On Wednesday, January 9, I went to Pro’s Ranch Market in the
morning to buy milk and yogurt and found Mexican squash, pineapples, bosc pears, sweet lemons on sale and bought them
plus several more Mexican limes and several red onions.
In the afternoon it was a reasonably warm 51˚, so I rode ten
miles and then heated a pita bread over the open gas flame to puff it up and then
cut it in half and filled each half with PPI tzatziki from Christmas and slices
of Roma tomato and then went to meditate as usual.
We wanted to watch the PBS Nova show titled “Neanderthals
Decoded” that was shown at 8:00 p.m. When I arrived home from meditation a just
before 8:00 p.m., since we had each eaten late snacks, we decided to heat up
the lovely PPI fish dish from Sunday evening, January 6 for a quick dinner. We drank some of the Camino Real Muscat with
it and decided that the Muscat was really sweet, but drinkable. I probably would consider it more of a
dessert wine.
On Thursday I decided to make another miso soup with a
closer approximation to that that I had read yesterday in my Japanese cookbook. So I made the instant dashi soup in a pot of
water and stirred red miso into a cup of the stock as the recipe had instructed. Apparently if you do not emulsify the miso in
stock off the heat the miso will clot and not make those lovely miso clouds. I then added another bundle of bean thread noodles
and two bundles of egg noodles, plus ham and BBQ pork and two peeled and sliced
shallots and ½ of a baby bok choy as a substitute for the trefoil and a small
amount of seche and wakame seaweed to give it that Japanese restaurant look and
taste. I ate three bowls with fresh lime
juice, hoisin and shirachi and fresh cilantro.
I like to eat soup before riding in the winter because it seems to heat
up the core temperature and hydrate my body. In the afternoon the temp was 46˚, so I rode
ten miles again at 4:30.
Suzette and Willy were home when I arrived at 5:30 p.m., so
I brought in the lovely Chinese eggplants and Chinese mustard greens we had
bought at Ta Lin on Sunday.
Suzette wanted to make the Eggplant and Garlic Sauce recipe
(page 169) in the new Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Cookbook she had
bought me for Christmas last year. The
author, Eileen Yin Fei Lo, cooks with a style that adds fragrance to the food
by adding small amounts of rice cooking wine to many recipes, rather than
overpowering them with flavorings.
Eggplant with Garlic Sauce.
You first make the Sauce (This is the recipe from the book
but we doubled this recipe because we had two pounds of eggplant and some other
ingredients we were adding to the dish.)
1 Tbsp. double dark soy sauce
2 tsp. Oyster Sauce
1 tsp. white rice wine vinegar
½ tsp. Shaoxing wine
½ tsp. pepper flakes from hot oil (we reduce this to avoid
making the dish too spicy)
½ tsp. of cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp. of chicken stock
Then I sliced the three foot long Chinese Eggplants into
three inch by ½ inch strips (about two pounds) and Suzette sautéed them until
tender in heated peanut oil. While
Suzette was stir frying the eggplant strips (the recipe calls for deep frying
the eggplant strips in 4 cups of peanut oil, but we never use that much oil) I
sliced two large white mushrooms and cubed 1 pound of BBQ pork and minced 1 1/2
Tbsp. of garlic and 1 Tbsp. of fresh ginger root (the recipe calls for only 2
tsp. of minced garlic).
After Suzette had cooked the eggplant, she stir fried the garlic
and then the ginger and then the mushrooms in more oil and then added the BBQ pork,
while I went to the basement to fetch the PPI rice and two beers.
When she returned the eggplants to the wok and stir fried it
with the vegetable and meat mixture for a minute and then made a well in the
middle of the ingredients and added the sauce and cooked the eggplant mixture
for a minute or two while I heated the rice and some of the PPI string beans
Susan Palmer had made last Friday evening’s Cotton Bowl BBQ Pork dinner.
When everything was heated, we scooped rice and then the
eggplant mixture and string beans onto our plates and ate them with a beer. The reduction of the red pepper and the increase
in ingredients dispelled the chili flavor completely. Next time I might try a little closer to the
actual recipe amount of chili flakes to see how the dish can taste when
properly made, although zippy picante is not one of my favored flavors.
Bon Appètit
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