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Skriven 2015-11-25 03:04:44 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: chinese dinner 544
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A visit to La Ferme Marty, where the echo picnic had gone on
a field trip whenever that was. The farm itself is no longer
open to the public - it's apparently taken off and become a
big operation, but it keeps contact with retail customers 
with its farm store, decorated kitschily with all kinds of
piggy things. Ian of course knows the owners, and we had a
bit of a chat about the products, including a discussion of 
the difference between fritons and rillettes, both of which
were available in the refrigerated case in front of us. It
turns out that rillettes are made just from pork belly,
cooked and then pounded with additional lard as needed, and
fritons were almost the same thing, only more parts are 
included. I ended up with a pound of each. Might as well
tell you my impressions while I remember. The rillettes were
pale with a gentle aroma and mild pork flavor. I found these
a bit too coarse - the product as I know it is pounded by
hand in a mortar and pestle with fat incorporated every so
often, the result being fairly fine textured with fibers
of an inch or less; if the combining has been done with
too much enthusiasm, the result might end up like potted
meat product or Underwood devilled something, but if it's
inadequately done, you might get something more like pulled
pork. This erred toward the pulled pork side. The fritons
had a much gamier aspect - dark in color and flavor both,
the result of some liver and unidentified bits in the mix,
maybe a little blood, too? The texture was a little more
like what I am accustomed to. At first I liked it better 
but then thought that I'd not want a whole meal, or even a
whole appetizer serving, of it.

--

Chinese dinner made by me.

Spring rolls filled with cabbage, mushrooms, pork, scallions,
and a few shreds of carrot. I couldn't find wrappers anywhere
so made them myself from a recipe I found on the Internet.

I made the dough too wet and didn't have time to air-dry it
so used it as is. The result was okay, not great, the outsides
crispy enough but the inside surface too chewy. Also they
collapsed into bendy shapes when I put too many of them at
once in the wok. The filling, pretty much what my mother
used to do, but I used too little seasoning, so the wrappers
took away too much attention from the flavor. Ideally, the
middles would have dominated on the palate.

Cold duck gizzards in sesame oil - instead of confiting the
gizzards as I'd planned to, I poached them for an arbitrary
length of time in broth and soy sauce. These were chilled,
sliced thin, drizzled with reduced poaching liquid, which
wasn't chilled else it would have gelatinized, and then
sprinkled with sesame oil and minced scallion.

Hunan-style chicken with a handful of hot peppers - I dunno,
marinate cut-up chicken breast in soy, drain, dredge in 
cornstarch, fry up hot with dry hot peppers plus onion,
carrot, and green pepper bits, not too many of them, and
what the heck, a fresh hot pepper if you have them handy
(Jacquie had grown a plant of chilli willy, a thin-walled
pepper shaped like a penis with a moderate heat between
serrano and cayenne).

Rice.

With this mess no wine could possibly go, so we brought
over some Kronenbourgs.

More of those assorted sorbets for dessert.
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