Company

Forget miracle ingredients.  Lose the fancy techniques.  Heck, toss out the extra-special gadgets.  I’ve realized that the best way to make any meal taste better is to add great company.  The best dinner guests, whether they be family, friends, or complete strangers, turn a mediocre meal into an enjoyable event and elevate a great meal to the sublime. 

Ever since I moved out on my own and started eating alone, I’ve had many opportunities to encounter this phenomenon.  In the first few months, I was simply amazed at the novelty of cooking for myself.  Like a very young child, practically anything I experienced was an astounding discovery.  “Look, Ma, I can make rice without a rice cooker!  Look, Pa, I can cut my own fruit!”  (Yes, I’ve reached the age of majority in every state and province, and my daddy still cuts and peels fruit for me.)  Lately, however, cooking and eating alone has become a tiresome chore as the gloss of independence has worn off of the list of things I simply must do every day.  I still make things like Caribbean-inspired pork roast, lemon-coconut cupcakes, and homemade honey garlic vinaigrette for everyday dinners, but food just doesn’t taste quite as good as when I first started cooking in earnest.  My problems are twofold: first, my culinary standards have gone up, as you may already know,and second, it’s just getting lonely to eat by myself.

Part of the essential experience of eating is the social aspect of sharing a meal.  Food isn’t, or shouldn’t be, merely sustenance for the body, but should also be a way of nourishing the soul.  If eating were only about taking the right combination of nutrients to ensure physical health, one would only need to shove food down one’s gullet without regard for taste, presentation, aroma, or enjoyment.  In fact, when I first broached my idea for “a future without food” to my friend Talia, she reminded me of the whole social culture of food that is integral to the act of eating.  I hypothesized that the changing forms of entertainment and sensory stimulation could serve as a replacement for the sensual pleasure derived from eating – basically a virtual world hypothesis – while nutritional science would eventually find the optimal balance of nutrients needed to maximize physical well-being. 

There are two glaring fallacies inherent in this hypothesis: first, that if mere intellectual stimulation would do away with the rich food cultures all around the world, it would have done so already.  This part of the argument is basically the same as the arguments to any other new technology; after all, Plato argued that writing enfeebles the mind, and the telephone was feared as a destructor of face-to-face communication.  Second, as Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food In Defense of Food makes clear, nutritional science is a frustrating discipline because the reductionist methods that are used in science (that is, isolating the variable that controls change and attempting to account for all others) run counter to the actual practice of eating, in which multiple factors come into play, from the combination of certain foods to eating habits to cooking methods.

Most importantly, the pleasure of cooking and eating with other people simply cannot be lost or replaced by other simulacra.  Sharing food with loved ones and new friends is an irreplaceable, enjoyable experience.  There really is nothing better than company; in the words of Steven Sondheim, “And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? / That’s what it’s really about, / Really about!”

Happy New Year!

Today, as I write this, is the first day of the new year, which makes it a perfect time for [re-]making all the resolutions that most people pretended to make three weeks ago, but have now had the benefit of twenty-six days (or more) to perfect and refine.  Of course, there’s nothing like a catalytic event to spur one on to the formation of excellent resolutions, such as two consecutive nights of Chinese (or, more correctly, “lunar”) New Year’s feasting.  As you can probably guess by now, my new year’s resolution is to cook more Chinese food.

If all the Chinese food I cooked were like yesterday’s meal, I’d be happy for many, many moons.  My mum and I spent most of the afternoon cooking, partly because the chicken stew she made took about four hours to braise, and partly because I spent a couple of hours wrapping dozens of wun tun.  Luckily, my dad helped by doing most of the shopping, so we cooks didn’t have to brave the hordes of shoppers all trying to purchase the same symbolic ingredients.  For example, we had fish, because the Chinese word is phonetically similar to the word for abundance, noodles, whose length symbolizes long life, and all manner of yellowish globular things, which look like golden coins.  All told, we had the requisite eight dishes, since eight is indicative of prosperity in Chinese numerology, which is especially important in this time of economic doom and gloom.

I wish I could give you the recipe for the wun tun that my mum and I made yesterday, but unfortunately, one of the essential components would have to be my mum’s sense of smell, and I’m not sharing my mum.  As I may have mentioned before, my mum is a “add stuff ’til it smells right” kind of cook, whereas I’m relatively more conservative and I tend to rely on quantifiable directions.  Your best bet is to find yourself a knowledgeable Chinese cook, preferably someone to whom you are, or can imagine yourself to be, related, and plunk down next to her or him as s/he cooks.  (If you prefer paper friends, cozy up to Martin Yan, of The Joy of Wokking fame.)  If you are making wun tun, be prepared to spend some time wrapping innumerable dumplings, or better yet, as my oh-so-clever friend Joaninha did, grab a bunch of friends and spend a fun afternoon together. 

