I love my two children and their ability to bring a smile to my face (or even a tear to my eye) from the other side of the world.
When Claire is in one of her bubbly moods, her enthusiasm is infectious. And Shane has a soft side that tugs at my heart strings. In the last two days both of them took on new cooking challenges.
When Claire visited home briefly in September she got bitten by the Chinese cooking bug and she took a copy of Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice back with her to Oz. If I was to recommend just one book from the list I set out in Chinese Kitchen Essentials it would be this one. It is packed with straight-forward and easy to follow recipes for Chinese home-cooking and is a great spring-board for experimentation.
Anyway yesterday Claire cooked a meal for Mike who has just started a new job and her sequence of emails from Sydney about her latest culinary exploits went something like this:
“Oh my, I may actually be the best chef ever!!
“Fuschia Dunlop is a genius! We’ve just wolfed down her menu for two – twice cooked pork, smacked cucumber in garlicky sauce and pak choy with fresh shiitake. So good, more photos to follow!”
“This was the easiest meal to cook and prepare.
I boiled the pork belly last night and it went in the fridge so today it was just a matter of chopping up the veg and getting everything prepped.
The pork belly is just so, so tasty. I added lots of red and green pepper as we had a few sitting round and I can’t get over how far 200g of pork belly can go!”
“The fresh shiitake and pak-choy side dish is great with the lashings of garlic and ginger. I maybe under cooked it just a little.
And Claire’s verdict: “Altogether a spectacular feast for a Tuesday night! Poor Mike has been made tell me in many ways how much he enjoyed it. I feel like a domestic goddess! xx”
“P.S. if it’s not obvious from excessive photos, I would like praise please! xx”
Praise granted Claire and we have also noted that the photos were taken with your brand new iPhone 5 🙂
If you would like to cook Fuchsia’s recipes, go out and by her book which is readily available in Ireland and elsewhere. You will also find variations of the three recipes Claire cooked in these links on the blog – twice-cooked pork, bashed cucumber and pak choi with shitake mushrooms.
Meanwhile, over in Beijing, Shane was helping Shan celebrate her first birthday as his wife today. I spoke to Shan earlier and she was very excited that her MaMa was cooking Big Plate Chicken with home made wide flat noodles for her birthday dinner. But Shane had another surprise up his sleeve. He took himself off to a baking school near his office and made his first ever cake to mark the occasion.
I spoke to Shane, Shan and MaMa on Skype just before their guests arrived for dinner. MaMa was waving at me in great excitement and telling me in Mandarin to hurry back to Beijing soon where she will show me how to make those wide flat noodles. Sometimes I wish I had a “beam me up Scottie” transporter so that I could just share those special moments.
Anyway Shane says “The cake was a success, as was (more importantly) Shan’s impromptu Birthday dinner”. Aww… he’s a romatic is my lovely son…
