Liveblogging - the last post

[desperance]

They're gone.

All went well, seemingly. Candy didn't like the silver fish - but hey, if one guest is prepared to admit to not liking one dish out of more or less a dozen, that's okay. Isn't it? *is worried about silver fish*

The cats liked it...

The cats got to eat quite a lot. And they both got to snatch chicken-bones and then growl when nasty people tried to take 'em away. I've never known Mac growl before. Baz does it on a daily basis - largely at Mac, you understand - but apparently bone-possessiveness will drive any cat to growling.

I think everything worked, pretty much, more or less. It'll be better next time. But you knew that.

I don't think I have quite as many leftovers as one might have imagined. Yay for guests who actually eat... Tho' there are all the incipient courses I never got around to cooking. More Chinese tomorrow, I fancy...

Comments

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

What is your recipe for silver fish?

[jemck.livejournal.com]

You may take cat-with-bone growling and amplify/intensify by a factor of 10 to get an idea of Buzz's reaction when Steve tried to take a dead mouse off him recently.

Steve had to give up otherwise they would have each ended up with half a mouse. So Buzz got unceremoniously dumped out of the door with his prize intact.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

That'll be why you call him Buzz, yay? As in buzz-saw?

I'm not surprised; he is a big burly bruiser of a boy, and "What I have, I hold" makes a fine family motto for the whole tribe. (I actually seemed to spend half the night taking bones off cats, as I was busy in the kitchen and my guests were ... uncooperative ... in the matter of preventing cats from getting hold of bones in the first place. I distinctly heard whoops and cheers, before I was called through one more time to risk life and limb but mostly limb.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

In Chinese, silver fish is a specific teeny-tiny little riverfish (I think). Can't get those, so I use whitebait (teeny-tiny little seafish, which are generally the very young of the herring). Basically I just boil them for a minute - literally - and let them cool, then dress them in soy, sesame oil, chilli and garlic. Today I am being deeply self-indulgent, and deep-frying the leftovers in little batches to make a snack to munch on as I type. I should probably dip 'em in flour before I fry for the perfect crunch, but, y'know. It's just a snack...

Also, the boys are getting a few. Little fishes: boys like little fishes. Who knew...?

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Do you cook and eat them whole, heads and all? (Mmmm, deep-fried fish sounds so good)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely whole: heads and guts and everything. They are tiny: less than two inches long, and slender as a very slender thing; my little finger would be a monstrous giant to these cuties, and I have small and slender hands. (Small and slender and greasy hands just now: I really should not eat fried foods at the keyboard. And yet I do. How is this...?) Whitebait are still at that stage where the bones and fins just add attractive internal crunch.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Is there not an American equivalent to the whitebait? Here they are a standard starter, coated in seasoned flour and deep-fried, served with lemon.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Not really. Americans tend to be very squeamish about eating guts and bones.

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

That was an excellent, excellent dinner. Thank you so very much. I loved it all - with the possible exception of the cucumber (although even that improved a great deal when I got a bit smothered in chili oil and I couldn't actually taste the cucumber. And as for the cats and bones, it wasn't that we were actively encouraging them, it was just that they were so damned sneaky about getting them (we had set them a long way from the edge of the table, but Mac especially was very determined and extremely looooong. And I, of course, was utterly trapped in the corner and thus unable to wrench bones from the jaws of growling felines.

My fave (and Candy's) was, of course your pork dish, although I did rather like the ants,if only for the extreme silliness and awkwardness of eating.

Completely fucked my diet for this week, of course (although I wasn't really hungry today until about 2.00 in the afternoon, after a heavy spell of hitting rocks and shoveling a tonne - literally - of sand...)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

OK, if silver fish = whitebait = friture de Loire, then I don't not like it, but a little goes a long way. Also, it makes me think of silverfish, which wreak havoc in your library and is therefore a Bad Thing.

We had to have a Chinese takeaway tonight, on account of your writing being so appallingly persuasive.

[glass-mountain.livejournal.com]

Commenting rather belatedly...this did sound wonderful. And I enjoyed reading your posts. I hope novel_in_90 didn't tease too much...for this too was a creative enterprise.