INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

MEAT MARINADE
SAUCE MIXTURE
Had a house guest last week++an old friend who likes my Chinese
cooking, but tends to prefer the tamer stuff++you know, things
without tentacles or feet.  So I whipped up a batch of this
excellent, quick and easy sweet and sour pork.  It's a long time
favorite that I haven't cooked for a some time.  Been too busy with
Thai and Vietnamese food to make it. It was just as excellent as I
remember it being and I actually improved on it with a couple of
substitutions.
I used 1/2 cup palm sugar instead of 1/2 cup brown sugar.  Palm sugar
has a rich, complex and addicting taste while being a little less
cloyingly sweet than regular sugars.  It gives a taste that's
"exotic" without being obvious.  Where the recipe calls for 3/4 cup
pineapple juice I used 3/4 cup of the juice from some brandied
peaches I made.  I made 'em months ago and froze the leftover juice
specifically to use in a sweet and sour dish. (This is a good thing
to do with any sweet fruity type juice.)
I left out the maraschino cherries++bleechhhhh!++and substituted a
red bell pepper for the color contrast.  The only thing even faintly
exotic in the recipe is the canned lichees (also a good juice to save
for sweet and sour stuff) and that can be omitted if you can't find
them++or use canned apricots or whatever instead.  You could also use
longans or rambutans, which are close relatives of lichee, quite
successfully.
Yield: 6 servings
PREPARATION:  Drain fruits, prepare sauce mixture.  Marinate pork in
meat marinade for 1/2 hour.
COOKING:  Deep fry pork cubes in a wok for about 3 to 4 minutes until
golden brown.  Drain.  Pour all the oil back into the bottle.  Add
sauce mixture into wok and stir until thickened.  Add green pepper
and onions and cook for 2 minutes.  Add pork cubes and stir until
heated through. Add fruits and stir until they're coated with the
sauce.
DO-AHEAD NOTES:  Cook through making the sauce.  Just before serving,
add pork, vegetables and fruit according to directions.
From "The Chinese Village Cookbook." A practical guide to Cantonese
country cooking.  Rhoda Yee, Yerba Buena Press, San Francisco.  1975.
Posted by Stephen Ceideberg; March 11 1991.
File ftp://ftp.idiscover.co.uk/pub/food/mealmaster/recipes/cberg2.zip

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