Cashew Chicken (kinda)

I adore Chinese food. And I usually make some sort of stir fry/Chinese-inspired dish a week. One of my favourite Chinese foods is cashew chicken, but I've never gotten around to trying to make it. (Although I have used the Wanchai Ferry boxed cashew chicken dinner before, and that is delicious!) So when I came across this recipe I figured it was about time to give it a try (with a few changes, of course).



So, I decided to add some veggies. Chopped up a double handful of carrots and two stalks of celery.



Sauteed them in some oil. When they were partially done, I emptied them out of the pan, and put the chicken (I only used one small breast, as opposed to the 1.5 pounds called for in the recipe, and I also, obviously, decided to forgo breading the chicken, though maybe I'll try that if I make this again) in to cook.



When the chicken was cooked, I put the carrots and celery back in and added some broccoli.



Then I added the sauce, which I halved from what was called for in the recipe. I didn't realise it when I was writing down the recipe, but these sauce ingredients are exactly what I usually put in my stir fries, just with less soy sauce, and more oyster sauce and sugar. Interesting!



Finished product! Oh, yeah. I didn't have any cashews, so this was just cashew chicken (sans cashews). haha!

I think if I had breaded the chicken and hadn't added the veggies, this would have tasted exactly like the cashew chicken I remember getting from restaurants when growing up. (Places here in the 'ville have cashew chicken closer to what I made: unbreaded chicken, carrots, celery, and water chestnuts.) So if I was going for a meat-filled dish, that would have been perfect... But I like my veggies! Regardless, though, I liked the balance of the flavors in the sauce, so I might start using these proportions as opposed to my other ones... So many choices!