General Tso’s Chicken & Sourdough Potstickers

We were at a beer festival yesterday, so today we’re in need of comfort food. Bacon sarnies, with homemade sourdough bread of course, took care of breakfast, but not our hangovers…

So we’re moving onto a lunch from some of my standard recipes that won’t be too taxing. And also not entirely unhealthy, or at least when compared to the alternative of just ordering Chinese food. The main dish is General Tso’s Chicken, server with potsticker dumplings, using my rye sourdough wonton batter.

I start by making the dumping wrapper dough, and popping in the fridge to rest before using it.

Then I make a dumpling filling from what I find in the fridge: sausage meat from a couple of sausages, a red pepper that was just about OK (unlike the green pepper that went straight to the compost) plus some string onions. I try these up with garlic and ginger before mixing with oyster sauce.

After that I make the sweet & sour sauce, bringing it to the boil to thicken it, then it just keeps warp on the back burner.

Then I roll out the dumpling wrappers, and assemble.

Then the chicken gets coated.

Then… it gets complicated as everything takes 15 minutes to cook, so I was too busy doing that to take pictures. The chicken goes in a hot oven, the dumplings get fried, then water is added and they get covered to steam, all while Soph whipped up some rice.