[Sca-cooks] Peanut butter and???

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Aug 10, 2006, at 1:27 AM, Sue Clemenger wrote:

> Gawd.  And I went to I-hop for dinner tonight.  My diet is  
> *pathetic*...I
> can't even *dream* of food that tasty....(anything involving pb and/ 
> or spam
> is straight out of an M Night Shamalan movie as far as I'm concerned)
> --Maire the seriously prosaic

Well, my Lobster Thermidor reference was straight (or as close as I  
could remember it, anyway) out of the Python "Spam" sketch. I  
probably wouldn't want to put a cheese-based sauce on lobster! ;-)

You remind me of the time I made a stuffed, roast chicken and brought  
it over to my mother's house. As I recall it was my standard mushroom  
stuffing (IOW, what I stuff into mushrooms, ordinarily), which is a  
fusion of mirepoix and a simple d'Uxelles mixture, so one part  
carrot, one part celery, two parts onion and two parts mushrooms, all  
brunoise diced (that's one-eighth-inch cubes to you), sweated in a  
saute pan with some butter till tender, with breadcrumbs or cooked  
rice (I forget which, either would work) to bind, some herbs,  
probably sage and parsley, and the heart, gizzard, and liver of the  
bird, all finely ground and worked, raw, into the stuffing.

Well, my niece was there, and she had some of this, and essentially,  
she went nuts. Eight or nine years later, she still talks about this  
as being one of the seminal culinary experiences of her life, and  
what really struck me was when she said, "I can't really explain it,  
but this is what I always imagined rich people eating." I sort of  
didn't know what to say to this, and finally all I could say was,  
"Well, maybe rich people lucky enough to have French grandmas that  
love them, anyway..."

Dinner for us was takeout rotisserie chicken (in New York this is  
often done by guys whose parents left China in 1947 or so, headed for  
various parts of Latin America, only to find that escaping oppression  
wasn't going to be so easy after all,  and ended up in the US, with  
brand-new fusion cuisines in hand). The approved local establishment  
for this apparently uses a rub/marinade of Chinese brown bean sauce,  
dark soy sauce, lime juice and Sazón Goya -- the latter in lieu of  
MSG, I suspect. They also make a hot sauce which, as best as I can  
figure out, is more lime juice, onion, green chiles, cilantro, and  
what might be more Sazón Goya, but more likely Adobo Seasoning, all  
whizzed up in a blender. It doesn't suck.

On the other hand, they make a pretty dreadful fast-food pork fried  
rice to go with their chicken, which seems to be made with Uncle  
Ben's Converted Rice, or some equivalent (and they make huge batches  
and keep it hot, which, of course, does wonders for the unlucky  
vegetables). The kid approves of this product; we get it for him and  
stick to the yucca fritos as being far more serious eating.

I also dry-sauteed a bag of mung bean sprouts in a little ginger,  
garlic, and shallot-infused peanut oil, with a little chopped  
scallion and a dash of dark soy sauce, but that was like a two-minute  
job while spouse and spawn were on their way home with the chicken.

We have a local IHoP, but we've only tried to get in there on Sunday  
mornings, and there's so much angst and always-imminent bloodshed as  
people try to get seated that it's not worth it.

Adamantius