One of my favorite places to eat in Pittsburgh is Bankok Balcony in Squirrel Hill. Perhaps the main reason I love it so much is because their cashew nut chicken is so damned good. I haven’t figured out what makes their sauce so damned good, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to try to make. So here’s my first attempt:

We almost always have some frozen chicken from Costco in our freezer. It’s the simplest thing to work with since it’s already in packet form. Just take it out the night before and put it in the fridge.

Cubed into about 1/2 inch pieces.

The veggies I decided to put in are onions and a red bell pepper.

Just chop off the top and then take out the insides.

Now we can start slicing it into smaller pieces.

Repeat with the onion.

For the sauce, we also need some diced garlic. I took one big clove out.


We’re actually going to have two sauces. One to marinate and cook the chicken in, and another to cook everything in at the end.

For the chicken, here are the main ingredients.

We only need the egg white. If you haven’t split an egg into the yolk and white part before, it’s pretty easy. Just crack it open and transfer the yolk back and forth between the two halves.

With our sauce and that minced garlic from before.

After mixing.

We then let the chicken marinate in it while we prepare the other sauce.

For this sauce, we start with sesame oil, corn starch, chicken broth, rice vinegar (ok, I didn’t have any…), and chili-garlic sauce.

I put a little less chili garlic paste, since I didn’t want it to be too spicy, atleast initially.

Taking some vegetable oil, we cook the veggies for about 5 minutes, until the onions are translucent.

Now it’s time for the chicken. Just pout it in with the sauce and cook for about 6 minutes.

Add the veggies back in.

Pour on the sauce. I thought it was a little too spicy, so I decided to mellow it out with some OJ.

Et voila.

I poured it over some rice and sprinkled some cashew nuts on top.

Overall it was a good stir-fry. It definitely wasn’t the sauce from Bangkok Balcony but still tasty none-the-less. This will be a dish I will try to make again. Since I made the sauce myself (with a little bottled help), I know what went into it. I’ll have to figure out the right combination of ingredients to match the Pittsburgh treat.