Sweet and Sour Chicken with a Pineapple

An idea of this dish is that of an Asian kitchen, but as usually, there is an European twist to it, to make it easier and faster to make from what is widely available in a local supermarket. We all are familiar with a typical Chicken-tonight or Chicken Sweet&Sour sauce jars. Those usually are great if you want to stock pile the jars themselves, but at some point I really got fed up that usually it is only a few scraps of vegetables swimming in it. Figuring it can't be that hard to make it, I decided to try and do my own. Result actually does not take longer than making it from a jar, and definitely is more filling.

Need:
200g of chicken filet
1 large carrot (it can be small as well, just more annoying to cut)
1 red sweet paprika
1 normal size onion
1 can of pineapples (300 ml one or smaller. As long as you get them swimming in half a cup of juice, it is fine.)
1 mug of basmati rice (aka about 300 mil, roughly)

3 spoons of plain tomato ketchup
2 spoons of soya sauce (ketjap manis or any other darker kind)
1 spoon of corn starch (here in NL it is Maizena)

Spicing: a pinch of pepper, salt, ginger powder. Though, to be honest, there is enough flavor in this to skip on spices entirely.

So, first put a pot with water (about 2 liters) for rice on fire, it will take a while for it to start boiling.

Start with the veggies, clean the carrot and shop it into pieces, more or less what you normally see swimming in pre-made sauce. Put a bit of oil in the pan (bigger and deeper is better), throw a carrot in, put it on medium fire so it does not burn too quickly, etc. Chop paprika into similar size pieces, throw in. Cut the chicken into more or less half bite pieces, add to the pan. Cut the onions into blocks, add to the pan. Open your pineapple can, fish out pineapples (save the liquid you will need that later!), cut the pineapples if they are not in the blocks already, add to the pan. Fry it for 3-5 minutes, while you are making the sauce.

Somewhere in between this process a water for rice started boiling - add rice, stir it with a fork and cook for 8 minutes, occasionally stirring so it does not stick to the bottom. Try to not overcook it.

Now action moves to the pineapple tin can (or a cup if you poured the juice out). To the pineapple juice add 3 spoons of ketchup, 2 spoons of soya sauce and 1 spoon of corn starch. Whisk it, so the starch is not in the lumps (children toy whisk is lovely for that, but simple spoon/fork can do too). Add this liquid to the frying pan and stir, stir, STIR, so everything gets coated well in sauce.

Get the excess water off the cooked rice (aka sift) and serve with the chicken.