Steve Wertz wrote:
On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:47:25 -0500, ian wrote:

Steve Wertz wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:54:20 -0500, ian wrote:

The NYT has an adaptation from Fuchsia Dunlop's new book on Hunan
cooking, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, about General Tso's chicken:

See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/ma.../04food.t.html

I got my copy of the book last week, finally, and made Gen Tso's chicken
last night. It came out very well indeed.
Except for the addition of tomato paste and lack of peanuts,
that's almost the same as her Gung Bao (Kung Pao) chicken recipe.

-sw
The chicken pieces are coated in egg white and deep fried.
The result is hardly the same thing at all. These are not 2 dishes that
anyone would confuse, should they show up on the same table.

But they'll still taste very similar.

-sw

I intended to be quite vociferous in my reply, but I took the trouble to
actually compare the recipes, and I have to admit that they are quite
similar. The coating on the chicken changes the feel of the dish to some
extent, as does the lesser (I think) ginger taste, the tomato paste,
the lack of peanuts and lack of sechuan pepper. The Taiwanese version
also uses rice vinegar instead of Chinkiang, though the 'US' version
uses the latter.

I added red, yellow, and green peppers to my dish, and they blended very
well, but they may also have made the dish less like Kung Pao.

Funny how small changes can lead to something perceived as quite different.

Thanks,

ian