Sweet and sour sauce: dairy & soya free

I don't know about anyone else with a toddler with CMPA or food allergies themselves, but when I started excluding dairy and soya - I almost immediately really craved Chinese food. I used to make a lot of stir fries with a simple Soy and honey sauce, and have an incredibly soft spot for restaurant style Crispy chilli beef. However, soya in all it's forms was completely out of the window. I started experimenting with combinations of flavours and it took a while to get a combination that I was happy with, but this is it.

Sticky enough to resemble that gloopy takeaway sauce, but with a fiery kick of chilli and ginger it's perfect for a Friday night fakeaway. Harry and I love it with rice noodles - his favourite additions are baby corn, peas and carrots, I like to completely wipe out my veg trays and make a proper fridge-bottom dish. When I made it for the inlaws however, I did tone things down a bit and just used onions, peppers, carrot and beansprouts - and I was surprised that everyone loved it!

Obviously you can add whatever you like to this sauce, meat, veggies, noodles; be they egg, rice or vegetable - and go as heavy or light on the spices as you like. Which I think is the great thing about a fakeaway - you really get to personalise it to your tastes.

Sweet and sour sauce, takeaway style
Dairy, and soya free
Serves 4 (plus a toddler)

Thumb sized piece of ginger, grated
3 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely chopped
1 red chilli, chopped/ or 1 tsp chilli flakes
4-5 tbsp tomato sauce
4 tablespoons Date syrup
3 tablespoons malt vinegar
225g tin of pineapple chunks in juice (chop the pineapple up if you get rings and keep on one side for the stir fry, you just need the juice here)
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder

Mix the ginger, garlic and chilli together in a medium sized bowl
Add the ketchup, date syrup, and malt vinegar - have a quick taste to check that your flavours are balanced and add extras of anything you feel it needs
Add the 5 spice powder - I normally add half the teaspoon first and then a bit more as necessary
Add the pineapple juice - give it a good stir and taste again

I marinate my chicken if I'm using it in half the sauce, then add the rest while cooking once I've added the veggies. It really is delicious, and I make a little bowl, with only a tiny bit of garlic, and ginger for Harry who inhales it too!

I'm linking this up to Le Coin de Mel's Free From Friday's linky - if you're an allergy parent, or have food allergies yourself, be sure to pop over and see what everyone else has linked up (there's a gorgeous looking chocolate cake up already)

Why not Pin this recipe for later, using the image below:

I'm also adding this to A Mummy Too's Recipe of the week link up: