Liveblogging a dinner-party
Jun. 6th, 2008 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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...)
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...)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 12:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 01:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 02:01 pm (UTC)Also, yay for the return of the blancmange and saffron! Did you remember the right kind of gelatine this time?
I don't think I'm going to ask about the ants climbing a tree, just in case it involves ants climbing a tree...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 02:45 pm (UTC)Well, powdered rather than leaf (I will keep looking at the prices; leaf costs about four times as much per jellied pint. Do you get four times as good a gel? I don't know, but am inclined to doubt it...). But yup, no nasty vege-gel for me.
Hah! I knew someone wouldn't. Be easy: it's actually beanthread noodles, in a beef mince sauce. You lift the noodles high with your chopsticks, and see all the little flecks of meat clinging to it, and think, "Ah! Ants! Climbing a tree!"
'Course you do, who wouldn't?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-06 07:01 pm (UTC)(it all sounds wonderful--i hope everyone enjoyed it.)