As we can't travel at the moment, and haven't been to a restaurant since March 2020, I decided to look at restaurant menus for places we'd like to go, and then learn to make it here.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Duck Marshall on last edited by
@marshant Thanks! Will do!
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
Friday night was Mongolian Goat. Lamb is expensive in France, and we have always preferred mutton or goat. It was cheaper to order some packs of goat meat direct from a farm than to buy lamb at the supermarket.
The sauce tasted right, but I needed to velvet the meat a bit longer, as this was a tough stewing cut. Also undercooked the vegetables, so the result was a little disappointing. Needs work.
Supplemented the green onions with some bell peppers as we didn't have enough.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
Friday night was Mongolian Goat. Lamb is expensive in France, and we have always preferred mutton or goat. It was cheaper to order some packs of goat meat direct from a farm than to buy lamb at the supermarket.
The sauce tasted right, but I needed to velvet the meat a bit longer, as this was a tough stewing cut. Also undercooked the vegetables, so the result was a little disappointing. Needs work.
Supplemented the green onions with some bell peppers as we didn't have enough
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
Day 3: Sweet and Sour Pork
We don't normally order sweet and sour anything from a Chinese restaurant, as what comes out is often bright red and overpowering.
However, we had some pork in the freezer, and looking at recipes online it seemed like this could be a really great dish.
Marinated and double-fried the pork, stir-fried the vegetables and made the sauce. Then back into the wok to combine.
This came out pretty well perfectly. Will definitely be doing this again.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
Day 4: Crispy Honey Chilli Chicken and Dim Sims (dumplings)
The Dim Sim or "dimmie" is an Australian Chinese dish. You'll find the smaller dimmies in fish & chip shops. There's a larger round version (steamed or fried) found in Chinese restaurants in Australia.
I tried a few different shapes, from the mini-grenade to something looking more like a Georgian khinkali. Fried three and steamed the rest. Need a bigger steamer.
Tasted ok. Needs practice.
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NeonSnakereplied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
@dentangle they look great - I've never had the bottle to try them myself
(Loving this whole thread)
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to NeonSnake on last edited by
@neonsnake I spent about 20 minutes rolling the wrappers, and carefully stacking them with a dusting of cornflour between to stop them sticking as the recipe had recommended.
They all glued themselves together of course, so I had to start again.
Then they stuck to the steamer. I feel there's a trick here I'm missing
In the end I was so tired, I kinda absent-mindedly made them into Khinkali. We ended up eating after midnight
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NeonSnakereplied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) on last edited by
@dentangle yeah, I can imagine - they seem to me that they'd be something that has a "knack" to them, but before you've mastered would be pretty tricky - well done for powering through to midnight!
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to NeonSnake last edited by
OK. @neonsnake asked for more Chinese food!
Lets start with last night's Beef in Black Bean. Was knackered, so I'm pleased I can make this even when tired now. Added a few green chillis to spice it up a bit.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@neonsnake Last week I made my wife's favorite, Crispy Fried Honey Beef. I think I'm going to be asked to make this quite often
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@neonsnake We use the same wok/karahi for cooking Indian food, however the cooking style is completely different. I never use more than a medium heat for Indian. Maybe 140°C to get the pan up to temperature, then down to 80-120 while cooking curries.
For Chinese, the wok needs to be *hot* - 180°C or so to really get things stir-fried properly and keep things crisp.
It takes constant stirring, whereas I'd normally wander off partway through cooking Indian.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@neonsnake A recurring theme with Chinese is to cook all the various parts separately then bring together the meat, vegetables and sauce at the end.
Indian tends to be one pot and keep adding things.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@neonsnake Our cooking equipment is kinda limited. Our gas cooker and oven died a couple of years ago and we haven't been able to replace it. We have a two-ring induction hob, a little remoska for small baking/roasting jobs and a little electric pizza oven.
In the winter we have a wood stove which is good for curries etc. There's also the 2m diameter wood fired four à pain in one of the outbuildings if I want to use a week's worth of firewood for an evening's cooking
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
The remoska doesn't do too bad a job of baking buns and small loaves.
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@neonsnake and the little pizza oven makes some pretty passable #pizza
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NeonSnakereplied to Brett Sheffield (he/him) last edited by
@dentangle I would very much like the recipe for this - this is one of my go to dishes for takeaway but I've never got it right when making it myself
(I'll reply to the rest of the thread probably tomorrow, our instance has been down all day, and I need to sort my own dinner out now!)
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Brett Sheffield (he/him)replied to NeonSnake last edited by
@neonsnake I'm making it again tonight, so will document the process.