It was a grand occasion in the Li family household on Sunday for an epic once-in-a-lifetime event: the 150th birthday party! Once-in-three-lifetimes, to be exact – it was a springtime celebration of our mom’s 60th birthday, Irene’s upcoming 20th birthday, and our dad’s upcoming 70th. Obviously, 60+20+70 = BADASS PARTY TIME. And no badass party would be complete without roasting a 50 lb pig in the backyard.  Or grilling a 30 lb fish. Or baking 10 desserts, including 4 crack pies. Or making 3 kinds of homemade pickles. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of beef brisket, pulled chicken, barbecued ribs, sweet potatoes, mac & cheese, three bean salad, collard greens, and sandwich rolls from Lester’s Barbecue and three sheet trays of cornbread from Andy’s restaurant Harvest.  And an accompanying approximately 20 cubic feet of alcohol. How else would you celebrate such a once-in-three-lifetimes occasion?

By the way, the top photo and a few others below were taken by our awesome cousin Justin who rolled up from New York for the party. You can see some of his other party and guest photos here. Thanks Justin!

Now back to the food. Let’s start with the reason that big brother Andy rolled up at 7am with a rented mechanical spit roaster: Antonio the simultaneously adorable and grotesque but ultimately super delicious pig.  We’re doing a separate post covering all the pig roasting action complete with some oh-that’s-amazing photos and some oh-god-that’s-creepy -and-disgusting photos, so we’ll keep it low-key for this party overview.  Although no party utlilizing over 16 sticks of butter can really be called low key. Here’s Andy, Daniel, cousins Tyler and Josh, and friends David and Joyce admiring Antonio as he slowly rotates over a bed of charcoal.

By the way, we’re not entirely sure this setup was legal. Don’t tell, or you won’t get invited over for delicious pork sandwiches topped with spicy mustard, hoisin sauce, and homemade carrot, red onion, and cucumber pickles.

For a lusciously closeup view of the pickles, look no further. We’ll post the incredibly easy recipe soon. You’ll be spearing these refreshingly zesty pickled bits of goodness onto everything you eat in no time.

However, despite being the center of attention at the party, Antonio was only a tiny percentage of the available food bounty at the party. He only barely outweighed Tyrone, the enormous striped bass that Irene and I could barely hold up ourselves.

We stuffed Tyrone’s gaping pink belly with soy sauce-soaked smashed garlic, scallions, and ginger. I would like to be stuffed and marinated like so when I go.

Then we wrapped him up in a cozy burrito of banana leaves and took silly photos.

Then we rolled him in tin foil and tossed him onto the grill. He came out looking like this.

And eventually like this.

Tyrone was simply enormous. Which is what we’re going to look like after we finish the leftovers. There weren’t too many dessert leftovers though, which is what happens when you make red velvet birthday cake with cream cheese frosting (cream cheese+ butter+powdered sugar+ vanilla+ heavy cream = OH HOT DAMN) and Christina Tosi from Momofuku’s crack pies. Let’s just take a few looks at these insanely addictive, ridiculously rich, burnished golden pecan-pie-without-the-pecan circles of beauty. Let’s ogle from the top…

…and from the side, with berries…

…and surrounded by luscious pale yellow sponges of light and moist grapefruit yogurt cake.

Here are Irene and Daniel with cousin Tyler taking a quick break from the dessert table. But only a quick one.

We made sure to stay well hydrated too. Best way to do that is by sticking close to the large crystal bowl of sangria.

Or by this lovely pot of tea.

All in all, it was an absolutely wonderful day of friends, family, and food food food. We had loved ones come from as close as next door and as far away as New York, Chicago, and Hawaii. The final attendee list probably totaled around 70 people or so, but the house is still filled with enough leftovers to feed an army. Of  T-rexes.  Who haven’t eaten since the Pleistocene Era.

Luckily we’ve got plans for the leftovers. Once we’ve recovered from the food coma….

…which just might take another 150 years.

Hilarious. Say hello to the squirty cream and a slice of sweet potato pie.  But wait, dessert first? Nothing wrong with that, but let’s rewind a bit to cover this Southern-inspired feast from the beginning. Sadly, I failed to take photos of the slices of warm cornbread with chunks of sweet corn and a dusting of paprika. You’ll just have to imagine them stacked in cute little baskets and served with pretty rounds of colorful green, red, and yellow jalapeno-chile butter.

Next up, shared ramekins of creamy mac & cheese with a crunchy cheddar and ciabatta breadcrumb topping, served up baked, browned, and bubbling.

