Sweet and sour "something"

Last week I tried a recipe from the local newspaper for homemade sweet and sour sauce. The article said sweet and sour is "the most famous and abused Chinese dish in the West." Probably. In Chinese restaurants, it's often a sticky sweet, fluorescent goo with fatty deep-fried lumps of meat. Yum. And I've eaten my share of it.

But a true s&s sauce should be translucent, light and tangy. You might like this recipe, because it has simple ingredients, and it's as easy as using one of those mix packets. It works for shrimp, chicken, pork.
Or, whatever :-)

For the sauce:

1/2 cup canned chicken broth
3 tbs. rice vinegar
1 tbs. honey
1 tbs. soy sauce
2 tbs. ketchup
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 tbs. water

Mix all the ingredients (except for the cornstarch and water) together in a small sauce pan and heat gently. Mix the cornstarch with water, then add to the sauce and simmer for a minute. Set aside while you stir-fry the meat and vegetables.

After I browned the shrimp, I added some garlic, chopped ginger and vegetables to the wok: carrots, onion, green pepper.
When the vegetables were "Chinese" cooked, I put the shrimp back in the wok with a handful of cashews and pineapple. I was lucky to have a nice fresh pineapple, but canned is fine, too.
Finally, add the sauce to the wok, and let it simmer for a few minutes to heat through. It was light and delicious with brown rice and Trader Joe's pot-stickers. And nothing at all like the restaurant version.

Talk doesn't cook rice.
Chinese Proverb