Dutch Baby

I made a dutch baby, sight unseen, and I’m beginning to wonder if it deserves a little more research of the eating variety.  

Dutch Baby 

I made this 10″ beauty for a couple of friends a few weeks ago and you can see that it is super solid. It was more like a cake than anything else. I have heard that it’s a little like a souffle and a little like a pancake. It should puff up nicely at first and then collapse on itself in a pancakey-textured way.
Mine was about two inches thick and remained that way until we ate it. It was tasty – eggy and slightly sweet – but I’m sure I did something wrong along the way.

Potstickers

We got together Saturday to make potstickers. It was a lot like the time we got together to make spring rolls except that he actually liked the end result this time, which is good.

Here is what made them so similar:
1. I did the prep work (cutting and mixing, mostly).
2. He offered to help assemble.
3. He offered his kitchen for the assembling process.
4. Upon unpacking bags of prep bowls he said “oh”.
5. There were lengthy demonstrations of faulty telekinesis.
6. My assembling is free-form, but compact and attractive.
7. His assembling is a bit like a football player’s attempt at embroidery – recognizable as needlepoint but indescribable beyond that point.

We tend to end up with a plate of fairly uniform objects and a plate of slightly misshapen things. We always choose to eat the misshapen plate first so that, in the event there are leftovers, no one has to admit to their coworkers which one is so bad at cooking.

But Saturday we just ate in silent contentment until all that was left was an empty plate, two sets of glistening ebony chopsticks, and a dish of hot peppers.

Eating with Chopsticks

I made Chicken Fried Rice last night which I ate with chopsticks. There’s something really nice about eating with chopsticks sometimes. I don’t own my own though perhaps I should consider it. At the moment I just hoard spare sets from the restaurants I frequent and surely they would like to use them for their own customers and their own foods. I don’t know why I enjoy using chopsticks.

I assume it has something to do with the full experience.

Like my mini espresso spoons. Regular spoons work just as well, but I bought a set of mini spoons for the full experience. Ditto to the mini-whipper (I already owned a mini-whisk, but the whipper works best for making slow gin fizzes or something – I honestly don’t know). The sake set I owned for a small period even though I don’t really enjoy sake.

Who knows.

All I know is that I sat around eating my fried rice with chopsticks and feeling smug because I can both make fried rice and eat it with chopsticks.