Re: [gardeners] Couscous or tagine?
Margaret Lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sat, 10 Feb 2001 09:25:25 -0700
>Last night was a problem. Jim's cousin Dick was coming for
>dinner, and I always fix a special meal for him because he
>so much appreciates it. Having decided on Suki Yaki, I brought
>home all those wonderful ingredients ahead of time, and thought
>that this would be a breeze... Hours ahead of his 4:00pm arrival,
>I started washing and cutting up all the greens, and I actually
>filled two huge turkey platters with giant heaps of colorful foods
>as I had seen my Japanese assistant do 10 years ago... There
>were bok choy, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, tofu, scallions,
>giant sweet white onions, red onions, chrysanthemum leaves,
>and lots of the fresh mushrooms which look like golf tees on
>elongated stems.. Next to marinate the very thin sliced beef:
>oh yeah, dummy, I forgot to thaw it! I even forgot that I could have
>used the microwave to encourage the thawing.... so there I was,
>cautiously peeling away shreds of lovely beef from a 3-lb mountain.
>I pulled out my Korean cookbook and made up the yummy marinade,
>and coaxed the beef into it.
>
>Set the table, placed all those platters on top, added the table-top
>cooker on an extension chord, and then put out the assorted Greek
>olives, the Korean 'oy kimchi' ( new cukes stuffed with very hot
>shredded peppers), Thai pickled onions, and the Korean daikon
>(white radish) salad which we love. Prepared the cooking sauce of
>half soy and half aji mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine). Got the
>chunk of beef fat out of the freezer for greasing the pan. Put out the
>Greek beer. And I was so overwhelmed by the amount of work
>involved here that I helped myself to a daiqueri which I had also
>prepared for the occasion.
>
>It wasn't until I sat down to do the table-side cooking that I realized
>what I had done... I had prepared the beef for a Korean Bul-gogi . . . .
>not a Japanese suki yaki...! Ye gods, Penny, time for another
>daiqueri, to ease the trauma, of course. I never said a word about
>it. And niether Jimmie nor Cousin Dick knew the difference.
Penny, how could you! I've never ever done anything like that. Unless you
count the Thanksgiving when, after dinner a friend helping put leftovers in
the frig said "hey, what's this bowl of sweet potatoes?" or the time I
prepared pastitsio with half of the recipe from the right-hand page and the
other half from the left-hand page.
>To end the meal I had a Trader Joe's ready-to-bake apple strudel
>in the oven as we ate, so we miraculously found enough room to
>eat it along with some vanilla ice cream and coffee. Only my hubby
>needed a 1:00am snack of 2 bowls of cereal and milk.
I'll bet he's a skinny dude, too. Criminey.
>And I have no intention of fixing another suki yaki for the rest of
>my life. Another daiqueri ? -- well, that's a horse of another color...
>
>Penny, NY -- oh dear, I never remembered to include the noodles .....
Bottoms up, me dear. Margaret L