use real butter

My parents are like children on Christmas morning whenever they send me something in the mail. They have called for the past three days to check and see if I received their package - a ceramic knife. It’s a very nice knife and I’m familiar with how wonderful these things are. So when it arrived today, I had to - per my mother’s specific instructions - cut a tomato with it. I felt like a Ginzu advertisement, but I went ahead and took photos as evidence for them. It cuts beautifully - as nice as my Henckels.

feels like a lightweight, but it performs like a heavyweight

it slices, it dices!

I go for long stints without cooking any Chinese food. Part of that is because I get on these experimental kicks where I see someone post about a great bbq recipe and I think to myself, “I need to learn how to bbq…” or just that I don’t feel like making the extra trip to the Asian grocer in town. The owner who is always shouting at me actually noticed that I hadn’t been in for a while when I went by on Wednesday. “Wheyhafyoubin?! Lontimenoseeyouokay?” I was so touched.

In an effort to use up random ingredients I had lying about the refrigerator, I found two packets of pickled mustard greens that my mom told me to buy when we were last in San Jose together.

i like being able to see what is in the packaging

They keep forever because they’re pickled and vacuum sealed, but… what to do with it? My mom and grandma do this all the time, “Here - buy these, they’re good for cooking with.” When I ask what exactly I’m supposed to do with said ingredient I get the answer in quickly rattled Chinese in a tone like, “Don’t you know anything?!?”

they are larger than i had thought

I think there are many ways to use this vegetable, but what sounded good in my head was to stir fry chopped mustard green with strips of bamboo shoots and pork in soy sauce, sesame oil, and a little corn starch. I boiled up some Chinese noodles in chicken broth and served the mustard green on top.

the stuff of a good stir-fry

a nice noodle soup for a cool mountain evening

Stir-fried Pork and Pickled Mustard Green

2 packages of pickled mustard green, squeezed and julienned
1/2 lb pork (dark meat), julienned
1-2 cups bamboo shoots, julienned
2 stalks green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, rough chopped
2 tbsp sesame oil
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp corn starch
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix the pork, sesame oil, soy sauce, and cornstarch in a bowl. Heat oil in a large frying pan on high heat. Add garlic and green onions when oil is hot. Stir around until garlic is fragrant, then add pork and sauté until meat is cooked. Add bamboo shoots and mustard green and sauté for another couple of minutes on high heat. Serve with rice or over noodles.

Tonight, I made some basic Chinese-style steamed fish. But I cheated. In fact, I never steam the fish, but nuke it in the microwave because it’s so much easier, faster, and cleaner.

place filets on a microwave safe plate and top with ginger and green onions

That said, I know if I bought fresh whole fish, I would be compelled to steam it because the flake is rendered far more tender that way. It’s a quick meal if you happen to have some defrosted filets available like cod, orange roughy, and other things that I think are probably on the Monterey Aquariuim Don’t Eat list. I’m trying to be better about that and carry the card around with me when I shop.

pouring hot oil

When I was little I used to scrape all of the green onions and ginger off the fish before eating it. Then in college I picked out the ginger and ate the rest. Now, I eat every scrap of ginger and green onion and I probably put too much on top - but I love that stuff.

light and refreshing anytime of year

a very pleasant combination of flavors

(Cheater) Chinese Steamed Fish

1 lb fish filets (white fish like flounder, cod, halibut, orange roughy)
2-3 stalks green onions, julienned
2 tbsp ginger, peeled and julienned
3 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp vegetable oil (something without flavor)

Place filets in single layer on a microwave safe dish. Spread ginger and green onions over the fish. Nuke on high for 2-3 minutes until fish is cooked. Sprinkle soy sauce evenly over the fish. Heat the oil in a small saucepan until it is HOT (i.e. if you dropped a piece of onion in, it would sizzle). Pour the oil over the fish (I think the idea is to sizzle all of the onions and ginger). Serve.

Mr. Jeremy just finished system administration on my computer. I now have a terabyte of disk space! Well, it’s actually half a terabyte since I have a mirror for redundancy, but when that gets crowded it will be time for an external RAID or some such lovely. Big thanks to Jeremy - a man of many hidden talents. Such a gem, he is.

I stopped by the Cake Lady (her unofficial name). It’s this tiny run down looking shop in a very depressed strip mall. The store is crammed to the hilt full of cake and candy-making supplies. It smells like 1974. The owner is pushy and since customers usually come in one at a time, she hovers and won’t stop talking to let you think for a second. You can’t even browse without her demanding what you are looking for. On top of that, she told me that CSR doesn’t do chocolate molding right, that she never has to scrape the chocolate over her molds. Well - she also makes maybe a dozen or so at a time? CSR is teaching their students to make chocolates in production-mode… meaning hundreds at a time. I really want to support her business, but she makes me batty and also doesn’t have much in the way of pastry supplies. I did purchase some luster dust… beautiful raspberry and midnight blue colors. I wonder who would want to sample some pretty truffles?

I have two projects for this weekend: a chocolate 6-inch cake for Grandma Darling, and a lemon 9-inch for my aunt, Elena, and her family. It gets a little tricky because of transportation issues and the fact that New Mexico is hotter than hell right now. The chocolate cake will be chocolate chiffon cake layers with Grand Marnier soaking syrup and chocolate buttercream. The lemon cake will be vanilla chiffon layers with lemon soaking syrup, lemon curd, and lemon buttercream. I will also experiment with a new mold I bought. Let’s hope it doesn’t tank. I’m a slut for lemony anything. Nice excuse to get this:

limoncello: i buy more booze for pastries and cooking than anything else

A beef brisket is in the slow cooker now. Hoping it will be melt-in-your-mouth tender by morning. It smells pretty good right now!

I’ve been trying to encourage Jeremy to finish off the semifreddo and the chocolate dome so I can make some room for more homework in the freezer. I can’t send anything to Tom and Kellie for several days because Kellie’s dad is visiting and he’s diabetic and she said it’s best not to even let him see sweets during his stay because he lacks self-control. And if I send anything to Marcus, it has to serve at least 5 people because his parents are visiting for the month. This afternoon I acquired 24 petit four molds which I plan to use in the very near future before my pastry cream, buttercream, chocolate mousse, and ganache go south. Jeremy has expressed quite a fondness for the petits fours I packed in his lunch yesterday - and they didn’t have any chocolate!

the chocolate dome ages nicely

2 dozen cute and little petit four molds