I really don't know exactly what the French title mean but thankfully there is google translate. I thought a French title would leave a better impression for my readers. In truth this is a fusion of French and Thai if you will.
I have always admire the sophistication of French cuisine. I have not attempt preparing French dishes until recently. It has more to do with the challenge of having to procure a lot of ingredients and ending up wasting a lot.
Amongst the food blogs/articles I regularly read Peter Hertzmann's is one. Recently I came across
his colorful article of this dish and immediately I want to give it a try. It is a rather complicated dish but his recount of the event fascinate me.
how difficult can it be if it starts off with boiling a dungeness crab?
the carrots, onion, and anise that served their purpose of boiling the crab - it is so wasteful for me...
preparing the curry oil is the easiest step
mix it up and give it some time for the olive oil to dissolve the flavor and color of the spices
these days i seldom bake so it is a rare occasion that I use my Kenwood (this is the UK Kenwood) mixer; i thought it would help making mayonnaise a snap
i follow peter's very economic recipe and to my amazement there is no mayonnaise; i ended up with egg and oil
It has been over twenty years since I last made mayonnaise. It was exactly the same result. How I forgot that experience. Last time after countless number of eggs and gallons of oil wasted I finally got mayonnaise. It is amazing with this common condiment and so few good articles of how to prepare it. The common mistake of making mayonnaise is too much egg - as I later realized.
i ended up resorted to using the whisk - it took me a long time to realize I had too much egg relative to oil
After over an hour of whisking I got my homemade mayonnaise. Why bother to make your own, you ask. The store bought mayonnaise is too sweet, salty, and sour for this dish as you can readily see in
the recipe.
after over an hour of trial and tribulation i finally have my home made maonnaise
heating up the oven to bake a few pieces of potato chips is quite silly - but I stuck to the recipe to a T, something I never do
assembling this dish requires a food preparation ring that i don't have - i sacrifice one of my can that i saved for nuts and bolts
preparing the avocado is relatively easy except forcing it though a sieve
it was 23:00 when the dish is finally done; the chips turned out less than good because of the uneven thickness of the potato slices - if i want to prepare more french dishes i need to get myself a
mandolin
This dish took over 5 hours of work to prepare. It is so labor intensive and certainly not a dish for most home cook unless you are entertaining a big party. For me it is a curiosity and it is worth the agony and effort. As always practice made perfect. I would make a few of it and learnt from my mistakes each time.
mistake #1 - reduce the serving size; i found my box of tart rings and it made assembling the dish infinitely easier
i decided not to bother with baking the chips for now; i just substituted with some asian shrimp chips
this is my second serving the next day - it is a lot smaller
third serving - i went back to the smaller white plate that is deeper
i learnt here that the avocado paste would not run had I freeze it instead of using it freshly made - next time...; also i found the recipe calls for too much mayonnaise with respect to the crab meat; i prefer just enough mayonnaise to bind the flaked crab meat together
here is what it looks like with my third attempt
The big crab that I brought yielded almost a pound of meat so I can be making this dish for the next few days and learn to perfect it incrementally
No comments:
Post a Comment