The main course was a stomach stuffing plate of pulled pork with homemade barbecue sauce on freshly baked rolls, dirty rice (made satisfyingly, mouthwateringly dirty with chicken livers sauteed in the trinity of green pepper, celery, and onion), and a light lemony cole slaw.

We had an extreme overabundance of pulled pork, which is never a bad thing, although this picture’s a bit extreme. WARNING: GRATUITOUS PULLED PORK PICTURE AHEAD.

I had fun playing mad scientist with all the spices and condiments in foodrambler’s kitchen to make the sauce.  Despite doing my best to write down the ingredients as I sprinkled, stirred, splashed and tasted, I completely failed to get a coherent recipe on paper.  If you don’t care about measurements or timing, here’s sort of what it looked like:

An Extremely Inexact Barbecue Sauce Recipe

What You Need:

2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 jalapenos
splash of vegetable oil
2 cans chopped tomatoes
maybe a 1 and 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
about a 1/2 cup of honey
maybe 1/2 cup of brown sugar
a few tablespoons english mustard
a looooooong squirt of ketchup
a splash of orange juice
a few shakes of chili flakes
some sprinkles of paprika
white pepper
black pepper
salt
umm…I’m forgetting stuff…oh well.

What You Do:

1. Saute onions, garlic, jalapenos in the oil until soft.

2.   Chuck in everything else.  Let it cook and reduce and thicken a bit. Play around with it. Taste, taste, taste. Add more of whatever if necessary.

3. Pour over your shredded and pulled pork and let simmer on the stove even more until tender as hell. Yum.

After this major carb load of cornbread, macaroni, rolls and rice along with a heaping scoop of pulled pork, most of our guests were suffering from serious Southern food coma. Which meant it was time to pull out our two intense sugar bomb desserts.

Option 1:  Sweet Potato Pie with a florette of Squirty Cream and a gentle snowfall of nutmeg.

Option Two: A delectably tacky and addictively delicious Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with canned pineapple and glace cherries from the twisted genius mind of Sara.

Just like my imaginary Southern grandma used to make.  I can just imagine her whipping out this beauty as we sip sweet tea (with generous shots of bourbon) in the gazebo under the magnolia trees and gossip about the neighbors.  Syrupy, sticky sweet and superb.

And in case you’re wondering, that plate was licked clean before you could say ‘Oh Grandma, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.’

Hooray! It’s time for another Rambling Restaurant Singles Night featuring an aphrodisiac dinner, so you know things are bound to get hot.  Particularly when you have five people in a veryverycozy kitchen and have fresh bread baking in the oven, a giant vat of soup bubbling on the stove, and ten large pork loins popping and fizzing boiling oil all over the place.

Really. Hot. Temperatures. Luckily, there was also a dining room full of really hot people (yes yes, as in extremely attractive) all mixing and mingling on the other side of the curtain.  To get their taste buds primed and hearts racing, we served four courses featuring ingredients thought to have aphrodisiac qualities.  Of course, both dessert courses featured what is inarguably the most guaranteed aphrodisiac of them all – a large quantity of alcohol. Which is how we started the night as well, with glasses of passionfruit, raspberry and rosebud fizz.

Each cocktail came with a little tag marked with a suit denoting where to sit for your first table, along with some silly icebreaker questions inside to spark conversation or incite passionate debate.  Our eleven brave men and eleven brave women scattered amongst four tables to wait for these shiny happy braids of dough…

…to toast to perfection into these lovely browned plaits with a soft and fluffy white interior.

Ripped into chunks wafting thin trails of steam, these rolls dipped and dived  into large bowls of rich and creamy Jerusalem Artichoke soup, garnished with a swirl of hazelnut pesto, a flourish of extra virgin olive oil and a twist of crushed black pepper.  My apologies for the blinding glare of reflective soup.

While soup was seductively sipped, Michelle and I played with the searing loins. Seriously, that joke kept us entertained throughout the entire dinner service. She and Sarah had busted their asses stuffing and assembling the pork loins over the last few hours and the marscarpone, sage, asparagus, and pancetta – filled rolls were works of art.

Take the pork loin, pound it furiously, and lay it out on a flat surface. Line up your fresh ingredients in a narrow strip lengthwise about two inches in from the edge.

Roll the flattened loin into a narrow tube, keeping the pile of ingredients towards the center, and secure with an array of torturesome looking toothpicks.

And then…ta-da! A beautiful, colorful, and flavorful cross-section of meat, vegetable, and cheese. It’s like all your  essential dietary needs in one satisfying bite.

Sear the loins (don’t be restrained here – make it hot and fiery!) for a minute or so on each side until lightly browned, then wack them into the oven until your desired level of doneness.

