General Tso's Chicken... who hasn't at one point appreciated its greasy, sweet, weird wonderfulness?

Happily for me, Cook's Country, one of the many many food magazines that we receive, featured a recipe for the General in its most recent issue, and my husband, being undaunted by deep frying, agreed to prepare it for dinner this week.

A word about deep frying. I can't do it. Partially because it scares the hell out of me for some reason-- I am positive I am going to either set the house on fire or, alternately, cook something at an excessively high or excessively low temperature and destroy it. (Yes, we have a thermometer. Doesn't help the phobia at all). I also shy away from deep-frying because I know I shouldn't be eating that sort of food, because it is bad for you, and if I don't prepare it myself I can still eat it an pretend there aren't 50,000 grams of fat in my dinner.

Otis, however, does not share my phobias, and prepared a masterful rendition, although he insisted on calling it 'General Gau's Chicken' and kept talking about some place called the Food Wall. Memories of his former life as a Massachussan, presumably. It took about a billion hours, which is par for the course for recipes from Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country, but I was willing to wait. It was worth it.

General Tso's Chicken

SAUCE
1/4 C hoisin sauce (Otis cut down the amount of hoisin by quite a bit, so it wasn't too sweet)
1/4 C rice wine vinegar
3 T soy sauce (we use light)
2T cornstarch
1 1/2 c water
1 T vegetable oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
2T grated fresh ginger
3 t red pepper flakes

CHICKEN
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into chunks

FRY
3 egg whites
1 1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
lotsa vegetable oil for frying

1. Whisk hoisin, vinegar,soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, and water in a bowl.
2. Using just enough to cover, mix with chicken in a bowl or bag
3. Reserve the rest of the sauce
4. Heat 1 T oil in a skillet and cook garlic, ginger and pepper flakes for 30 sec-1 min.
5. Add 2 cups of the sauce and and simmer while stirring until dark brown and thickened; remove from heat and cover.
6. Whisk egg whites until foamy.
7. Combine corn starch, baking soda and remaining sauce in a shallow dish until resembles coarse meal.
8. Pat chicken dry with paper towels,
9. Dredge egg whites and then cornstarch mix.
10. Transfer to a plate to fry.
11. Heat oil to 350 degree oil; fry chicken until golden.
12. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate.
13. Toss with sauce.