Saturday, March 20, 2010

Spring Breakin': Snowed in with Boys

Spring break is upon us! Alas, although it was 70 degrees yesterday, we now have several inches of snow, and, as the old song goes, it's showing no sign of stopping. First day of spring, my ass.

Anyway, since Laine is out of town for the weekend, I took our Hipster Puppy, Sonny Chiba Las Vegas, to hang out with my boyfriend, Shaun, at his house. This has proven to be an exciting undertaking, especially given Chiba's boundless enthusiasm with regard to snow. In this respect, she is a better Southerner than any of the rest of us.

No, really.

Also, there's Shaun's roommate, Joel. Below I have attempted to summarize Joel's personality in Blingee format:

Joel
Joel has become one of Chiba's favorite people, for obvious reasons.

There's also Phillip, who has begun mimicking Chiba's every move. The likenesses are striking!




Amidst all this excitement, we all were still able to restrain ourselves long enough to watch what may well be the greatest movie...

that can bear the banner "Sci-Fi Original."

What Ice Spiders lacked in coherence and plausibility, it more than made up for with copious bro-speak and insane costume choices. Also, it was totally appropriate for this godawful weather.

While waiting to replenish our movie stash, we decided to cook an epic, vegetarian-friendly feast. Since Laine picked some spring onions while it was warm out, I decided to use them for a gigantic stir fry and some scallion pancakes. Scallion pancakes, it should be noted, are a HUGE point of contention between me and my homeland. Short of making them for oneself, they are nearly impossible to find in Chinese restaurants below the Mason-Dixon line. If you have ever eaten a scallion pancake, then you realize that this is totally fucking insane. I mean, it's not like we don't like fried things. For those of you in similar situations, observe.

This recipe is basically how I make scallion pancakes, but I use more flour (you definitely want thick dough for these) and I usually make them a little smaller so they cook faster. And, on this occasion we blew off the store-bought green onions in favor of...

Excellent!

So, we started with all this stuff:


2 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp yeast+1 tsp sugar in 1/2 c warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
a whole mess of (soaked, scrubbed, and minced) WYLD SKALLYNS

We put 1 c flour in a bowl with the yeastysugarywater and stirred it until blended. Then we put the other 1 c flour in another bowl with the salt, the vegetable oil, and another 1/2 c warm water, and mixed that up, too. (We still had to add a few pinches of flour to get the stuff to bind right.) Next, we mashed both doughs together and let the newly-formed giant gob of dough rest for about half an hour. When we came back, the dough was much nicer, so we rolled it out, spiraled it into a log, and cut said log into 1-inch slices. We mushed those slices into circles, rubbed some oil on them, and sprinkled them with more WYLD SKALLYNS than you could possibly imagine. We pinwheeled the circles up to mix the SKALLYNS in, then mashed them flat again before pan-frying them on medium-high heat. Ultimately, they looked like this:

If you eat these (and you really, really should), it is imperative that
you dunk them in vast amounts of Bragg's Liquid Aminos. It's the law!

For the stir fry, Shaun used this recipe. This time, we substituted seitan for meat, used green bell peppers instead of peas, put in WAY more garlic, and used baby shiitakes instead of regular shiitakes. Oh yeah, and WYLD SKALLYNS!

11 baby shiitake mushrooms, plumped in water
(this keeps them from absorbing too much oil)
3 tbsp peanut oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten with a pinch of kosher salt
1/4 c minced carrot
1/4 c WYLD SKALLYNS, minced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
pinch red chile flakes
1 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce (Bragg's would work here, too!)
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
3 c long-grain rice
1 c cubed seitan, marinated 1 hr in Bragg's Liquid Aminos and honey

Here's the work in progress:


And ready to eat!


Spring break is great for a lot of reasons, but getting to cook leisurely is one of the best.

Particularly if you're able to use this as an excuse to threaten those around you with a rolling pin.

Another great thing is that I get to wear outfits that are just not okay for work--or, in this case, most social situations. Today, for example, I wore one of my favorite dresses. It is so garish and psychedelic that is has been known to rob people of their vision. Chiba, however, is impervious to its powers:

Dress: Dynasty, via Cheap Thrills
Belt: Stolen from Shaun
Socks: Mossimo
Shoes: Mudd

But, hey, there's a lot of scary dresses in my closet, and there's a whole week of Spring Breakin' ahead of us! Stay tuned for our next installment:


3 comments:

  1. Mmm...laobing! Haven't had that in ages. Have you two seen this:

    http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/

    Thought you two might find it interesting, at least on the food-end.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks cool--thanks, Andrew!

    ReplyDelete
  3. snowmarx is amazing. obviously.

    ReplyDelete