Food food food
One week past Mid-Autumn, and mooncakes are selling at acceptable prices. On Saturday night, a few friends and I went hunting for mooncakes. In our case, ‘hunting’ resembled activities analogous to shooting at fish in a barrel- there was no risk, no effort, no life or death decisions. In short, our mooncake hunting was far unlike the hunting games that African lionesses (male lions are nothing more than useless, hairy sperm bags) and gazelles play.
The first shop we entered were selling mooncakes at half price. Implicitly figuring that microeconomics MUST be at work and thus other stores will be discounting at about 50%, we got our stuff there.
After much contemplation and conferring, we settled on four different variants (twin-yolk white lotus paste; red bean; quad-yolk lotus paste; golden emerald) and got a box of each.
***
On Sunday morning, I went to the market with the same group of friends. At the butcher’s, Mr. B saw lumps of pork leg roast on sale.
“Should we get one of those to share?”
“Do you know how to cook them?”
“No.”
The butcher knew- roast it in an oven at 180 deg. for 80 minutes with both the upper and lower elements turned on. At the end, ratchet up the heat on the upper elements to crackle the fatty skin. He also mentioned something about covering it as it would make a mess in the oven. We did not really catch the last part.
The pork leg roast appears to be a segment of de-boned pork leg, and tightly bound with cotton string into a tidy little bundle as to compress it, thus removing the unsightly void where the bone used to be.
Dinner consisted of attempting to roast that pork leg, but because we wrapped it in aluminium foil, it was more baked than roasted. Chillies, butter and lots of mushrooms were also added into foil wrap. A few potatoes were baked and then servedswimming in with generous amounts of molten butter. Another portion of potatoes were intended for mashing, but turned out slightly under-boiled, so they were simply diced into fragments and mixed with all sorts of seasoning. Again, including butter. Celery stir fried with oyster sauce and loads of garlic rounded off for the vegetable corner. Coffee wrapped it all up. We forgot to consume the herbal chicken soup which was made earlier in the day, so it turns out that chicken soup wrapped them all up.
Dinner was brilliant.
Personal
The first shop we entered were selling mooncakes at half price. Implicitly figuring that microeconomics MUST be at work and thus other stores will be discounting at about 50%, we got our stuff there.
After much contemplation and conferring, we settled on four different variants (twin-yolk white lotus paste; red bean; quad-yolk lotus paste; golden emerald) and got a box of each.
On Sunday morning, I went to the market with the same group of friends. At the butcher’s, Mr. B saw lumps of pork leg roast on sale.
“Should we get one of those to share?”
“Do you know how to cook them?”
“No.”
The butcher knew- roast it in an oven at 180 deg. for 80 minutes with both the upper and lower elements turned on. At the end, ratchet up the heat on the upper elements to crackle the fatty skin. He also mentioned something about covering it as it would make a mess in the oven. We did not really catch the last part.
The pork leg roast appears to be a segment of de-boned pork leg, and tightly bound with cotton string into a tidy little bundle as to compress it, thus removing the unsightly void where the bone used to be.
Dinner consisted of attempting to roast that pork leg, but because we wrapped it in aluminium foil, it was more baked than roasted. Chillies, butter and lots of mushrooms were also added into foil wrap. A few potatoes were baked and then served
Dinner was brilliant.
Personal
posted by Tan Yee Wei at 9/25/2005 10:27:00 pm
<< Home