[Sca-cooks] Things that are like other things (WAS RE: Okay, it's that time again...)

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 11, 2007, at 10:37 PM, Mike C. Baker wrote:

>> 	Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp Rolls -- the cheating dim sum version
>
> Which reminds me, Adamantius et al.:
>
> How does this differ from rumaikis / roumakee / similar?
>
> And yes, I've had at least three different variations that all claimed
> the Roumaki name -- not any of which were all that similar, and no two
> of which were even equal in terms of ingredients.  Most include  
> bacon of
> some form, two were with shrimp, two with probably chicken liver, and
> the first / best was breaded over bacon-wrapped chicken liver and then
> deep-fried, although none of the rest have been breaded, or anything
> more than sautéed.

I always assumed rumaki was originally a Japanese thing; Wikipedia  
says it's Hawaiian; the earliest variants I believe I encountered  
were chicken liver and bacon, water chestnut and bacon, and liver and  
water chestnuts, with bacon, rolled up and skewered, marinated in soy  
sauce, and broiled or grilled.

Cantonese bacon-wrapped shrimp are a relative of the standard modern  
Chinese-American Butterfly Shrimp with Bacon, but also of a variety  
of stuffed seafood dishes that involve a shellfish of some sort (say,  
an oyster), sitting in a black mushroom cap, topped with a stuffing  
suitable for wontons or other filled dumplings, wrapped in caul fat,  
rolled in cornstarch or dipped in batter, and deep-fried. One variant  
is a large shrimp, split and butterflied, filled with a wonton-type  
stuffing mixture, wrapped in either caul fat or bacon, rolled in  
cornstarch, and deep-fried.

We've done these before, and they're magnificent, but for a large  
group, they're kind of hard to fry -- because they're stuffed, they  
take longer to cook, and when you are frying three or four at a time  
in a wok with people peering over your shoulder for the entertainment  
value, and to pounce on the finished shrimp when cooked, it's easy to  
miscalculate and leave them with raw centers.

Probably the thing to do, when making them in quantity, is to fry  
them once, then either finish/reheat them in the oil before serving,  
or finish them on a cookie sheet in the oven.

The other thing to do is make them smaller, which is kind of  
difficult and messy, so what dim sum houses in my area have been  
doing for about the past 20 years is making the stuffing from shrimp,  
water chestnuts, a little pork fat for moisture, ginger, scallion,  
and corn starch, and roll that in a half-slice of bacon, giving a  
cylinder roughly 3/4 inch in diameter and an inch in height. This is  
what we'll be doing for New Year's.

For some reason, they are traditionally served in restaurants with  
some pretty fake mayonnaise; I'm wondering if this is an application  
of English Salad Cream in Hong Kong: this is a slightly thin,  
slightly sweet, very lemony version of mayonnaise. They just call it  
Lemon Sauce, but it's nothing like the Lemon Sauce that is sometimes  
used as a variant on sweet-and-sour sauce.

Adamantius





"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04