Wednesday, August 12, 2020

RECYCLING HERRING AND MACKEREL

For several days now the most popular essay on this blog has been about fish: 'mackerel is not herring'. Which dates from ten years ago. Naturally, I am pleased that people are still reading my ancient gibberings. And go ahead, please feast upon the fatty fish, and lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats ....

Along with 'how to cook a zebra', it's one of my most popular posts.
Mostly found by people in England, late at night.
I wonder why they read about food.


From that same time period, a recipe for something I doubt that my apartment mate has ever had. It's mostly served to white people.


芙蓉蟹
[Fu Yung Hai - Velvety omelette with crab meat]

1兩 (one ounce) 蟹肉 (crab meat).
2支 (two stalks) 青蔥 (scallion).
4個 (four) 蛋 (eggs).
少許 (pinch) 鹽 Salt).
2大匙 (two tablespoons) 油 (oil).

½杯 (half a cup) 高湯 (superior stock).
1大匙 (one tablespoon) 醬油 (soy sauce).
½小匙 (half a teaspoon) 大白粉 (tapioca flour).
少許 (pinch) 糖 (sugar).

Remove all shell fragments from the crab meat, rinse and chop the scallion. Gently beat the eggs till smooth, add the pinch of salt, the oil, the crab meat, and the chopped scallion.

Mix the tapioca flour with a little cold water.

Heat some oil in the pan, pour in the egg mixture, cook till barely set, and slide onto a plate. Wipe any fragments of the omelette out of the pan, add a drizzle oil, and when hot pour in the superior stock and soy sauce, adding the pinch of sugar. After two minutes or so of cooking, stir in the dissolved tapioca flour and when the sauce becomes glossy pour it over the omelette. Add a drizzle of fragrant sesame oil and some minced cilantro if you must.

You will note that in this recipe tapioca flour is specified. But you could also use corn flour, it would simply require a little more. For the Chinese style superior stock you may substitute the normal chicken and bones stock. And feel free to use more crab meat.

Oh, and adding sliced avocado on top is not a bad idea.

Sambal or sliced chilies on the side.


Thinking about good things to eat also reminds me of naughty business.
As it should most normal people.

As I said, I wonder why English people read about food.




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2 comments:

Eurus Holmes said...

English people read about food because we're too uptight and repressed to read about sex and far too guilty in colonial atrocities to read about violence and war.

Religion is right out because talking about it is rude and restricted to Catholic aristocrats in Evelyn Waugh novels. Politics is just as rude and restricted to perverse writers like the Fabians and the Bloomsbury Group.

Therefore, food is a safe, soothing topic. (This may explain why our food is so often bland and mild in flavour.) So is the weather, which is why we all listen to the Shipping Forecast.

The back of the hill said...

Isn't there a chain of restuarants serving public school food?
Complete with birchings.

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