Wheel! Of! FISH!

Welcome to Wheel's Kitchen, fool.

2002-04-07 - 5:41 p.m.

Ah, grand day. My greatest regret is that I missed seeing a flotilla of cardboard flotational devices being cermonially dumped into the bay thanks to a bunch of damned farmers who coerced the bureaucrats and nogoodniks of the federal government into playing God with the time industry.

Daylight savings is simply an excuse for people to be monumentally screwed up for a few days. After I realized I wasn't going to make the opening of the Cardboard Regatta, I playfully spent the next hour resetting time pieces and trying to figure how in the BLUE HELL you adjust the time on a watch with two buttons, one reading "Alarm" and one reading "Mode". Hitting both makes the watch beep progressively louder, and if you keep jamming on the buttons, strange icons appear on the watchface, including a lowercase C in a series of concentric semicircles and an A with a comet tail.

I think my watch was designed in Dis as special punishment for the people who craft employment applications and -- as a poignant timely jibe -- tax forms. God knows how I ended up with it. It just turned up in my room one day. I assumed it had been left here by my friend Tommyknocker until he swore that it wasn't his. Maybe I did the Devil a favor recently and this is his way of repayment.

Better than a solid gold fiddle, I guess.

So, I've decided in my munificence to share with you the recipe for a romantique dinner for two which I tried last night and which I heartily recommend to anyone seeking the healthy diversions generally associated with an evening which begins with a romantique dinner for two.

This recipe is recommended for lovers, for desperate people trying to look suave on a cheap "eat at home" date, or simply for obsessive lunatics who find a deep and abiding joy in the nimble use of chopsticks.

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WHEEL'S 1,000 TREASURES RICE

You will need:

1. A two quart saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, preferably Teflon-lined and VERY clean. Spotless, like. A great deal of this dish goes into the preparations, so be prepared. And the tastes are all subtle and such, so you don't want lingering oils from last night's Chef Boyardee's Dinosaur Pasta with Meatballs messing things up.

2. Quite possibly, one or two small frying pans. Once again, Teflon is very desirable.

3. A few nice clean bowls, glass being particularly favored for its crystalline beauty and its easy cleaning.

4. A very sharp knife. Ginsu-style. You should be able to bring this knife down across someone's hand and not have them notice until they get up and leave their fingers behind.

5. A number of measuring implements, a few nice towels, maybe some chef's garb. All cleaned up and laid out in a manner that will be aesthetically pleasing when the recipient of the meal sees all your cookery implements laid out and says "Oooh, what are you making?" That's when you grin easily and say "You'll see." A slyly raised eyebrow or a cocky wink are allowable here. Then shunt them off to do something entertaining for a while.

* Note: This only works in actual relationships. The person being cooked for should have their own room and a number of books or a computer or some other way to pass the time. Do NOT invite someone over for dinner, show them the stuff you're going to be using to cook, then wink and lock them in a bedroom for a few hours.

Ingredients:

Ah, here's the first trick. You can use practically anything in 1,000 Treasures Rice, as long as its flavor is not overwhelming, it can be prepared and stored easily, and it can be chopped up into very delicate bits without causing a mess or ruining it. Tomatoes are not recommended, since they get pulpy in really tiny bits, for instance. Garlic would be a bit startling. Sweet onions are fine, though.

For example, for last night's dish I used:

1 cucumber

1 Florida sweet onion

1 green bell pepper

2 carrots

And:

1 pack of SmartBeef™ strips

1 Florida sweet onion (again)

- I used organic vegetables from our local healthy emporium, the Granary (which received a write-up in Eclipse's most recent journal ... be sure to visit her diary!). This is not JUST a matter of eco-concern and smugreenness. Organic vegetables tend to taste better. You can really notice what an impact all that wax and crap has on the nature of vegetables. An organic cucumber is a bright and alluring green on the inside, and smells GOOD when you cut it open. It has a real TASTE, none of this watery nonsense that gets passed off as cucumbers at the supermarkets of the world. Let that be a lesson.

- The veggies were washed, peeled, and washed again and then very carefully cut down into tiny, tiny chunklets, each just big enough to qualify as a "morsel" and not to disintegrate. The carrots were peeled (as was the onion, of course), and only half the pepper was used.

