Liveblogging a dinner-party

What I really wanted, I wanted to take a photo of the fish-heads in their soupy stock and post that: but alas, no power in the camera. No pix.

Still, one word is worth a thousand photos, so this post is a bargain.

So far today, I have done First Shopping, which is local; I have made the basic stock for the soup; I have cooked a very great deal of rice, which I will fry from cold for dinner; I have made six little vanilla blancmanges; I have put Chaz'z Chinese Pork on to simmer v v gently for v v ever. [Chaz'z Chinese Pork is a tradition; I invented it - with a huge great hand of pork - when I was called on once to feed a dozen friends, and now I'm not allowed to cook Chinese without it, however inauthentic it might be. Actually it's not really, because I read a lot of red-cooked recipes before I devised this; but basically all I do is stick a large piece of pork on the bone into a stock-pot, cover it with water, add dark & light soy, rice vinegar, Shao Xing and rock sugar, and then cook it very gently for hours & hours. The fat goes gelatinous, the meat is so soft that you can pull it off the bone with chopsticks, the liquid is boiled down into a sticky sweet sauce, and nom-nom-nomming occurs.

At present, after First Revisions, the menu looks like this:

Slivered radishes
Smacked cucumber
Silver fish with chilli
Jiaozi

Fish soup

Ants climbing a tree
Chicken with chestnuts
Chicken with black beans (or possibly General Tso's chicken)
Chairman Mao's red-braised pork
Chaz'z Chinese pork
Bamboo shoots with ground pork

Vanilla blancmange with saffron sauce (not strictly Chinese - at all - but hey...)

Liveblogging the dinner, part two

Okay: I have done Second Shopping (into town: fishmarket, farmers' market, Chinese superdupermarket) and now I'm tired. I only have little feets, you know. Not like the Idiot Boy, with his enormous paws.

I couldn't remember how many ricebowls and soup spoons I had, so I bought more. Now I have lots. More people must come and eat more often.

The chicken-and-chestnuts is simmering away. Retrenchment is beginning; I may not do another chicken dish. This is partly tiredness, partly a vague feeling that there may after all be enough food, partly because the spare chicken thighs haven't defrosted yet and I'm not sure I can be bothered to hurry them up. Might just chuck 'em back in the freezer and forget it.

Now I have to go and pass the fish-stock through muslin, and smack up my cucumber. One of the pleasures of cooking Chinese, I get to use my cleaver. For many things; indeed, for all the knifework, from chopping through bones to fine slicing. It's way heavier than a classic Chinese chopper, which makes it all the better for bashing stuff with the flat of the blade, when called for. Hark, I hear the cucumber calling...

Liveblogging the dinner, part three

Forgot to mention, of course: I have also done three loads of washing-up. Partly because I have been nicely trained, but mostly because there is truly no alternative in this house. Apart from the fact that I like to use the same pots over and over, there is utterly nowhere to put dirty pots and dishes. Except in the sink and on the floor, of course, but I need both of those. I have a teeny tiny sliver of a kitchen, and limited spillover; so when I'm doing a dinner, I wash up as I go. And put stuff away also. *is extraordinary*

Next up: Chairman Mao's red-braised pork. One of his favourite dishes, allegedly. Something of an exercise in compare-and-contrast, as my own slow-cooked pork will be on the table at the same time; his is more variously flavoured (star anise, cassia, chilli), but mostly I want to do it because it starts with caramelising sugar in oil, and I'm curious to try that. Eek. I foresee more washing-up, with specific reference to burnt sugar...

La lutte continue

"Fall back! Fall back...!"

There is less than an hour before my guests officially arrive; I may legitimately expect them to be late, but not by much. I am not, alas, going to make the jiaozi. (These are dumplings, stuffed with pork-and-cabbage, boiled and dipped; they're fabby next day too, fried, at which time they become known as panstickers. For, uh, obvious reasons...)

But the cucumber has been well and truly smacked, the silver fish await their final dressing, the soup's looking good; the porks are simmering, each and each; I have dry-fried the sweet fresh bamboo shoots, which is as much as I can do in advance for those; the ants can't really climb the trees until the last minute; I'm starting to think about tidying up, clearing the table, that kind of thing.

Vacuuming will not be occurring today. Unless they're very late.

Liveblogging - part four

Okay. They're due in five minutes. The table and mats have been wiped (I used to be slovenly and not do stuff like that, until a lover told me - tenderly, I thought, but quite firmly - that it was important. I said "Hey, it's only you and me tonight, and you know what I'm like..." "Yes," he said, "and I'm trying to change you." With what results, please note!), a full bottle of wine has been knocked over - no names, no cat-drill - and recovered, at the cost of one sodden chair-seat; guess who's getting a wine-wet bottom tonight...?

There really isn't much more I can do about the food until they're here. I shall continue laying the table. The new rice-bowls and spoons have been washed (necessarily, as the spoons' price-labels were stuck to the bowls, just where people would stick 'em in their mouths; much soaking and scrubbing has occurred, to get the gum off). Chopsticks can be found, but actually I think I'll hold off until people say what they want; I may have some forkers among the guests, and I'd hate to humiliate them into asking for the nasty sticks to be taken away and a nice prongy fork to be brought instead.

I must have forgotten something - besides the mushrooms for the soup, that is - but by definition, I don't know what it is.

Liveblogging the dinner, part five

They're here! I'm gone...