Kung Pow Chicken!

Kung Pow Chicken recipe I learned from Ermo and helped make with Leslie at his and Shu’s place today.  It was soooo sooo delicious!

4 chicken thighs cut into tiny-ish cubes.  Best if thigh is still somewhat frozen.  It is easier to cut.

Mix up the marinade for the chicken.  Some salt, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and corn starch (mixed with a bit of water).  Basically this is done without any measuring.  You do it to how you like it.  So, if you like it salty then more salt and soy sauce.  If you like it a bit bitter have more vinegar.  If you like a bit sweet and salty have more sugar.  Basically you have a bowl and you use a ladle and you pour those ingredients into the ladle and you use that to measure and mix.

Once you get it how you like it mix it into the chicken and let it sit for 20 minutes.

While that is sitting get your spices together.  Numb spice you just buy already and don’t do anything.  The chilli peppers you may have whole and you just use kitchen shears to cut tiny lengths.  Then chop up onion sprouts and a few cloves of garlic to your liking.  Also pour out some peanuts.  Can just use unsalted peanuts from the store.

By now the twenty minutes is probably up and you can heat oil in a wok on high and once the oil is very hot put the cut up chicken into the pan.  Stir vigorously keeping the chicken moving and flipping.  A sort of stir flip motion continuously.  Do this until you start to see the chicken change from pink to white.  Once that happens immediately take the chicken off the heat and put it onto a plate.  You may pour off any of the excess juice to either save or throw away.

Now turn the heat to a medium temperature and add in some oil again.  Let it heat up.  Then add in the numb spice and chili pepper and stir them around until it smells good and the garlic is looking nice.  Then add back in the chicken.  Turn up the heat a bit.  And then add in the onion sprouts and peanuts.  This part you must continue the stir and flip motion vigorously until the chicken is mixed in with the other ingredients and appears to be fully cooked.  Note that this does not take very long.

You can eat this by itself or if you want can serve with some rice.

Also, the cool part about this is that it is highly dependent on what you like and what tastes good to you.  So, there really is no wrong way to make kung pow chicken.  You could add other vegetables if you want or leave out some of the spice if you think it is too spice.

Wedding Prep and Research

Wow!  I’m quite busy.  Leslie and I’ve been putting together a wedding website (here, also she did it all.  All I did was suggest where and put in the map lol).  We have just finished our wedding registry and wow there is a lot you need for a kitchen.  Leslie has made wedding invitations and RSVP cards and cool art to go on them.  So cool!!! Well umm most of that has been what Leslie has been doing…

I’ve been helping some with that.  But I’ve been working on redoing the cloud robotics paper for ICRA and intermittently working on the theory for Bounty Hunting.  And I’m also planning on proposing my thesis and doing my comps this fall.  Along with getting married!

NYC for Agent Mix IJCAI Workshop 2016

Had an amazing first day in New York City.  Took the BoltBus with Leslie at 7am (July 10th).  We went and got pizza for lunch and went to the Met.  To get to the met we took the metro and walked through central park catching Pokemon along the way :).  We explored the Met for a while.  It is huge!!!  We left and grabbed an Uber back to my hotel and I checked in.  We took an Uber then back to the BoltBus stop and Leslie took the bus back to DC.

After she left I tried pizza from two more places.  At the one place I got 2 slices and a coke for $3.  I ate a slice in front of the building and then I folded the other slice up and grabbed my coke and ate, sipped, and walked.  That was so much fun!  Delicious pizza, with amazing surroundings.

Tomorrow at 11am I present at the Agent Mix Workshop a paper Ermo and I did on bounty hunting with task abandonment.  I can’t wait until 11:25 and my presentation is finished and I can have fun again :).

Going to have to figure out what I want to do in the free time!  I’ll post more then!