Sasha's Kitchen: Chinese Style Cashew Chicken

I love Chinese food but only really good, quality Chinese food made with quality ingredients and good meats, which is quite hard to come by, to say the least. Recently, I received a package of all kinds of delicious nuts from ShopRite, everything from cashews to almonds to a variety of mixed nuts. I made a great salad that incorporated some of the cashews, but decided to save the rest to make a Chinese style sesame chicken. A good sauce for most Chinese dishes, will include some amount of hoisin sauce in the mixture. I came up with my own recipe for the cashew chicken sauce here which was relatively easy, and tasted authentic and delicious. This dish was a huge winner with my husband and is one that we will surely make again and again.

Sasha's Chinese Style Cashew Chicken
1 package chicken breasts (I used Empire Kosher, my favorite type of chicken)
2 T canola oil
3 cloves of garlic, diced
7 scallions, diced
2 T rice vinegar
4 T hoisin sauce
2/3 cup of cashews
1 T soy sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tsp honey (I used delicious homemade honey from a family friend in Danville, PA, Jan, who make his own honey from his own bees!)

Chop up the chicken breasts into small pieces. Coat with the cornstarch and saute in the canola oil until the chicken is about two thirds complete. Add the scallions, cashews and the garlic next. While the chicken is cooking, mix the hoisin sauce, water, rice vinegar, honey and soy sauce, and add the mixture to the chicken. Continue to cook until the sauce thickens a bit (the water will evaporate) and the chicken is fully cooked. Serve with rice and either steamed snow peas or sugar snap peas.

Sasha's Kitchen: Chinese Style Cashew Chicken