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I'm Not A Foodie, I Just Play One On TV
Jan. 2nd, 2010 12:04 amMy dad and I have a long and noble tradition of vastly overestimating the amount of food we are capable of eating in one day, meaning that we plan a lot of fantastically complicated meals that never actually exist in reality. Yesterday was no exception: we realized partway through we had way more dishes planned than we were going to eat, so we decided to split it into two days worth of meals. And even doing that we still ended up nixing a few.
Yesterday we started with Southeast Asian-style shumai with a chicken/lemongrass/kaffir lime fillings, although I think the wrappers we used were closer to har gow wrappers. It was the first time I've ever made my own wrappers - we actually started out with the wrong kind of flour and had to make an emergency run to the Chinese grocery, but that worked out for the best. Even though the instructions on the package were kind of confusing because the translation was so awful, it turned out to be pretty easy, and worth doing again. And with a ginger-soy dip, the dumplings were delicious.
There is an unofficial rule that Dim Sum Day requires a squid dish of some kind, since my dad and I both love squid. He keeps trying to talk me into doing octopus instead, but I maintain that octopus is gross. Disappointingly, even though we bought whole squid (and I am always the one who has to clean them, yay squid guts), we got hardly any tentacles. >:( But the spicy fried squid is my favorite squid recipe ever, just barely edging out salt-and-pepper squid by virtue of being covered in panko and deep-fried. Mmmm.
We make chile beef wontons every year. They will never stop being incredibly delicious, and we've finally mastered them to the point that they both look like wontons and don't squirt you with scalding oil when you bite into them. They taste like ginger and chile and happiness, and we ate approximately a million of them.
Today we went so far out on a limb as to actually eat vegetables - a very nice stir-fried bean sprout and peanut salad. Light and crisp and refreshing after yesterday's deep-fried everything (okay, the shumai were steamed. but 2 out of 3 is a lot of hot oil), and I really like bean sprouts, who knew. We had that with seaweed-steamed shrimp. This is apparently a concoction of my dad's, but it's really simple - you just take a bunch of dried seaweed and soak it until it is all reconstituted again, then put it in the steamer, put some shrimp on top, and steam it until the shrimp are done. It gives the shrimp a rich, mild seaweed-y flavor which is surprisingly good. The Vietnamese style dipping sauce we had it with was pretty good, although next time we make it we will probably use less fish sauce.
Somehow, over the years pork steamed buns have become my specialty. I don't really know how that happened. This is actually where the going back to the Chinese grocery yesterday turned out to be a good thing - we had planned to make them originally, but when my dad went to buy all our ingredients, they were out of barbecued pork. But when we went yesterday, they had it, so they went back on the menu. We had a minor problem with the dough, in that it didn't really rise properly - I suspect the yeast was of questionable age, but it may have been the special bun flour we used - but aside from being a little dense and smaller than expected, they still tasted fine, and the filling was perfect and wonderful. These are such a comfort food. :)
We also made some orange icing so we could use up the last batch of cookies we had left from our Christmas Baking Extravaganza, and so I could use up some of the chocolate bar my mom gave me that is actually too dark to eat straight (I know, I know, but this chocolate is as dark as Dick Cheney's soul), which I thought was a nice way to end the evening even if the icing didn't quite go with the cookies we had. Next time, we are making it for cupcakes instead.
I am pretty sure that I have done more cooking/baking in the last three weeks than I have in the last six months. And I still have to make biscuits tomorrow.
Yesterday we started with Southeast Asian-style shumai with a chicken/lemongrass/kaffir lime fillings, although I think the wrappers we used were closer to har gow wrappers. It was the first time I've ever made my own wrappers - we actually started out with the wrong kind of flour and had to make an emergency run to the Chinese grocery, but that worked out for the best. Even though the instructions on the package were kind of confusing because the translation was so awful, it turned out to be pretty easy, and worth doing again. And with a ginger-soy dip, the dumplings were delicious.
There is an unofficial rule that Dim Sum Day requires a squid dish of some kind, since my dad and I both love squid. He keeps trying to talk me into doing octopus instead, but I maintain that octopus is gross. Disappointingly, even though we bought whole squid (and I am always the one who has to clean them, yay squid guts), we got hardly any tentacles. >:( But the spicy fried squid is my favorite squid recipe ever, just barely edging out salt-and-pepper squid by virtue of being covered in panko and deep-fried. Mmmm.
We make chile beef wontons every year. They will never stop being incredibly delicious, and we've finally mastered them to the point that they both look like wontons and don't squirt you with scalding oil when you bite into them. They taste like ginger and chile and happiness, and we ate approximately a million of them.
Today we went so far out on a limb as to actually eat vegetables - a very nice stir-fried bean sprout and peanut salad. Light and crisp and refreshing after yesterday's deep-fried everything (okay, the shumai were steamed. but 2 out of 3 is a lot of hot oil), and I really like bean sprouts, who knew. We had that with seaweed-steamed shrimp. This is apparently a concoction of my dad's, but it's really simple - you just take a bunch of dried seaweed and soak it until it is all reconstituted again, then put it in the steamer, put some shrimp on top, and steam it until the shrimp are done. It gives the shrimp a rich, mild seaweed-y flavor which is surprisingly good. The Vietnamese style dipping sauce we had it with was pretty good, although next time we make it we will probably use less fish sauce.
Somehow, over the years pork steamed buns have become my specialty. I don't really know how that happened. This is actually where the going back to the Chinese grocery yesterday turned out to be a good thing - we had planned to make them originally, but when my dad went to buy all our ingredients, they were out of barbecued pork. But when we went yesterday, they had it, so they went back on the menu. We had a minor problem with the dough, in that it didn't really rise properly - I suspect the yeast was of questionable age, but it may have been the special bun flour we used - but aside from being a little dense and smaller than expected, they still tasted fine, and the filling was perfect and wonderful. These are such a comfort food. :)
We also made some orange icing so we could use up the last batch of cookies we had left from our Christmas Baking Extravaganza, and so I could use up some of the chocolate bar my mom gave me that is actually too dark to eat straight (I know, I know, but this chocolate is as dark as Dick Cheney's soul), which I thought was a nice way to end the evening even if the icing didn't quite go with the cookies we had. Next time, we are making it for cupcakes instead.
I am pretty sure that I have done more cooking/baking in the last three weeks than I have in the last six months. And I still have to make biscuits tomorrow.