil and the sauce is ready to be served.

For the sance mix, you need to taste the mix and adjust the sugar and sourness to your taste.
You can pre-make the sauce and re-heat before serving. Extras can be kept in glass jars and used withint 1 week. Or you can freeze it and use within a month.

Tip #1: To peel the onion easily, simply chop off the top and bottom. Slice the onion into two but not all the way through, leaving the last layer in tack. This will help you peel off the onion easily and beautifully.

Tip #2: To avoid having the onions make you cry and to prevent it from becoming soggy after leaving it to sit a while, slice along the grains (lines you see on the onions).

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