I'll never forget those ghastly, ghostly jellyfish-looking gnocchi I was served at a dinner long ago, nor the twitching faces of all the guests pretending that this wasn't a horrible, horrible meal.
I'm getting ready for the deep-fried turkey on saturday. The dishes are reasonably straightforward. I am trying to figure out some clever way to to serve the balance of the crayfish I'd frozen up as leftover from the last party.
I took the day off, tested some recipes, and reminded myself the Host Rule #1 should never be violated.
I want to serve the crayfish as some sort of cold salad, but wanted to avoid some gross, glurpy mayonaise-based dish. Today I found a recipe for a dill-based vinagrette tossed with sliced mango, melon, snow peas, and julienned carrot.
First, I steamed the crayfish. They somehow cooked faster in the steamer than they do in the pot of boiling water. (well, I guess steaming water is hotter than boiling water, so that's the answer) Thus I overcooked the crayfish and left their meat tough.
Then the salad was way to heavy and chunky and dominated the tiny, tough crayfish. The vinagrette was lame, oil with a slight astringent taste of dill, and nothing else.
Blah. Maybe we'll be eating crayfish and hellman's after all.
Fact of the matter is.... ketchup+horsradish+shellfish tastes damn good, no matter how low-class it is. I've not been able to find a sufficiently strong horseradish here. Mostly it's served a a cream-based horseradish, already diluted with some mayo-like white sauce.
What else? Saw an off-hand reference to glazed pecans with sugar, garlic, hot sauce. It wasn't really a recipe, just a scribble. So I tried it and it was horrid. I should have put in much more sugar and far less butter. My sauce didn't generate a thick-enough glaze. More like an oily stain. And the heating seemed to denature the hot sauce flavor. When I redo this, I'll use molasses, brown sugar, and probably chili padi (those horrid little thai chilis) as they pack enough punch to outlast the temperature.
Finally finished up a recipe Ling started. It was sesame-encrusted fish fillets with a strong ginger and garlic soy-based sauce. The sauce was really good. I didn't cook the fillets very well. It's not something I do very often. After abusing a few fillets I got the hang of it. The oil needed to be hotter than I realized to pan-fry them, I needed to be more vigilant about turning them to make sure the sesame seeds don't char and become toxic bitter. Finally, to tell they're done, hold a knife into a thick part of the fillet for eight seconds, then hold the knife to your lip. If it feels like sipping hot tea, it's ready. However, it still requires that you flip the fillets, otherwise one side burns before the fillet cooks nicely.
Anyway, wasn't pleased with the execution of any of the recipes and didn't even like some of the recipes, so I am damn glad I had my experiments today and not saturday.
Posted by Nils Blutig at December 18, 2006 08:02 PM | TrackBack