General Tsao’s Sauce (from scratch) with Tofu

This is my husband's recipe, he developed it after looking at a ton of General Tsao's sauce recipes online, most bragging about being completely from scratch... and having ingredients like hoisin sauce or something. Yes, this one does use soy sauce and chili oil, those are pre-made.
We used to buy General Tsao's sauce from Trader Joe's (it's very good) but with his corn allergy, we had to come up with our own version. Use lots of broccoli with this one :) 

If you're not familiar with using arrowroot as a corn starch substitute, it's a thickener that works very well with sauces. It's also a lower temperature thickener, so keep your sauce at a lower temperature when you add it. It's easiest to add to a sauce if it's already liquid, and mixes really well in cold water- so add a little cold water to your measured out arrowroot, stir, and then add the liquid to your sauce. Arrowroot also thickens quickly.


Ingredients:

5 Tbsp rice vinegar
6½ Tbsp. rice wine
½ cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1½ or 2 tsp. chili oil
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
½ cup sugar
3 tsp. minced garlic
1½ tsp. minced ginger
4 or 5 teaspoons arrowroot, for sauce (pre-mixed in a little bit of cool water)

½ cup oil (for frying)
One container of Extra Firm fresh tofu.
1 cup (ish) onions
4 Cups broccoli (approx)

Sauce Instructions: 
Mix Rice Vinegar, Rice Wine, Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil, Chili Oil and Tomato Paste. Add 1/2 cup sugar, then whisk it together.

In a large sauce pan lightly sauté the garlic and ginger in a small amount of oil, then add the mixture and bring to low boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and cook, and add arrowroot while whisking. It should be thick when done. Then remove from heat and set aside.

Stir Fry Instructions: 
Take tofu out of liquid it came in and chop into 1 inch cubes, press these between two towels to take out the moisture and dry them. Heat 1/2 cup oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Then place in the tofu, turn it during cooking so that each side gets browned. When all sides are browned, place the tofu on a paper towel to get rid of excess oil. Sauté the onions, add broccoli and cook until tender. (add water if necessary) Then add the tofu and then the sauce and heat over low for until everything is heated through.