I've been wanting to cook chinese buffet style chicken for a while now, and finally found a pair of recipes to make it worth-while. We've noticed that unlike other asian restaurants, the chicken is mostly fried independent of the sauces, only combined right before serving, possibly because of the breading on the chicken. First, we made Sweet and Sour Chicken, adapted from the New Classic Chinese Cookbook. The author takes the approach of teaching Americans how to cook Chinese food, so there's recommendations like "don't use double black soy sauce, it's too strong for you." The recipes use widely available ingredients, although a trip to an asian food store wouldn't hurt. The sweet and sour chicken turned out very well, with the flavors mixing into a light syrupy sauce; I can't get enough warm pineapples.

The second variety was Spicy Honey Chicken (General Style), an excellent recipe from suburblicious.com, one of our neighbors in the Foodbloggers webring. She writes mostly in French, and luckily translated this recipe to English. I'd been looking for a good General's chicken recipe, and this is perfect. We decided to use her method of frying chicken for the whole batch, only adding sherry to the milk marinade. And for the peppers, we used Ground Chipotle Pepper from Penzeys, and the flavor is not searing hot but builds flavor as you go. The honey in the sauce is a great tangy taste instead of sugar. Both were served over a bed of jasmine rice, and we'll be enjoying it all week long.