When things go wrong, and they do, for me, it’s usually radically wrong. I was testing out a vegetarian, vegan general Tso recipe.
Over the last few months, I’ve been working on several sauce recipes, general Tso and mongolian have been a part of that process.
In the true spirit of mise en place, I steamed some kabocha squash, along with some sliced carrots. I then sliced, diced and chopped my aromatics and peppers. And then premixed my sauce and set it aside.
A funny thing happened as I was mixing my sauce; my intuition spoke to me. “Wendy, that’s the wrong sauce.” Umm! I thought to myself, “no it ain’t!” and kept on going. But if the truth be told, it did look a little thick…and there was tons of it.
I did my thing, in my handy dandy wok, aromatics in, peppers in, steamed vegetables in. Now it was time for the sauce to go in. I hesitated before I put the sauce into the wok, but once in, I immediately thought, “wow, this is the wrong sauce. And there’s frick’n’ loads of it”
The mongolian sauce literally smothered, or better yet drowned everything in the wok. Did it taste okay? Barely, the balance of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami that I always strive for wasn’t remotely there. It was all sauce. Was it edible? Yes. But the only thing I could pick out in the picture was one lone piece of yellow pepper and one lone piece of red pepper. The green onions don’t count as I added them as garnish.
Life is always taking the opportunity to teach me much needed lessons. I know the lesson here is always listen to your intuition, because it is never wrong.
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