I wouldn't consider this to be a food blog, but it is a blog where I do a lot of food. It makes perfect sense when you consider that I live in Hong Kong, which has got to be the food center of the world. There are restaurants lining up practically every street. The other reason is that I am still lallygagging about finding a job so I have plenty of time to cook and rediscover the joy of food that I lost when I was a sleep deprived architorture grad student.
That saying about the way to a man's heart being through his stomach is very true for SB and me. It also is even more true in reverse. When we first met, he wooed me with food. I was so busy and he would cook dinner and lure me home. I think all I ever made in the first few months was coffee. I still make the coffee because SB can't seem to figure out the Mucca and has decided that I hold the keys to the mysteries of delicious coffee. I slowly began to cook a few meals but he was the main provider. My meals, though, were quite superb, if I do say so myself. I began experimenting with cooking when I was barely tall enough to see over the stove (as a ten year old I made a kick ass crepe). I hardly ever cook from recipe (with the exception of baking) and rank myself as one of the better amateur cooks. Good, though not even close to the same league as those Michelin chefs who make culinary artwork. Ms. Garcia at SAC once said that she had foie gras that almost made her weep. I can only imagine what that must have been like.
There have been two times in the past few weeks that SB looked up from his food to tell me that he loved me. I don't know if this is a new trend but it's sweet. Once was late at night after hockey practice when I whipped up some fettucine alfredo. I do not consider a fake Italian dish to be anything special but it must have been the combination of hunger, lower expectations at such a late hour, perfectly al dente noodles, and abundance of dairy products that tipped the scale. I also happen to know that SB is a carb addict and his sister and grandmother were butter addicts who ate pats of it as small children. This was nothing if not a plate of cheese, butter and carbs. As he tucked into it, I told him to come up for air and that's when I heard a muffled, "I love you" and more slurping.
The second I love you came from a Vietnamesey dish. I had marinated some beef in garlic and spices, which I cooked and served with bun (vermicelli), copious amounts of cilantro, scallions, do chua (pickled onion, daikon and carrot), some of my mint plant, and Nước chấm (lime, fish sauce, sugar, chili, garlic, water). It's a good, simple dish that utilizes one of the best components of Vietnamese food, which is that the food contains many layers of taste from the meat, to the sauce, to the pickles, and finally to the herbs that are eaten in quantities that make them almost vegetables.
SB had called as he was leaving work to say that he felt like having meatballs. What?! I had already begun assembling the meal and so it was too late to go back. Then I thought, well, why not? I would add some Viet meatballs to the mix so I ran off to the store for some ground pork and made nem nuong.
I was looking up spelling for nem nuong when I came across this recipe for it from wandering chopsticks. I liked that the author uses onions to add moisture that is lost from using low fat pork. I will have to try that one day when I finally get a food processor and can grind my own pork again instead of buying that fatty crap at the store. I perused the blog and it gets my half-Vietnamese stamp of approval. You should look at it for good Vietnamese recipes, especially since I am too lazy to print them here. I'll eventually measure out what I cook and put some recipes here, but only if they aren't somewhere else or if my more North-Central tastes clash with the typically Southern cooks.
After these declarations of love from SB, I remembered a recipe that one of my friends had sent me years ago, for something called engagement chicken. Since I was much younger then, I had no interest in serving up a meal that would end up with me getting hitched. I remember perusing the recipe, thinking that is didn't sound so special, and then deleting it. After all these years I decided to look up the story behind this chicken. Thank you, Internet! I love google. Here's the recipe. The story is that some Glamour magazine staffer gave the recipe (originally from Marcella Hazan's More Classic Italian Cooking) to an assistant over 20 years ago and she got engaged as a result, and then she passed the recipe down and by the time it was all over three women had become engaged.
Here's my analysis. The chicken is tasty, although not particularly spectacular in my opinion. Certainly not enough to warrant a ring. I suspect, as do others, that these women probably were not great cooks to begin with, and so their partners were overwhelmed by the gesture and not the chicken. Also, the presentation is quite lovely and the first husband admitted that the chicken looked like something a wife would prepare and that's what got him thinking. I would say in those cases that the image of a woman who could cook and present a dish that could be served to impress your friends was what did it.
If I ever wanted to use food trickery to make SB submit to a pair of finger shackles, the engagement chicken would not work for me. SB has already tasted better. Beside, presentation is not important when he's contemplating the use of a human feed bag. Kidding aside, he does enjoy it when I give him a beautiful plate so I do see why it works with the chicken when reeling in mere mortals. No matter how enlightened, men like SB get reeled in by a competent provider who is willing to romance them.