- All the chopped veggie bits were transferred to a bowl, and then they were dashed with ginger (I used ground ginger since my ginger root had gone spongy) and a touch of hoisin sauce (just a touch - any strong sauce, like soy or basalmic vinegar, will do, and the barest hint will nicely offset the fresh vegetableness), and then mixed by hand (well-washed, by golly) and put into the refrigerator (recently cleaned and with a nice box of baking soda to kill any lingering odors -- of course, your refrigerator should be like that ALL the time, not just when you're deep in the throes of cookery).

After setting aside the vegetables, I broke out my rice bin and dug up:

2 cups of Mahatma long-grained rice

3-3/4 cups of Brita-filtered water

2 tsp. of extra virgin olive oil

And then put the water and oil to boil in the big saucepan, and ... hell, you should know how to make rice. Anyway, I made sure to use just barely enough water to make the rice tender. I let it sit for fifteen minutes on low heat, stirred it, and gave it five more minutes to make sure it was double-plus extra fluffy. And piping hot.

While the rice was cooking, I got going on the other burner with the beef strips:

- The SmartBeef™ I used was a mixed bag. I got it at the Granary because I really like beef strips and there was something in textured soy proteins tailored to look like stir-fry ready steak strips that appealed to my cyberpunk soul. It ended up tasting a wee bit like a really cheap bag of beef jerky -- just in TASTE, not in texture. The texture was quite spot-on. But you could feel the lingering Slim-Jimmy taste in your mouth after that first bite. Odd. -- and the preparations process was kind of gruesome and Lovecraftian. Why DOES soy product, even textured and tweaked to look like beef, drip red fluids? WHAT RED FLUIDS ARE IN SOY? I think it was actually Soylent Green. Which actually sounds very eco-conscious, doesn't it?

- At any rate, I sautéed the faux-beef strips with minced sweet onion (these were DAMN good onions -- locally grown, and when you took them out of the bag there was a thick, sweet onion smell that hit you right in the taste buds. Deeelightful.) in olive oil (just a drench, not too much) for about five minutes in a little Teflon skillet over medium heat, until the almost-beef was browning a bit. Then I added a spoonful or two of water (I anally decided to use Brita-filtered water for this whole exercise, in my desperate quest for True Neutral cooking) and covered it up to let it sit for another minute or so on low heat.

- I took it off the heat and let it cool for a bit by dumping it onto a ceramic plate. Then I cut each bit up into tiny morsels and transferred them all to a glass bowl with a dash of soy sauce. In retrospect, the beef strips would've been better served cooked in some strong tasting sauce for a long time. That might've driven out the unnatural aftertaste while not losing that nice nearly-beef texture.

Now all was prepared, so the best part of 1,000 Treasures Rice was at hand. I spread out a towel and set two nice black ceramic bowls with wide rims out, and then got my rice pot over there, the bowl of chilled vegetables, and the steaming minced beef and onions.

- One tiny scoop of rice, say a large spoonful, followed by the careful placement of a vegetables and a bit of beef or two.

- Flatten it down a bit with the back of the spoon, more rice, more veggies, a touch more beef and onions.

- Keep layering it in like this, going in a spiral around the bowl rather than just laying it all in the center, until you have a bowl full of rice and goodies.

- Flatten it down nicely, lay a last few treasures on top, and then put a nice big scoop of rice on top. Cover ALL the tidbits completely.

- In my case, I used my hands to shape the rice into a neat, smooth ball. I had clean hands, and besides, this meal was destined for the mouth of a girl who has had a lot of contact with my hands. You might want to use a big spoon, however.

- I garnished the bowls by wrapping the long leafy stalks from the tops of the carrots around the smooth mound of rice for a pretty little foliage effect, but any garnish will be nice. I think a twist of orange and a sprig of mint would look neat.

This dish MUST be eaten with chopsticks, because if you eat it with a spoon or fork there's not much magic or enchantment. You just chunk out all the carefully laid morsels with your metal shovel and lose all the joy of discovery.

The best thing is to find the morsels and then feed them to each other with your chopsticks.

Everybody: "Awwwwww!"

