Sweet and Sour Sauce

 Mom was pretty sick yesterday, so I offered to make dinner. I was in the mood for something different, and remembered we had the left over pork roast, so I tried to think of what would be good to do with the left overs... and this is what I came up with... but of course I changed the recipe.... here is the original, with changes at the end in italics. My goal was to find a recipe that did not use corn syrup or catsup in it, one that was relatively clean...

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon peeled and grated fresh ginger
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup pineapple or orange juice
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar

• 1 heaping tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch blended with 2 tablespoons cold water

Directions

Heat a wok or saucepan over high heat and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the ginger and garlic. Stir-fry just until fragrant, and then add the juice, vinegar, brown sugar and soy sauce. Bring to a boil and cook until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the cornstarch and water mixture and cook until thickened, about 1 minute. Stir into any nearly completed stir-fry dish and bring to a boil until the sauce thickens, about 1 minute.
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* I more then doubled the recipe by adding and making the following changes:

• 2 T oil
• 2 T of fresh ginger
• 4 cloves of garlic (some about half were small, and half were bigger)
• 1 cup of pineapple juice
• 1 cup of pear juice (from canned pears in the refrigerator)
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 3+ T of soy sauce
• Instead of another cup of pineapple juice, I added 1 cup of juice from the pairs.
• 4 T vinegar -- mom did no have rice vinegar
• 2 T brown sugar

*I started as directed with the ginger and the garlic in the oil, then added my juices, brown sugar, 2 T of soy sauce, and vinegar.

*It tasted super sweet and vinegary , so I added more soy sauce and water (trying stretch the sauce anyways) and when I added the onion, it finally started to taste better. 

*After creating the sauce initially, I sliced some onions up, tossing them in and added the meat for a bit, letting them simmer together. 

 *Next I added a yellow & an orange pepper, but tried to not let them over cook. 

*I did thicken the sauce twice also, once after adding the normal proportions, but when I stretched it with water as I was adding the onions, it seemed to get too liquidy again, so made the cornstarch/water mixture again, and added it for a minute or two to the boiling sauce before taking it off the heat and serving it.

*Served over baked white rice.