Hors-d'œuvres

[Annie Subjunctive]

Hors-d'œuvres are really a lost art in contemporary America.  You see, things on a Ritz cracker just don't count.

The phrase hors d'œuvre comes from the French for outside of the (body of) work.  Hence, for food to qualify as an hors d'œuvre, there must be a body of work outside of which it can exist.  When dinner comes from a box or a can or a delivery man, there is no real work involved and thus the food you serve outside of the main meal can't really be called an hors d'œuvre.

And a link to complete the snottiest dobie of all time.

[Jonathon the Dragonator]

What I love about French is that it can take a perfectly good Latin word like opera and turn it into this almost unrecognizable form like œuvre. Beautiful.

[Anna]

for Jon.  

[Jonathon the Dragonator]

Merci.

[rivka]

*hands Annie spray-cheese on a cracker*

Here, taste this. It's delish!

[Jonathon]

Ooh! I love squeezy cheese!

[Annie Subjunctive]

Spray fromage?

[Anna]

SACRILEGE !  

[Porter]

When dinner comes from a box or a can or a delivery man, there is no real work involved and thus the food you serve outside of the main meal can't really be called an hors d'œuvre.

Yeah.  That's enough work all no its own.

*opens a can of Pringles and sits in front of the tube*

[saxon75]

I bet on nights when she knows she has the whole place to herself, Annie secretly settles in for a night of Friends and Easy Mac.

[imogen]

Annie's tagline works well with her last post.




Speaking of food, we met with our wedding caterer last night.  Annie, I wish you had been there so some-one else could have been drooling over the menus as much as I was.  (Cocktail food - but amazingly delicious and yummy cocktail food.  The caterer is our big expense.)

[Trisha]

Reminds me that one of the questions Ken Jennings didn't get was "What is Rumaki".

[RRR]

This seems like a good thread in which to mention that I've been wanting sticky rice ever since I had some for the first time at that Chinese restaurant at Kamacon. I wonder how you make it.

[Eukairos the Noemonator]

Just straight sticky rice?  It's pretty easy.

1.  Buy sticky rice (I'm sure you know this, but it's different from other varieties of rice)
2.  Measure out however much you want, say, 2 cups to begin with, put it in a bowl, and cover it with water.  Let it soak anywhere from 3 hours to overnight.
3.  Dump the stickyrice in a steamer basket, if you've got one.  If you don't, line your steamer with cheese cloth or something so the rice doesn't fall through the holes, and dump the rice in that.  
4.  Turn on the heat under the steamer.  When you start seeing wisps of steam rising up through the rice, cover it.
5.  Steam it for a while, flipping the mass of rice once or twice as it steams.  When it's done (ie, when you can pinch off some of the rice and roll it into a ball from anyplace on the mass of sticky rice), turn it out onto a tray or plate, and use a spoon to spread it out and let a lot of the heat escape.
6.  If you have a sticky rice basket, transfer it to that, and it'll keep for a day or so.  If you don't it'll get crusty before that, but the interior will still be fine.  It's good hot or at room temperature, but I woudn't refrigerate it.

[Annie the Masticator]

Calrose rice is my favorite for sticky rice.  Last time I went to buy some, I could get either 5 pounds for $4.00 or 50 pounds for $10.00.  Mathematically, I just couldn't let it go.

Unfortunately, this was a week before I moved home for the summer and I ended up having to move 50 pounds of rice.  My mom won't touch the stuff, but thought it was silly for me to move it again.  So, I moved back without it and now I keep having longings for the 50-pound bag of Calrose rice lying there unloved 230 miles away.

[John the Saxecutioner]

I grew up on Japanese rice, and for the longest time I didn't understand why Chinese rice was considered "sticky rice"--in comparison to Japanese rice, Chinese rice is quite loose.  I don't think I had any rice that wasn't Chinese or Japanese until I was a teenager.

Noemon's method for sticky rice is much more involved than my method.  My method:

1.) Dump some rice (I usually go with Calrose when I'm feeling cheap or lazy, or the more expensive stuff from the Japanese store when I've got the time to get over there) into the pot from the rice cooker.
1a.) If I feel like it, wash the rice by filling the pot with water and then dumping out the water (retaining the rice).  Repeat this step until the water is mostly clear or until I get tired of it, whichever comes first.
2.) Fill the pot with water until the water level is about an inch above the rice (I just measure it by putting my fingertip at the top of the rice and waiting until the water reaches my first knuckle).
3.) Put pot in rice cooker.
4.) Close rice cooker.
5.) Turn on rice cooker.
6.) Wait until rice cooker turns itself off.
6a.) Wait another 15 to 20 minutes, if I am willing to wait (makes cleanup easier as the rice won't stick to the bottom of the pot as much).
7.) Eat rice.

[Eukairos the Noemonator]

That's how I make, say, Jasmine rice, but sticky rice is different.  Maybe I'm thinking of a different thing than what you're talking about though.  Lao sticky rice is eaten by hand.  There's kind of a loaf of it, either on a platter or in a basket, that all the people eating it sit around, pinching off bits of the loaf rolling them between thumb and forefinger with one hand until they have a ball or disk, dipping said ball or disk into whatever stick yrice dip you're having, or lap, or whatever, and eating them.  Is this the same thing you're talking about?

[John the Saxecutioner]

Um, no.  To me, sticky rice is just rice that sticks together (like Japanese rice) instead of the grains falling where they may (like basmati rice or Uncle Ben's).  Although, there's a Japanese dish that's called onigiri which is basically just a ball (although it's usually sort of triangle-shaped) of rice.  It may or may not have a seaweed wrapper or some kind of filling, like dried fish.  I usually eat onigiri with my hands, although I'm not sure if that's completely proper.

Which one were you talking about, Sarah?

[RRR]

I think what I'm talking about is closer to what Noemon is describing. It was a block of rice with, I think, mushrooms in the middle. Maybe sausage. And it was wrapped in some kind of leaves.

Now I need a steamer.

[Eukairos the Noemonator]

If you don't already have one, you'll probably have best results with one that is basically just a big, tapering pot that has a bell-like flare at its mouth.  You buy the bamboo sticky rice basket seperately.  You can get both at pretty much every SE Asian grocery I've ever been to, and they're relatively inexpensive.

[RRR]

Like this?

Do you heat it on the stove?

[Eukairos the Noemonator]

Yep, that's exactly the type of pot and basket I'm thinking of.  I have a set that looks just like it sitting on my stove at the moment.

And yeah, you have to put it on a burner--it isn't a powered device.

[Annie the Masticator]

I finally got my long-coveted bamboo steamer for making dim sum, and then realized that I needed a wok in which to place it.  Big frying pans don't so much work.

Oh, well.  I have a good crepe pan - I guess I can't have everything.

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

Are we talking about rice dumplings here?