(Actionhero adds: "*WRETCH* *SPEW* *REVERSE PERISTALSIS*")

The meal should be served with candlelight and wineglasses full of some passionately-colored beverage. I personally used R.W. Knudsen's Mango Fandango Spritzer, followed by Reed's Cherry Ginger Ale. Good vintage, smooth oaky finish. Also, it'd be nice if you had some lacquered chopsticks instead of the leftover wooden pull-apart ones from Cang Tong III or Mr. Chen's Magic Buffet.

Even if you're eating Wheel's 1,000 Treasures Rice by yourself, it's a delight! Make a game of it ... find out how many bits of cucumber you can dig out in 10 minutes, and then try to break that record!

The most notable thing about this meal, aside from its delicate preparation and romantic nature, is that it is VERY filling. You will find it quite hard to finish, because when you eat rice a few grains at a time looking for bit of onion or tiny niblets of beef, that rice fills quickly.

"Now, wait a moment," I can hear some of you crying, "I have very inactive taste buds, and eating a big bowl of rice with tiny vegetables in it doesn't sound at all satisfying!"

First of all, shut up. You're a Philistine. You incompenent yahoo! How dare you question my taste?! You SICKEN me! YOU MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT, YOU PUSILLIANIMOUS WEASEL!

Second, you may be right. The rice is a delight of subtleties and thick with romance, but it might lack the direct assault on the taste buds that some people require with their meals.

As a side dish, then, might I recommend:

WHEEL'S DOUBLE-CRUNCHY PAN SIZZLED GARLIC-PEPPER CHICKEN

You'll want:

2 leg quarters (Mmmm. Leg quarters. The nourishing, juicy thigh AND the easy-to-hold drumstick, all in one handy package. I used Wellington Farms Free Range Chicken, because although I love eating chicken, I'm also becoming quite fond of chickens, and I don't want to think about eating one that lived its entire life locked in a miserable cage, wracked with terror and snorting the shit dropped on it from the dozens of cages above it, pecking the eyes of its neighbors, waiting to get big enough to die. Also, Free Range chicken has thicker skin. Mmmm.)

Anywhere from 1/3 to 1-1/2 cups of extra virgin olive oil

12 garlic cloves, peeled and washed (or just take the easy way out and buy a jar of peeled and washed garlic cloves)

1/2 a minced green Bell pepper

Garlic salt and lemon pepper to taste.

- Put a good portion of the oil in a Teflon skillet over low-medium heat and when you can feel the heat with your bare hand held a foot over the pan, but before the oil starts actually sizzling, put the garlic and pepper in.

- Let it sit there for a bit longer and crank the heat up untl you can see tiny bubbles in the oil and just hear a sort of subvocal sizzling.

- Drop the chicken in, tucking the pieces in next to each other, cover the pan and let it sit on just-shy-of-medium heat for about 10 minutes.

- Check it often, and lift it to test the underside with a knife to check the progress. Don't want this chicken getting tough.

- Flip it over and cook it the same way on the other side. You'll want both sides just barely golden and fulsome with juice.

- Scrape the garlic and peppers, which should be quite soft, brown and juicy by this point, in under the chicken, and crank the heat up a bit. Cover the pan and occupy your time otherwise for a while. Try reading "The Demolished Man", by Alfred Bester.

- You should hear popping sounds soon. That will be the fat on the chicken and the garlic buds interacting in the hot oil and bursting into a delicious garlicky-oily schmutz which will coat the chicken. Make sure it doesn't burn. That'd be sad.

- Crank the heat back down, dust the chicken with the spices and remaining oil, and flip it over a few times to really get that crushed, fried garlic all over it.

- Let it sit on low heat for about 10 more minutes, covered.

- Serve with something relatively neutral, like, oh, say, rice with tiny vegetables in it. Just make sure not to drop the chicken on top of the carefully-sculpted rice bowl. Put it on a separate plate, and keep some nice soft crusty bread handy to soak the spicy, tasty oil off your lips. This chicken will be juicy, crispy, and garlicky-fried. It'll bring tears to your eyes. You'll be sucking the bones trying to get the last drops of goodness out of it. You'll be begging for more. Which will be sad, since you'll be the one who cooked it.

I don't think I'll ever get a cookbook contract. The footnotes alone would break the publisher's budget.

- Welcome to Wheel's Kitchen

"Tell me who you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. A cannibal, more than likely."