I decided this morning that I'd cook Sha a traditional Chinese dish. Rather stupidly I chose Luóhàn zhāi. This is a dish that calls for a huge number of ingredients although 18 is traditional to represent the 18 Buddhas. I managed only six ingredients :(
So ... a challenge. Can anyone do better? A complete list of the required ingredients is available here. Instead of starting the cooking (by wetting the wood ear) I spent a happy 30 minutes trying work out what Red jujubes are and whether I had any or not. At the end I discovered that I'd have to go looking for a prickly tree in Pakistan and so decided it was unlikely that the local supermarket would stock it.
The instructions that I found also lead to interesting problems. "Cut the tofu into cubes" ... okay, that's straightforward. "Lightly brown the tofu pieces on both sides". err.
Whilst we were eating we chatted with Sha's mum in Beijing and Sha has given my attempt at cooking 9.5/10 so I'm very happy!! :)
Yesterday afternoon we went to watch the new version of the Karate Kid at the cinema. It was fun. Much of the filming was from Sha's local area in Beijing and I kept having to stop her becoming too enthusiastic as the camera panned around. It was fun to see various roads etc. that we'd walked down together!!
This blog entry is all about food. I have to record the wonderful pork in preserved vegetables that Sha cooked last night!!!
5 comments:
If you were doing this at the right time of year (early spring here) we could have supplied you with some 'wood ear' from the Garth woodlands. We tried cooking some and it was quite tasty but exploded in the pan when heated, so we lost some.
(... possibly because we didn't wet it first.)
Apparently you should leave your wood ear in a bowl of very hot water (with the lid on) for about 30 minutes and then cook it!
What on EARTH is a wood ear? Is it some kind of mushroom?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auricularia_auricula-judae
... commonly known to the non-squeamish as Jew's Ear.
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