ginger pineapple chicken -- the speedy way

Last night I told Cornelius I would have dinner ready by the time he returned from doing laundry. Time wise, I didn't hold up my end of the bargin, but it wasn't for lack of trying. He left with 2 loads to take over to our friendly (but slightly scary) neighbourhood laundromat and I searched the cupboard and fridge for ideas.

I had frozen chicken thighs, a can of pineapple, an onion, some celery, a large knob of fresh ginger and a few assorted items to make a nice sauce. Ah, some kind of sweet/sour sauced chicken, I thought! So that is what I set out to do.

I nuked the frozen chicken for a few minutes on a low setting. Still half frozen, I stirfried them with some garlic and ginger. I'm sure I was breaking some kind of rule by using still frozen chicken, but I was running out of time and I had a growling stomach to prove it. I dumped in a bit of vegetable broth once everything was nice and golden brown, threw in some red chilis, and put on a lid hoping that all the simmering would do the trick in fully cooking the chicken.

While things were gently bubbling away on the stove, I added some brown sugar, juice from the can of pineapple tidbits, soy sauce, white vinegar, more ginger & garlic and some sesame oil to the the remaining vegetable broth that I had left in a measuring cup. In another bowl, I made a slurry with a few tablespoons of the above mixture and some cornstarch.

It was around this part of the story when Cornelius did return with the loads of clean laundry and I didn't have things ready. No worries, as he quickly opened the cookie tin and started snacking on a couple of peanut butter cookies.

When I poked around the simmering chicken and noticed that things were indeed going as planned, i added some chopped celery and onions and the pineapple tidbits to the mix and then dumped in the sauce and some of the slurry to thicken everything up. I let the mixture bubble away for about another 10 minutes or so and then I served our meal up over some sticky rice.

Dinner went surprisingly well. We had clean clothes and our bellies were full. Not bad for a Sunday evening.