Cashew Peanut Chicken

This one is my mom's creation. She happened to taste a similar dish in a restaurant and had to recreate it. So she gave me a rough idea of the ingredients and said I could try it out with whatever sauces I liked! Given the freedom, I took this opportunity to try out most of the sauces I had in my refrigerator... and I must say, I was quite happy with the result!

Ingredients:

Chicken - 1/2 kg

Carrot - 1 cup (1 inch long thin slices)

Capsicum - 1 cup (1 inch long thin slices)

Onions - 1 small (thinly sliced)

Garlic - 2 cloves

Sugar - 1 tsp

Cashewnuts - a handful

Peanuts - a handful

Dried red chilli -5

Egg - 1

Corn flour - Enough to coat the chicken

Lime juice - 1 tbsp

Pepper - 1 tsp

Oil - 1/4 cup plus enough for deep frying

Salt to taste

To mix:

Tomato sauce - 1 1/2 tbsp

Soy Sauce - 2 tbsp

Teriyaki sauce - 2 tsp

Schezwan sauce - 2 tsp

Hot chilli sauce - 1/2 tsp

Honey - 1 tsp

Garlic powder - 1 tsp

1. Marinate the chicken pieces with lime juice, pepper and salt. Set aside for 15 minutes.

2. Add a beaten egg to the chicken and mix well. Put the chicken into a strainer. This is done to remove excess egg.

3. Toss the chicken pieces in cornflour. Again put the chicken pieces into a strainer to remove excess cornflour.

4. Deep fry the chicken pieces until they are nice golden brown in colour.

5. In a pan, add oil and throw in the crushed garlic. Remove the garlic from the oil when it starts to turn light brown in colour. Fry the red chillies and the nuts in oil and keep aside.

6. In the same pan, saute the onions till it gets translucent. Add the carrots and the capsicum and cook till they are done.

7. In a small bowl, mix together all the sauces and powders mentioned above. Add this to the vegetables and mix well. If you like to have some gravy, add quarter cup of chicken stock.

8. Add the sugar and throw in the chicken pieces. Toss it till the chicken pieces are well coated. Stir for a minute.

9. Transfer this to a serving bowl and mix in the fried chillies and the nuts.

This dish goes well with fried rice/noodles.