Catering a "pan-Asian" dinner for eight

[sheetz]

Outstanding job! I look forward to your recipes.

[heidih]

Miz Ducky- everything looks scrumptious (wow - is that an old fashioned word or what?)

The salad roll shot is great with the colors showing through. Looking forward to your peanut sauce recipe.

Your fish is very impressive. How did the diners react to whole fish? Were they able to portion it off to their plates easily?

Also wondering how they reacted to the pork belly. Of all your dishes that is the one I thought might be the most intimidating considering our Western anti-fat mindset.

As others have noted, your green papaya shreds are beautiful. I am going to look for one of those cool tools. Despite the torture to your hand muscles, did you hopefully notice a more vibrant taste as opposed to the pre-shredded? I have found the pre-shredded to be o.k. texturally, but kind of flavorless.

Congrats!

[v. gautam]

Beautifully set table and beautiful serving dishes and stemware to match. A lot of care and thought went into the dinner, and the guests look quite absorbed with the food, but they also must have been keenly aware of all the rest as well. What an effort MizD, singlehanded and a quarter, as it were!

And the shopping too; you had mentioned last year some difficulty in getting around, hope those things have not been bothering you too much. I worried very much about who helped you with washing up, leftovers, etc. re-organizing things back into their boxes, and getting them back into your house. Even with food consumed, those bottles and things weigh a ton. After all this work, you had to be exhausted, and dehydrated as well.

Anyway, the party was a grand success, that was what matters.

[mizducky]

Miz Ducky- everything looks scrumptious (wow - is that an old fashioned word or what?)

The salad roll shot is great with the colors showing through. Looking forward to your peanut sauce recipe.

Your fish is very impressive. How did the diners react to whole fish? Were they able to portion it off to their plates easily?

Also wondering how they reacted to the pork belly. Of all your dishes that is the one I thought  might be the most intimidating considering our Western anti-fat mindset.

As others have noted, your green papaya shreds are beautiful. I am going to look for one of those cool tools. Despite the torture to your hand muscles, did you hopefully notice a more vibrant taste as opposed to the pre-shredded? I have found the pre-shredded to be o.k. texturally, but kind of flavorless.

Congrats!

←

Thank you!

My diners were generally good sports about the foods that were more challenging to their American sensibilities--namely, the head-on fish and the fatty pork belly. With the pork, there was a certain amount of joking about heart conditions and the like, but especially when I explained that this was not meant to be an everyday indulgence or eaten in huge portions, most people gave it a try, The fish, I wound up portioning out and serving just because it was less awkward that way. I explained that the head is considered a delicacy, but nobody quite had the nerve to give it a go. I did have one brave soul dare to eat one of the fish's eyes, though!

I do think the freshly-shredded papaya had a snappier texture. I didn't notice that much difference in flavor. I think no matter what one does, green papaya is just destined to be a blank canvas, flavor-wise, on which to have fun with fish sauce and chiles.

Beautifully set table and beautiful serving dishes and stemware to match. A lot of care and thought went into the dinner, and the guests look quite absorbed with the food, but they also must have been keenly aware of all the rest as well. What an effort MizD, singlehanded and a quarter, as it were!

And the shopping too; you had mentioned last year some difficulty in getting around, hope those things have not been bothering you too much. I worried very much about who helped you with washing up, leftovers, etc. re-organizing things back into their boxes, and getting them back into your house. Even with food consumed, those bottles and things weigh a ton. After all this work, you had to be exhausted, and dehydrated as well.

Anyway, the party was a grand success, that was what matters.

←

Thank you! Actually, my hosts were in charge of the table setting--they do have some gorgeous table linens and tableware, don't they?

Fortunately, I'm in a lot better physical shape than I used to be, with a lot better endurance level. Plus I've acquired various totes and wheeled handcarts and other implements for shlepping gear and groceries around ... plus I brought a big two-liter bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper with me the day I cooked and served the meal--a.k.a. "the cook's personal rocket fuel"--which kept me pretty hydrated as well as juiced up for all the work. Still, I was definitely punchy by the end of the evening--but my hosts graciously helped me get things washed up and packed away so I wasn't fumbling around all night.

[mizducky]

So, three of my recipes are now posted over in RecipeGullet:

The tom yum goong

The pork belly

The dan dan noodles

I used this recipe for the peanut dipping sauce for the summer rolls ... more or less. The garlic threatened to burn and the ground peanuts never gave up any noticeable oil when I sauteed them as the recipe indicates, so I just sauteed them until they seemed right, trying to avoid scorching anything. Regardless, the flavor and texture was, as the recipe author notes, far superior to any sauce based on prepared peanut butter that I've tasted.

The fish is basically the recipe for steamed fish with ginger and coconut milk from Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery. Standard steamed-fish protocol--make several slits in either side of the fish; rub with garlic cloves, sugar (she specifies dark brown, I used palm sugar), and fresh-ground black pepper; top with sliced mushrooms, scallions, minced ginger, and a mixture of coconut milk and oyster sauce, and then steam as usual. (There's supposed to be a typical Vietnamese garnish of deep-fried garlic and onion slivers and crushed peanuts, but in the rush of things it got forgotten.) I served it with a platter of lettuce, herbs, and cuke slices for wraps, and nuoc mam cham for dipping.

For the kong namul I did this recipe as posted on my blog. The sigumchi-namul simply substitutes spinach for the bean sprouts.

The black sticky rice pudding recipe can be found here. I did this one pretty much as written, except I kept working as much coconut sauce into the hot rice as it would absorb without getting soggy, which was a lot! I omitted the optional garnish--a lot of garnishes got left on the kitchen counter during this production.

Edited January 28, 2008 by mizducky (log)