Apropos of Nothing ...

Sent to me by my late mother (along with lots of family photos, etc.) when she moved into the nursing home. Because we lived in a small town, only one local restaurant offered this essential dish, so she sometimes just made it at home using this recipe, which I assume was clipped from the Lebanon Daily Record (where I got my start as a "straight news" journalist at 12, writing meeting reports for the "club notices" section on behalf of the Laclede County Beekeepers' Association).

It's good stuff. If you live in the benighted 90% or more of the United States where the dish is not available, the recipe should serve you well.

An easier alternative, when and if this sauce mix happens to be available at Amazon (not an affiliate link), is to just grab some cashews, some green onions, and your preferred store-bought chicken nuggets (I prefer these from Sam's Club -- again, not an affiliate link), heat up the nuggets, throw on the cashews and chopped onions, and toss the whole mess in some of the sauce. Back in the day, my mom tried a recipe based on McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, but pretty much everyone deemed that route unsatisfactory.

Another thing I've done, when I've had that sauce available, is go to a local Chinese restaurant and order one of their breaded/battered chicken dishes, "hold the sauce and veggies," then run it home and do the cashews/onions/sauce thing. Personally I thought the Sam's Club chicken came out bettter, though.

So yes, it is possible to have cashew chicken pretty much anywhere in America.

But it should be convenient to do so.

OK, it's Starting to be an Emergency.

I love living in Gainesville, Florida. Love it. LLLLLLLLOOOOOVE it. Pretty much everything about it is great.

Except that I can't seem to find Springfield-style cashew chicken anywhere in the area.

There's plenty of good food.

There's plenty of good Asian-American food.

But no Springfield-style cashew chicken.

If you don't know what Springfield-style cashew chicken is, I encourage you to not find out, because if you do find out you will spend the rest of your life craving it at inopportune moments and apparently it's really not very available outside of, say, a 150-mile radius around Springfield, Missouri, and there is just no acceptable substitute.

If you don't know what Springfield-style cashew chicken is and really think you must know, here's a quote from my Yelp review of a St. Louis restaurant that offers it:

Springfield-style cashew chicken is breaded, deep-fried chicken served with chopped green onions and cashews in "oyster sauce" -- a sort of brown gravyish substance that doesn't taste at all like oysters.

Do any Gainesvilleian or other Floridian readers know of any place within a 100-mile or so radius that serves it? I'm getting close to desperate enough to try making it myself, and I can't see that turning out well.

PSA for Springfieldians Living in St. Louis

I haven't visited every Chinese restaurant in the St. Louis area, but I've eaten at quite a few.

So far I've only found one that gets "Springfield-style" cashew chicken right.

I just finished off a #17 combo -- "Crispy Cashew Chicken" -- from Quik Wok at 10665 Saint Charles Rock Road in St. Ann, and it finally occurred to me that I should share the joy.

The combo comes in at under $5 (they take cash only, so don't sashay in with your debit card expecting food; also, they're closed on Sunday) and includes a generous portion of cashew chicken (breaded, deep-fried chicken with cashews and green onions in a brown oyster sauce), a helping of fried rice, and two crab rangoon.

I probably did eat at every Chinese restaurant in Springfield (Missouri) circa the 80s and 90s (I lived right behind Leong's Tea House, owned by the dish's inventor, for two years) and I know my cashew chicken. Quik Wok's is the real thing.

The only place I've had better cashew chicken (unless it was homemade by my Aunt Lois) was a hole in the wall place in Springfield, near the corner of Glenstone and Seminole. That place was still open when I visited a few years ago. I think it may have been called Hong Kong II, but I can't remember for sure.

Note: If the comment thread turns into a tip trade, I'd be interested in where I can find a decent medianoche around here.