"Copycat" P.F. Chang's Crispy Honey Chicken

I will be back with more on our trip to Hua Hin but wanted to share these photos first.

I found this little guy hiding out in my portulaca yesterday morning. He was quite content to sit there and listen to me chatter to him while I watered the flowers and fed the fish. There are so many mosquitoes at this time of year and I hope he hangs around and eats his fair share of them.

Caitlynne had her first follow up with the doctor yesterday. The swelling had gone down significantly and he was able to put a hard cast on her ankle. 

 

 I was honored to be the first to sign her cast. Front and center! 

It looks like mine might be the only signature as her cast is now a work of art. 

Would a boy do this?!?

Caitlynne told me that (according to information found on google.com) in one week she can paint the plaster white and then "recreate" all over again!

The "copycat" P.F. Chang's crispy honey chicken turned out really well but we all agreed that the recipe could use some more tweaking. 

I also made a side dish of red and green peppers and onions stir fried in garlic and oil. 

I just bought a garlic press and am totally loving it! I cannot believe that, with the amount of cooking that I do, I never thought to buy a garlic press. Now, I add freshly pressed garlic to everything I can think of and then some. Last week, I made a salad with a balsamic vinegar & olive oil dressing and I used so much garlic that I had to apologize profusely to my poor friend who drove downtown with me after lunch. 

Dinner!

This is the recipe I "followed". To make a lighter and healthier dish, I omitted all of the ingredients/steps pertaining to the batter. Instead, I marinated the chicken in the seasoning ingredients for about 2 hours and then stir-fried the chicken in a teeny bit of oil. When I finished stir-frying the chicken, it was nicely browned (but not crispy as it would have been if battered and fried) and very tasty. In fact, I probably could have just stopped right there and served it with veggies and rice. 

For the sauce, I used all of the ingredients and the proper measurements but I will definitely modify that the next time. First of all, there was a ton of sauce! Maybe battered chicken would have absorbed a lot more than the stir-fried chicken did but I only used about 1/2 of the finished sauce and the chicken was definitely well covered. In addition, the sauce was very flavorful (Christopher said "strong") and I will reduce the rice wine, sake and/or soy sauce to tone it down. The marinade had soy sauce in it as well so maybe it is too much to have more soy sauce added elsewhere in the recipe. I thought that 6 tablespoons of sugar was a little too much sugar, especially when there is already 1/2 cup of honey in the sauce. If the amounts of sake, rice wine and/or soy sauce are reduced, the amount of sugar should be reduced as well.

So, with some more modifications, this is definitely a recipe I would make again. I might even look at a few other recipes and see if the ingredients/measurements called for are the same or similar.

Have a great Friday!