#72 - Adventures in cooking

So here are some photos from cooking at last.


Apparently technology and I are still not on great terms because I thought I got the photos earlier but found I hadn't put them on my computer after all. Oh well...so - still work to be done but getting better.  Initial try was a basic roast chicken dinner with some salad, stuffed mushrooms, jus and rice. Rice - because this is Hawaii and my audience prefers rice instead of potatoes. As do I. Looks like the Asian roots of Hawaii are coming out!  I had a little problem with the julienned snow peas, but I now know that it's because I tried to julienne them after I had cooked them (when they were slippery inside) instead of before.  Note to self for the next time...


I couldn't find decent chicken stock.  They keep selling chicken broth so I thought I'd try one out.  Ick - the stock wasn't good until I added a ton of wine to the jus, at which point it tasted good enough that eventually people just ate it on the rice.  The list of ingredients on the "broth" had chicken flavoring and some kind of sugar extract and all kinds of other stuff on it.  I just wanted to see chicken, some veggies and water.  Is that so much to ask???  At the moment it looks like I will have to make my own to get what I want, but it just means I have to plan at least a day in advance so that I have enough time to make some stock.  I got a mock-horrified look from the guy at Tamura's (a local wine store who also sells some specialty ingredients and yummy food) when I  mentioned the chicken stock wasn't my onw.

Some other sights...
-just another day at the mall...Ala Moana Centre Stage.  So nice to see hula while waiting for them to finish making my coffee.  This seems to happen most days - I think it's around noon or 1pm or something.  It's nice for the tourists because they get a little show and it's nice for the dancers because they get an appreciative audience.  For me it's just one more thing that makes home, home.

A Saturday afternoon in the winter...our view while we had our lunch by the water just off Diamond Head.  On men's canoe, one women's canoe.  It was kind of nice - we got the vicarious thrill of watching some skilled paddling while eating by the water.  Is it possible to claim someone else did your exercising for you???



Welcome back dinner for the parents:
Prep = 4 hours.  Cooking the amuse bouche - 3 minutes.  Cooking the appetisers - 10 minutes (while we were eating the amuse bouche).  Cooking the main - 8 minutes.


I read Anthony Bourdain's updated edition of Kitchen Confidential and I finally found out that I am not crazy for getting pissed off when people mess with my stuff in the kitchen.  It's called mise en place for a reason and I had to try to keep my cool while fending off my mom's well meaning but incredibly annoying attempts to help.  (Yes Mom - I know I can use that pot.  I chose this one for a reason.  No thank you - I want the shrimp shells, I need them to infuse the oil for the dressing/salsa.  Yes, you may watch and I am happy to explain what I am doing.  No, don't touch that bowl!  No, please don't try to help me plate - they all need to look the same.  Yes please to helping put the plates on the table - careful, they're hot and they need to face the same way.  Thank you!)


Apparently it has something to do actually organizing our minds - in which case mine is still messy.  Organized chaos is not acceptable in the kitchen so I have to think a lot harder because I sometimes forget things are there if I can't see them.  It helped to separate the things into the various courses.  I think I used most of the small pots in the kitchen and we went through a lot of plates.


Preparing amuse bouche

Amuse bouche - pan fried scallop and celeriac puree, Thai-ish style shrimp with celeriac puree (right - for the person allergic to scallops but not shrimp...)  I didn't know one of the guests generally doesn't like scallops so it was a compliment to be told that she liked this one.

Starter - stuffed mushrooms (and bacon bits!) with zucchini spaghetti and tomato concasse.  My plating on the left, my sister's suggestion on the right...

Preparing main - pan fried ginger and green onion Ono steak, lemongrass and keffir lime shrimp, rice and zucchini spaghetti.  Inspired by the lobster open lasagne in Superior...

Plating the main...

Dinner being kid tested...

Verdict:  yummy.

(Q:  Want some more?

A:  Mmm hmmm.)

There was enough food left which we didn't cook that I ended up sending some home with friends and leaving some marinating in the fridge for the next night for my parents.  This is what my girlfriend KK did for dinner the next night, using her own ideas for plating - wish I'd thought of that.  Nice plating, Ms K!  It's nice that she went to the trouble of making her dinner pretty.  We had a rather entertaining text exchange about the cooking of the fish:
Her:  How do I cook the fish?
Me:  Hot pan.  Oil.  Fish in pan.  Cook.
Her:  I can do that.


No photos of dessert - lemon crunch cake (the remaining half from my birthday dinner a couple of nights before)...I hadn't made dessert because I didn't feel like it - between various food restrictions, gluten, eggs and to some extent, lactose were out which makes it a little difficult to make dessert.  Fruit salad had been done rather a lot, but something was missing so out came the leftover birthday cake.  Even the non-dairy/non-gluten/non-egg people had a teeny tiny bite which rounded out dinner nicely.


A gray, rainy, overcast winter day (left) and the same winter day an hour later (right).  Lunch at the Plumeria Beach Cafe (Kahala Hotel).

A no-no of presentation - crap sprinkled on the plate rim.  My sister said maybe it was their way of presenting their plate.  I told her it was wrong...probably it didn't help that I wasn't a huge fan of the food (tasted like leftover steak) - the batter or whatever it was supposed to be suffered from being super soggy.  The roasted salmon belly salad was good although it would have been nicer if they had removed the skin.  I found out why the dish was part of a prix fixe menu for lunch at what looked like a discounted price.  I'm still of the opinion that it's one thing not to waste food or to find another use for it in a dish, but I would have thought you wouldn't want the customers to be able to tell.  I mean really, if you look at the ingredients of each dish and break it down, this option was actually more expensive because you can't really serve the components as anything and they would have gone in the rubbish bin anyway.


Anyway, this trip home has been a great one to study what other people make and serve.  There was so much to learn and appreciate about the local food here (yum - time for dinner now, bye!) and what we like to eat.


So until next time, happy eating.