Sweet-and-Sour Chicken

I am convinced that this dish is a concoction of some Westernized Chinese restaurant. In China, chicken is considered to have such a delicate flavour that it would be a travesty to flavour it with a sweet-sour sauce: beef, yes; pork, yes; chicken, and especially chicken breast, no. Again, I imagine a proprietor thinking, ‘Westerners love sweet-and-sour pork; why not chicken, of which we have many leftovers?’

Here I offer a more balanced, more authentically Chinese approach: the swee