Take-away Chinese Food at Home!

One of the things that I've had a really hard time finding here is good Chinese takeout. One of my favorite things to get is sweet and sour chicken it's been a long time since I've had a good version of it. I'm excited to make Take-away Chinese Food at Home!

You know, there's one other thing that is a staple for Chinese take-out. It's easy to overlook, but it's always there. This meal wouldn't be complete without a fortune cookie!
I checked for Fortune Cookie recipes and found this simple one on Tasty.co.

Ian whipped 2 egg whites and some vanilla together in a bowl. Next he sifted flour, sugar, and a little salt.

Then he mixed them together with a spatula. The result was a very thick paste. I then added a couple tablespoons of water to thin it out to a ribbon consistency.

The recipe site says that you should only cook 2 cookies per tray. They take about 8 minutes to bake. Just 1 tablespoon of batter per cookie, then you spread it into a circle nice and thin.

While one was baking, I used a second baking sheet to get the next ones started. Alli is getting her cookies ready.

The kids and I made fortunes to go inside each of the cookies. These giant fortunes were for a special cookie.

After the cookies were browned around the edges, they came out of the oven and I had to act quickly. I grabbed a random fortune, put it inside the cookie, folded the cookie in half, and then pinched the edges towards each other to get that classic fortune cookie shape. It's hot work, but if you don't act fast, the cookies will get too hard and crack.

After folding, I took the suggestion of a website and placed them into muffin tin to help hold their shape while they cooled.

These were so much easier than I was expecting them to be. It was a fun treat to make!

With the cookies completed, it was time to turn our attention to the rest of the meal.
We're making 2 entrees tonight. Theresa is making a Bourbon Chicken that got amazing reviews from Food.com. One of those ingredients is apple juice. Theresa, did you take one of the kids' Capri-sun Juices for this?

And while Theresa was making the Bourbon Chicken, I'm busy dipping pieces of chicken into a tempura batter and getting them fried. For the tempura batter I am using this recipe with modifications. As-is, the batter was a bit watery. I added a bit more flour to thicken things up.

While I finished the chicken, Theresa was a work making the sweet and sour sauce. It's from Food.com and it's composed of things like pineapple juice, brown sugar, and soy sauce. I'm really hoping this turns out good.

Yum! Let's eat!

First there's the sweet and sour chicken. The sauce isn't the bright red that you'd normally get from takeout Chinese, but all that really matters is the taste.

The Bourbon Chicken.

Cream Cheese wontons are something I would always order too if the takeout Chinese had them. In college it was one of my favorite meals.

The bourbon chicken was delicious. It had just a little heat to it, and surprisingly the kids liked it better than the sweet and sour chicken.
I was very impressed by the sweet and sour chicken. The sauce was so good. The equal to what I remembered. The tempura chicken was good too, but next time I'm going to try to figure out how to get it a little crispier. And being able to toss a ton of pineapples into the sauce makes things even better.

Like usual, Rich and Chi joined us for dinner. They've been very impressed with the meals Theresa and I have been pulling together lately.

The kids gave a thumbs up to the whole meal. It's very tasty. Alli is smiling with her cream cheese wonton.

Regular fortune cookie on the left, giant fortune cookie on the right, and that's where the giant fortunes ended up.

Time for dessert! Let's eat those cookies we made! The fortunes were fun, and we had some pretty funny ones and some sweet ones.

Alli is ready for them. Another smile, this time made out of a fortune cookie.

Ian's said "Everybody thinks you're awesome!" He was pretty happy with that one.

Let's watch a few of them. I put some funny ones in there and by random happenstance they ended up going to some good people.

The kids were really sweet with the fortunes they wrote.

There wasn't a whole lot of paperware to prepare for today, but I did make my own take-home box.

It's even got a tab you can use to close it up.

And true to her fortune, Grammy did end up in the kitchen cleaning!