That saying about the way to a man's heart being through his stomach is very true for SB and me. It also is even more true in reverse. When we first met, he wooed me with food. I was so busy and he would cook dinner and lure me home. I think all I ever made in the first few months was coffee. I still make the coffee because SB can't seem to figure out the Mucca and has decided that I hold the keys to the mysteries of delicious coffee. I slowly began to cook a few meals but he was the main provider. My meals, though, were quite superb, if I do say so myself. I began experimenting with cooking when I was barely tall enough to see over the stove (as a ten year old I made a kick ass crepe). I hardly ever cook from recipe (with the exception of baking) and rank myself as one of the better amateur cooks. Good, though not even close to the same league as those Michelin chefs who make culinary artwork. Ms. Garcia at SAC once said that she had foie gras that almost made her weep. I can only imagine what that must have been like.
There have been two times in the past few weeks that SB looked up from his food to tell me that he loved me. I don't know if this is a new trend but it's sweet. Once was late at night after hockey practice when I whipped up some fettucine alfredo. I do not consider a fake Italian dish to be anything special but it must have been the combination of hunger, lower expectations at such a late hour, perfectly al dente noodles, and abundance of dairy products that tipped the scale. I also happen to know that SB is a carb addict and his sister and grandmother were butter addicts who ate pats of it as small children. This was nothing if not a plate of cheese, butter and carbs. As he tucked into it, I told him to come up for air and that's when I heard a muffled, "I love you" and more slurping.
The second I love you came from a Vietnamesey dish. I had marinated some beef in garlic and spices, which I cooked and served with bun (vermicelli), copious amounts of cilantro, scallions, do chua (pickled onion, daikon and carrot), some of my mint plant, and Nước chấm (lime, fish sauce, sugar, chili, garlic, water). It's a good, simple dish that utilizes one of the best components of Vietnamese food, which is that the food contains many layers of taste from the meat, to the sauce, to the pickles, and finally to the herbs that are eaten in quantities that make them almost vegetables.
SB had called as he was leaving work to say that he felt like having meatballs. What?! I had already begun assembling the meal and so it was too late to go back. Then I thought, well, why not? I would add some Viet meatballs to the mix so I ran off to the store for some ground pork and made nem nuong.
I was looking up spelling for nem nuong when I came across this recipe for it from wandering chopsticks. I liked that the author uses onions to add moisture that is lost from using low fat pork. I will have to try that one day when I finally get a food processor and can grind my own pork again instead of buying that fatty crap at the store. I perused the blog and it gets my half-Vietnamese stamp of approval. You should look at it for good Vietnamese recipes, especially since I am too lazy to print them here. I'll eventually measure out what I cook and put some recipes here, but only if they aren't somewhere else or if my more North-Central tastes clash with the typically Southern cooks.
After these declarations of love from SB, I remembered a recipe that one of my friends had sent me years ago, for something called engagement chicken. Since I was much younger then, I had no interest in serving up a meal that would end up with me getting hitched. I remember perusing the recipe, thinking that is didn't sound so special, and then deleting it. After all these years I decided to look up the story behind this chicken. Thank you, Internet! I love google. Here's the recipe. The story is that some Glamour magazine staffer gave the recipe (originally from Marcella Hazan's More Classic Italian Cooking) to an assistant over 20 years ago and she got engaged as a result, and then she passed the recipe down and by the time it was all over three women had become engaged.
Here's my analysis. The chicken is tasty, although not particularly spectacular in my opinion. Certainly not enough to warrant a ring. I suspect, as do others, that these women probably were not great cooks to begin with, and so their partners were overwhelmed by the gesture and not the chicken. Also, the presentation is quite lovely and the first husband admitted that the chicken looked like something a wife would prepare and that's what got him thinking. I would say in those cases that the image of a woman who could cook and present a dish that could be served to impress your friends was what did it.
If I ever wanted to use food trickery to make SB submit to a pair of finger shackles, the engagement chicken would not work for me. SB has already tasted better. Beside, presentation is not important when he's contemplating the use of a human feed bag. Kidding aside, he does enjoy it when I give him a beautiful plate so I do see why it works with the chicken when reeling in mere mortals. No matter how enlightened, men like SB get reeled in by a competent provider who is willing to romance them.
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