Wantons, Actually.
I sacrificed two nights of sleep for my very first dinner party, that is, my very first attempt to cook a full meal for loved ones here in L.A. One night worried stiff that it would be a disaster and everyone would be left starving or poisoned, another night ecstatic over its success. Samuel-ah, eggplants missed you so much!
I added fried wantons as the staple dish last minute, and spent 4 hours making all fifty of them in the kitchen. Blasting Dizzee Rascal's newest album on my ipod and with both the fan and air-conditioning blowing at me, I had a screwed up 'Eat Drink Man Woman' moment remembering my beloved mother making these dumpling dishes for us ever so often. How she manages to always make everything herself including even the dumpling wrappers beats me; the filling itself took me nearly two hours to prepare. But these are the magical ingredients: tofu, mushrooms, carrots, bak choy, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and lots of garlic... and voila! After I test-drove the first four wantons -- the trick is not to overfry them and expose the fillings -- I could have almost cried. Yes, the myth that Shao cannot make anything more elaborate than eggs or oatmeals could be said to be challenged. My party was becoming a reality!
And so were my pimples; human skin have to give way to perfectly golden wanton ones. From the arrival of the first guests to the last, I was more or less stuck in the kitchen making the last preparations: the spicy eggplants, spicy tofu and of course, the wantons themselves. The kitchen is of course, always ironically the place of starvation for the cook. The happier I was as the night went by looking at my fed guests, the hungrier I became. Luckily I am as fast an eater as I am with my wine glasses.
Would I do this again? Undoubtedly yes! Hopefully the next time with more finesse and less pimples. The party accomplished what I really set out to do: to stuff friends with "tasties" in lieu of everything they have done for me in making L.A. my second home, and become the Auntie-ah I've always wanted to be, constantly telling her guests to "eat more, eat more!"
I added fried wantons as the staple dish last minute, and spent 4 hours making all fifty of them in the kitchen. Blasting Dizzee Rascal's newest album on my ipod and with both the fan and air-conditioning blowing at me, I had a screwed up 'Eat Drink Man Woman' moment remembering my beloved mother making these dumpling dishes for us ever so often. How she manages to always make everything herself including even the dumpling wrappers beats me; the filling itself took me nearly two hours to prepare. But these are the magical ingredients: tofu, mushrooms, carrots, bak choy, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and lots of garlic... and voila! After I test-drove the first four wantons -- the trick is not to overfry them and expose the fillings -- I could have almost cried. Yes, the myth that Shao cannot make anything more elaborate than eggs or oatmeals could be said to be challenged. My party was becoming a reality!
And so were my pimples; human skin have to give way to perfectly golden wanton ones. From the arrival of the first guests to the last, I was more or less stuck in the kitchen making the last preparations: the spicy eggplants, spicy tofu and of course, the wantons themselves. The kitchen is of course, always ironically the place of starvation for the cook. The happier I was as the night went by looking at my fed guests, the hungrier I became. Luckily I am as fast an eater as I am with my wine glasses.
Would I do this again? Undoubtedly yes! Hopefully the next time with more finesse and less pimples. The party accomplished what I really set out to do: to stuff friends with "tasties" in lieu of everything they have done for me in making L.A. my second home, and become the Auntie-ah I've always wanted to be, constantly telling her guests to "eat more, eat more!"
posted by msl at 9:44 PM
2 Comments:
i am every color of the rainbow with jealousy (envy? no--to uphold an impossible distinction). also, drooling.
Want(on) you! when you coming back already?? Enough is enough, French is so yesterday, Singlish conversations now!! Drooling over the food or me? (to uphold an impossibly narcissistic distinction).
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