We served the pretty little meat spirals (prettier in person, I promise) with gravy, roasted potatoes, and a wilted spinach and toasted pine nut salad with a red wine-honey-english mustard dressing.

Following the main course, it was time for more table switching, more new friends, and of course, more food.  For dessert, we served a fantastic find of Sarah’s called a St. Valentine’s Syllabub – an old school English pudding, popular from the 16th-19th century, consisting of heavy cream, lemon, brandy, white wine, sugar, and…some other stuff.  Since the cream required a lot of arm action to whip and solidify, I handed the bowl over to the lone male in the kitchen and instructed him to ‘beat it until you get a bulky whiteness.’

Uh. Oops. Sexual innuendo so thick you could scoop it with a spoon.  And layer it with toasted almonds, juicy red raspberries, and top it with a tuile biscuit heart (in my defense, ‘bulky whiteness’ is exactly what you’re aiming for in the recipe. I did not make that up).

Such adorable tuile hearts, just the right consistency to break or crush or stomp into pieces, as foodrambler said. However, we should also remember that hearts can jiggle and wiggle, bewitch and bewilder, and they can most certainly intoxicate.  Especially when served as a Glow-In-The-Heart Gin & Tonic Jelly, as molded by the fabulously inventive jellymonger duo of Bompas & Parr.

Under normal light, it’s an architecturally impressive jello mold that packs the wallop of  a silky smooth G&T in one cool and condensed mouthful. Way classier than a cherry red gelatinous mess of jello shot in a Dixie cup.

But it gets so much cooler. Just add blacklight and it glows! It’s like magic! Especially after ingesting many spoonfuls of gin-soaked jello!

We gave one to each table to share and then split another one behind the scenes. And then another. By then, things were starting to get a bit hazy.

Which meant, time to head off to the pub!  A Rambling Restaurant Singles Night would never be complete without a proper visit to the pub.  At which point this story must end. Can’t give away any secrets! You’ll just have to come along next time…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/16/a-rambling-aphrodisiac-dinner-complete-with-searing-loins-and-gin-tonic-jelly/feed/ 6 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/09/random-food-porn-or-what-i-accomplished-in-sophomore-fall/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/09/random-food-porn-or-what-i-accomplished-in-sophomore-fall/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:27:42 +0000 irene http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2825 As the spring semester starts up, I find my mind wandering back to all the things I did in the fall. Remember the fall semester? Walking up the slope without getting my face windburned off? Four months of classes and pouring money into this lovely Ivy League institution? Learning about things like neuroscience, psychology and the legal system, human development, and so on? Brutalizing your savings account and learning how to bake flourless chocolate torte, braise pork belly, poach eggs, make hollandaise sauce, butcher a deer, french ribs, and so on? Becoming a shameless fan of the blood-spatter-style plating of sauce (pictured below)? Do I remember all that? Not really. Good thing I took pictures, and we’ve got recipes coming in future posts.

The whole flourless chocolate torte thing started for us with Daniel Barbolobew’s birthday. We had espresso in the first incarnation of this absurd dessert, but eventually cut it out, adding instead raspberry coulis underneath and chocolate ganache on top. Here’s another peek:

Another project we took on last semester was the celebrated and scrumptious pork belly. Lots of people think of stomach – tripe, really – when they hear us talk about pork belly. No, no, no, no. Don’t get crazy. All we’re talking about is the cut of meat – the tummy, not the stomach – from which the holy grail of meat and fat and tasty (BACON) comes.

Uncured, dry-cured, beer-braised, cider-braised, torched, roasted, we did it all. The only really important part is that we braised it for three hours. (The reason we know that’s important is that we failed to do it twice, and with terrible, chewy, tough, no-fun results). Here’s a look at the belly before curing: shiny, fatty, and, if you have good spatial reasoning, obviously identical to bacon.

And here’s a shot of the pork belly, after curing, browning, and a little bit of braising.

Next, as we all know, we love Julia Child (but not that whiny Julie!) and so when we came home from the farmer’s market with a dozen fresh eggs, it was obvious to us that we needed to learn to poach them. This is one recipe I’m definitely posting. There seems to be a few different groups of people when it comes to poached eggs – those who’ve loved them forever and ate them all the time as kids, those who have never had them, those who hate them because they don’t understand the beauty of runny yolk, and those, who, like me, have recently become completely obsessed. It doesn’t hurt that Daniel is an egg-poaching pro.

