The sauce is based on a light sweet-and-sour, pepped up with a deep chile spiciness and a trace of Sichuan pepper that will make your lips tingle pleasantly.

NPR: Savoring The Spice In Kung Pao Chicken

One might ask whether starting down this sticky, sweet-and-sour slope toward an unregulated market in lemonade will mean allowing just anyone to open a lemonade stand, food truck, or other unregulated, informal business that will compete with brick-and-mortar incumbents.

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The Atlanta-based company claims to be the first candy maker in the world to have completely overhauled its product line--including sour Suck Ups liquid candy, Super Sweet or Sour Blast spray candy, Xtra Sour Goo and Dream Chews--in 2004 to remove all refined sugars and replace them with fruit juice concentrate.

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WATER-COOKED FISH is a Sichuan preparation of poached white fish and wilted cabbage in a sweet-sour broth slicked with chili oil.

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For hydration, there is water flavored with pandanus leaf, which tastes pleasantly of toasted rice, and fruit-flavored drinking vinegars, which, mixed with seltzer, are like sweet-and-sour sodas.

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Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl if you dip your finger in, you can taste the sweet-sour base of the gong bao flavor.

NPR: Savoring The Spice In Kung Pao Chicken

Some restaurants, like the Ning Po Residents Association, require a nominal annual fee (around 200 Hong Kong dollars), but in return you gain access to excellent food (in this case, recipes from the city of Ningbo, near Shanghai, such as delicate, juicy soup dumplings and sweet-and-sour fish), in an exclusive but usually unpretentious setting.

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It can be described as a shortcut to umami, the so-called fifth flavor (in addition to sweet, sour, bitter and salt), which in turn is often described as savory or meaty.

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