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Friday, December 14, 2001

Shopping list

Now I've fallen in deep, slow silent sleep/it's killing me, I'm dying
Holy maudlin lyrics, Batman! No, really, I swear I haven't gone goth on you all; it's just a Badly Drawn Boy lyric. Chosen because I feel like death warmed over today. Nay, I feel like death that has been stewed for four and a half hours in a stockpot full of peeled and sliced ginger. Possibly because I spent from midnight until 4:30am stewing peeled and sliced ginger in a stockpot. Possibly.

I'm having this dinner party on Saturday and I have decided to make a ridiculous amount of complicated food. I have been desperately trying to summon my inner-Nigella (or at least my inner-Jamie) but to very little avail. I've charted out all my recipes, decided when everything needs to be started, picked up all my ingredients (except the bloody fucking corn starch. I'm not going all the way back to the supermarket for a tablespoon of corn starch! Maybe I can borrow some from a neighbor). I've made (well, started; it's a long process) my Candied Ginger, and I even made a big fabulous tray of lovely Thai ice cream. The ice cream is insane, it's made with coconut milk, vanilla pods, and CREAMED CORN but you'd never know it from the taste! Those wacky Thai folk! I love them.

Tonight I'm going to a quickie birthday party and then it's off to see the Royal Tenenbaums, so I don't think I'll get any more cooking done until the morning. Sigh. I hope I can get it all done. If not, I'll just call Saigon Cafe for takeout and stash the containers in the dumpster next door.
The menu, for your edification (it's all appetizer-y/tasting things, since I don't have a big enough dining table for everyone to have a Proper Meal): shrimp & pork salad rolls, pistachio-chicken and bitter-orange-pork satay, scallops in plum sauce on scallion pancakes, curried chicken and bamboo wrapped in banana leaves (if, that is, I can find some fucking banana leaves in this city), coconut rice balls, sweet-spicy almond mix, a lentil soup, some yummy flatbread things, potato stuffed indian paneer, three dipping sauces (peanut sauce, curried yogurt, and mango chutney). For desert, ginger pavlovas with the aforementioned Thai ice cream and spicy candied ginger, plus cardamom flavored whipped cream (yo, cardamom is EXPENSIVE). Drinks are Thai salty-rum-limeade, cardamom eggnog, and hot & iced espresso with sweetened condensed milk.
If we're not entirely soused by that point, we'll head down to the local dive bar, Uncle Joe's, to toss back a few more.
Hope it doesn't rain!

p.s. If you're reading this and you feel like trekking out to Jersey City for a party, let me know. I'll throw another shrimp on the barbie for ya.

Posted at 01:07 PM

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