All the best to you and yours in the hardworking Year of the Ox!

Wun Tun (Chinese Dumplings)

I know I just said I couldn’t give a recipe, but I thought you might be interested in the gist of it, just for interest’s sake.  Hopefully I remembered everything!

What you’ll need (more or less):
Wun tun wrappers
Ground pork (about 2 lbs)
Cornstarch (about 2 tsp)
Salt (scant tsp)
Sugar (1 – 1 1/2 tsp)
Light soy sauce
Oyster sauce
Sesame oil (scant tsp or two; optional)
Green onion, chopped very, very finely
Bok choy, a small handful of leaves only, squeezed as dry as you can and chopped very, very finely
Broth or stock, gently boiled with more green onions and a few pieces of peeled ginger.

What you do (more or less)

• Chop the ground pork some more to get it as fine as you can, then put it in a large bowl.  Sprinkle in the cornstarch, salt, sugar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil.  Mix well.
• Chop the green onions and bok choy as fine as you can, then add it to the meat mixture and mix well.
• Put a very small lump of meat in the centre of each wun tun wrapper.  (Don’t try to put too much meat in, as I always do, because the wrapper will just burst and you’ll get all these annoying pieces of meatless wrapper in your soup.)  Dip your finger in water and moisten the edge of the wrapper, along one side.  Fold the wrapper in half, pressing tightly to seal.  Do a neat little twist or crimp on the edges, just for fun.
• Place the wun tun on a baking sheet (or something similar), making sure the wun tun aren’t touching each other.  When the baking sheet is full, put it in the freezer for awhile until hard.  (You don’t want the wun tun touching because you want them to freeze individually.)  When they’re hard, you can store them in a plastic bag, and they won’t all stick together.
• When you’re ready to eat your wun tun, boil a pot of water (so the soup won’t get all starchy) and heat your stock/broth with ginger pieces and green onion pieces.  Gently slip the wun tun in the boiling water and boil until the water returns to a boil, the wun tun float, and then a few minutes longer.
• When the wun tun are done, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon, then pop them in your broth.  Enjoy!

Vermilion Splendour

“Look at me!  I’m Sweeney Todd!”  I crowed to my friends.  With one hand ghastly reddened, a knife in the other, and a maniacal grimace on my lips, I must have demonstrated a convincing approximation of the demon barber of Fleet Street.  Clearly, my acquaintances are deficient in their knowledge of contemporary musicals, for they failed to appreciate my homage to Steven Sondheim.  Then again, perhaps they just sighed in exasperation and waited for me to continue chopping up the rest of the beets.

I never used to like beets.  That is, until this year, I basically refused to try them.  My mum and my aunt raved about them for years, but I never understood what all the fuss was about.  This summer, however, when I was in the Okanagan, my aunt and uncle bought an armful of beets from the local farmers’ market.  Only years of instruction in good manners prevented me from starting a family feud by eating the entire pot of boiled beets.  I started to think these little magenta nuggets might be more precious than carbuncles.

And then – oh, and then – my friends took me out for lunch for my birthday.  A little spying on the other diners’ plates influenced me to try the beetroot salad.  That bit of espionage led to a beautifully plated assortment of beets, both the familiar garnet-coloured variety and the less common golden beet, along with a round of “local” goat cheese and finely crushed hazelnuts.  Delightful!  The entire dish was astoundingly delicious.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there.  Inspired, perhaps, by my Iron Chef party, I was graciously invited to another Iron Chef party, hosted by the brother of one of my guests.  My team was assigned the appetizer course, so I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to get my hands on some more beets.  For my first time cooking beets (actually, I didn’t cook them, my partner did), it worked out wonderfully!  We made a beet salad with goat feta cheese, dill, carmelized shallots, and toasted almonds.  Even without the dressing, which we just plain forgot, it was simply delicious.  (Come to think of it, we also forgot to salt and pepper it.) 

Continuing the red theme, I made a yummy dinner tonight.  Try it yourself!
Note: this is one of those no-measure recipes.  You’ll need to adjust it based on what you have and how many people you’re planning to serve.