Look at those wispy sheets of delicious egg white. Daniel and JC (you know which one) have so much in common. I think that’s why I like him so much. Anyway, poached eggs are also great because you can eat them in any number of ways: with traditional breakfast food, smooshed into a mini pita, next to your standard meat and potatoes, or on a salad with a plop of caramelized onions and some hollandaise sauce. Who invented this shit: take an egg, and then cover it with more egg – but not the whole egg, just the best, fattiest, most disgustingly tasty part – and mix that egg with butter. Crazy.

Finally, I won’t rehash all the gory details of our deer killing/butchering/eating experience (but you can: here!), but let me tell you: venison is awesome. We made bourguignon, curry, stirfry, but more often than not, just panfried little bits of steak (or, alternatively, heaven) and ate them with our fingers. To save you all that nonsense, here’s a rather unattractive pictures of the most attractive thing we’ve done with that animal so far: balsamic glazed frenched rack of ribs. Check it:

That concludes our review of the fall semester. Already, the spring has been extremely fruitful (or, to be more accurate, meatful), so look out for a recap of our Deadpan Entree Smackdown, and our first Deadpan event!

i absolutely love markets. farmers markets, flea markets, even supermarkets in countries other than my own always bring a smile to my face no matter what kind of mood i’m in. things have been a teeny bit frustrating here in london what with the backwords hurdling werewolf chase of setting up a business. it’s been quite exciting but a bit exhausting, and going to the market is a great way to slow down and clear my mind.  we are sloooooowly moving towards signing our lease, but as non-citizens with no proof of UK employment, this process moves at about the brisk pace of the yearly expansion of finland‘s land mass thanks to post-glacial rebound. yes, post-ice-age isostatic recovery always provides me with an endless source of entertainment.

post-glacial rebound aside, i am here to talk about the endless excitement of markets. to tantalize your tastebuds and stimulate your imagination as to how ridiculously wonderful our apartment will be once we actually get it, i’ll show you some photos from last week’s broadway market. our hopeful new place is sandwiched right in between this phenomenal saturday market, chock full of independent food retailers and fashion stalls, and the famous sunday morning columbia road flower market. my first visit there will be to stock our new flat floor-to-ceiling with bouquets and plants and loveliness in bloom.

thus, we will have a one-two punch of back-to-back weekend marketing within a five minutes walk radius of our place. this idea makes me happy as a pig in sh*t.  or,  happy as me with a roasted bit of pig in bun in hand. miraculously, this exact item happened to be on sale at the first stall of the market. this poster, and the accompanying smell, called to me with  caressing words of love and promises of porky perfection.

yeah. for reals. i’m obsessed with this stand. they have a huge metal grill with a slowly rotating hog on a spit. when you order, they grab a ciabatta from a stacked pyramid of rolls in a cute wicker basket and slather it with homemade applesauce. it’s soft on the inside, but hardy enough to contain an massive helping of sandwich innards. then goes in a handful of roquette (which i assume =  rocket, which also = arugula…where are we, europe or something?) and then a generous serving of succulent moist pork. the crowning detail that swiftly buys my adoration? a few carefully selected pieces of crackly pork skin, artfully placed on top of this work of art.

HELLOOOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL.

my mind was sufficiently distracted by the sandwich for the immediate future, but i did manage to snap some more
photos of what the market that will soon become part of my saturday ritual. i particularly enjoyed the adorable aesthetics of the shortbread owl cookies from the cinnamon tree bakery.

i also appreciated their chalkboard sign detailing their use of organic ingredients. they had another sign explaining how all their products are handmade in their south london kitchen. cute and local! yes, that IS lovely.

other stalls sold vintage dresses, handmade jewelry, old-school track jackets, grandpa cardigans, and lots of other clothes that brought me straight back to the dolores park fixie hipsterfests in  the mission. chris and i were particularly amused by the ‘vintage’ mountain view high school t-shirt for sale halfway around the world. we also bought dolmas from the olive stand. yum.

we also gazed longingly at the imported italian olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar and eyed the gorgeous bouquets. excited to have a house to put these in.

our stomachs were stuffed full of pork, so i plan to go back next week to try the ghanian food at spinach and agushi. steaming woks at the market can only mean very good things.

once we get our tasty snack, we can sit by the canal, just a block or so from our house, and enjoy what will hopefully be lots of sunny weather.

i can’t wait! every saturday, we shall go to market, to market, buy a fat pig. is mother goose reading my mind? she may not have mentioned the applesauce and the ciabatta, but she certainly knows whats up with the pork products.  i’ll leave you with her words of wisdom…

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, dancing a jig;
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog;
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog;
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done.

hopefully soon we will have our apartment, and the jig dancing can begin. come visit me and off we will go to the market!