Saturday, September 6, 2014 – So the Mid-Autumn Festival, also called the Mooncake Festival, is actually on Monday. But Monday is, for some reason, a terrible day for dinner parties. So I through a dinner party on Saturday instead.
So the menu for today was, from least interesting to most interesting:
- steamed rice
- broccoli (cooked)
- Mom’s potato salad
- Taiwanese-style soy-braised pork
Steamed rice is, of course, “self-explanatory”, so I won’t bother explaining.
The broccoli is also “self-explanatory”, but it’s really not. Like I said in the potato salad post, my mom prefers steaming broccoli, but I prefer boiling them. Boiled broccoli just gets better results in terms of color, texture, and taste. The only downsideof boiled broccoli is that “boiled broccoli” doesn’t sound as pleasant as “steamed broccoli”.
For those curious folks, I boiled the water, then added a handful of salt, then added the broccoli and timed it for 5 minutes. When you boil broccoli, you’ll notice the colors light up like, well, a light pretty much the instant they hit the water. After the 4 minute mark, they start getting tender. The longer you cook them, the more tender they get. But don’t go too long, or the broccoli gets brown and mushy. (The longest I’ve boiled broccoli is 5 minutes, and they were perfect.)
Mom’s Potato Salad. In our last episode, we decided that we had made way too much potato salad, and that granny smith apples weren’t suitable for potato salad. So this time I made half a batch, and it seemed to be the right amount. Also, I used a Gala apple (because Fujis are more expensive, and Uwajimaya doesn’t carry Honeycrisps), and it worked perfectly.
The original recipe called for half an apple for every 2 potatoes, but I decided to go with a whole apple instead, because the potato salad needed that extra sweetness. (Of course, I halved the recipe, so it’s still just 1 potato and half an apple.)
Dinner guest Sara described it as “I wasn’t sure about the potato salad at first, but then I tried it, and it’s pretty good. I still like my mom’s potato salad better though.” Everyone prefers their mom’s potato salad.
Taiwanese-style soy-braised pork. 1 lb of pork serves 2 apparently. I have 6 dinner guests. So I bought 3 lbs of pork shoulder to make this dish. This proved a bit challenging. If I triple the recipe will it fit in my pot? If braising 1 lb of pork shoulder takes 1.5 hours, how long does it take to braise 3 lbs of pork shoulder?
To answer the first question, no. I used my largest saute pan, my Calphalon 12-inch pan, and even though all the liquid and pork fit, it boiled over while it was cooking. (Why didn’t I use a stock pot? Because for braising, you want the pan to be wide and shallow, and you the meat to be just barely submerged in a single layer.) So next time, I should only double the recipe. Or double the liquids and aromatics, but triple the amount of pork. Yes, I like that better.
To answer the second question, 2 hours. Apparently, pork cooks really fast. And yes, I made sure it was fully braised. (Meaning cooked all the way through, and then cooked some more until the collagen breaks down and makes the pork super tender.)
Dinner guest Chris described it as “nicely done on the pork”.
A Mooncake Festival Dinner Party isn’t a Mooncake Festival Dinner Party without mooncakes of course. And of course these are storebought, because who makes their own mooncakes anyway? So the only mooncakes I like are the red bean ones, and regular size mooncake are too big. So I bought a dozen mini red bean mooncakes. They were good.
In case you can’t tell by the box that’s slightly off camera, I got Sheng Kee brand (which according to the box is based in California somewhere). The one with the woman in the green dress and the shotgun ancient Chinese musical instrument.
Bonus pic: Joy took a close-up of the mooncakes.