Pasta with Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce

You’ll need:

• Pasta
• Sundried tomatoes, packed in oil
• Garlic
• Chicken (boneless and skinless, or leftovers)
• Whipping cream (or half-and-half, but why do anything by halves?)
• Dry white wine, or dry vermouth
• Fresh basil or cilantro
• Parmesan cheese

What to do:

1. Start boiling a pot of water to cook the pasta.  While the pasta is boiling, you’ll make the sauce.
2. If the tomatoes aren’t already sliced, slice them into julienne or dice them.  Slice or dice the chicken, according to your preference.  Mince a few cloves of garlic.
3. Heat a saucepan and spoon in some of the oil in which the sundried tomatoes are packed, about a tablespoon or so.  Saute the chicken in the oil.  Add the garlic and saute for half a minute or so.
4. When the chicken just turns white (or when it’s hot, if you’re using leftovers), add about 1/4 cup cream, 1/4 cup dry white wine, and about 1/4 cup of sundried tomatoes.  (These proportions make enough for two people.)  Cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens. 
5. Your pasta should be done by now.  Drain the pasta and put it into the saucepan, then toss to coat the pasta with the sauce. 
6. Sprinkle some fresh herbs and some freshly grated Parmesan overtop.  Enjoy!

New year, new foods

 Hello everyone,

I’ve been very busy celebrating over the last week (or two, to be exact), which in my vocabulary translates into lots of cooking, cleaning, preparing, and hosting.  Not only has New Year’s Eve come and gone, so has my birthday, and my brother’s birthday is rapidly approaching.  With all the hustle and bustle, I’m afraid that I haven’t much energy to write words worth reading, much less eating.  In lieu of words, I present photographs of the party foods I’ve made in the last week.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, my word count for this post will greatly exceed the sum total of my previous posts!

 

New Year’s Eve

Cucumber and shrimp "canapes"

These photogenic appetizers are inspired by the shrimp and dill salad cucumber bites from the Canadian Living magazine.  I cut the cucumbers on the diagonal to make the slices easier to eat, so you don’t have to open your mouth like a hippopotamus in order to get both the cucumber and the dill into your mouth.

Devilled eggs

This is almost the easiest recipe ever.  Piping the fillings into pretty little rosettes is a breeze for me, but figuring out how long it takes to hard boil eggs is beyond me.  Oh well, to each her strengths!

Fruit platter

I cut up a whole pineapple!  The cutting process was surprisingly easy and injury-free.

 

Tea Party

Besides the New Year’s Eve shindig, I also hosted a tea party.  Although I forgot to take photos of the dozen types of teas that were offered, my lovely guests took photos of the food.  Photo credits are due to S.B., N.C., and C.K. 

Tea party

This is the only photo that shows the Earl Grey cookies (recipe at bottom of post) and some of my grandmother’s collection of china teacups.  The Earl Grey cookies are the spotted ones at the top left corner, and the cookies with the dark centres are the thumbprint cookies I talked about in my last post.

Lemon shortbread tarts

I put my Christmas gift of edible blossoms to good use!  Lemon is one of my favourite flavours.  On a sidenote, a now-defunct company in Victoria, BC, Canada, called Hilltop Chocolates, used to make dark chocolate treats with a divine lemon-cream filling.  Two of my favourite flavours, in one chocolatey bite!  Luckily, I also like butter, which comprises a good half of the matter used to make the shortbread tarts. 
P.S. Good job with the macro focus and spot metering, NC and SB!

Mini artichoke-and-shallot quiches

I kind of made up the quiche recipe as I went along, but this is more or less what I did:

Artichoke and Shallot Quiche
 
Buy:

• frozen tart shells – I used Tenderflake brand, which comes in packages of 18
• marinated artichoke hearts - they’re packed in oil and seasonings, usually in a small jar
• shallots – you only need 2 or 3
• eggs
• milk
• Dijon mustard

 To make:

• Let the tart shells warm up a little bit, then place them on a baking sheet
• Beat 2 eggs with 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard, plus a bit of salt and pepper (Tip: if you beat them in a measuring cup, you can pour it into the shells easier, and you wash one less bowl!)
• Chop the artichokes and shallots, then sprinkle a little bit in each tart shell
• Pour the egg mixture over the artichokes to fill the tart shells
• Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes

 
Earl Grey Tea Cookies

The recipe I used is available at http://www.eatmedelicious.com/2007/07/earl-grey-tea-shortbread.html. 
Note: I didn’t use parchment paper to line the baking sheet, so the bottoms browned quickly.  I baked them for 5 minutes, then flipped them over and baked for another 5 minutes.