OK, this is the Last Post on food for a bit... Plenty of leftover pork from last night which will keep us happy for days. So I decided to try something that I'd seen in.. wait for it... the Women's Weekly Chinese Cookbook! We still have a lot of this series from the er... 80s?... and use them all the time!
Step one was to make noodle baskets. I spent years looking occasionally for these little wire baskets on a stick and then discovered them at Marion in January when we were house-sitting at Seacliff. The recipe said egg noodles but we just had cheap chow mein noodles. whatever.
Cook them, put them on a wire rack to dry a bit. DON'T try to dry the noodles with a paper towel beacuse it sticks! Place them between the two little baskets and deep fry them. It took a little while, but I've learned a new party trick. Before the party, not at the party.. ("Hey, lets go and deep fry some noodles...")
I'm also reminded how countries like China which have many people living a subsistence lifestyle use simple ingredients like wheat, water and oil, and time, to make food that we consider fancy (this is one of the things about food that interests me - including the fact that many of our exotic herbs and spices are cheap and everyday for them...) I do love the "foodie" setting on the Hipstamatic iPhoto app...
Next I took the some of the leftover pork, leftover veg (carrot and zucchini) and put it in the food processor with more shitake mushrooms, spring onions, crushed garlic and ginger, a bit of shao xing wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce, minced chilli and sesame oil. Put the minced mixture onto the noodle baskets...Actually, the mince mixture needed a lot more zing.
Now, you can actually eat this kind of pork mixture cold in lettuce and its really tasty. I'd had this idea of putting each pork basket on lettuce, so you'd eat the whole lot at once. but I couldnt figure out how to cut the lettuce into a small cup. how would you do that? perhaps you need a small lettuce and just use the inner leaves...
anyway. I decided on the fly to make an asian omlette to go with it, as you do. This was based on another Kylie Kwong recipe that I've made more correctly before... That link will give you the general idea.
Lup cheong sausage is something I've only discovered recently. I love it and some of the family dont (it's sweet.. so???). So the omlette was made of eggs, chopped spring onions and thinly sliced sausage. The omlette sauce was a cooked mix of ginger slices, halved cherry tomatoes, shao xing wine, sugar, soy sauce, black vinegar and sesame oil (I'm not giving it all way - go buy the book!). I wish I'd had a better idea of what to do with the lettuce than shred it and put it one the side...
overall though. pretty nice we thought (apart from the sausage that they picked out of the omlette....)
and we have plenty more leftover pork.
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