Text 7785, 96 rader
Skriven 2013-12-10 16:42:15 av Ruth Haffly (1:396/45.28)
   Kommentar till text 7670 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: XB, XO 556
==================
Hi Michael,

 ML> No idea. We were stuck for a place for lunch before a
 ML> gig; it wasn't anyplace we had been before or had planned
 ML> in advance.
 RH> So you knew better not to suggest it if anybody wanted a meal there
 RH> before they went belly up. Once burned,..........................

 ML> To give it credit, it was out in noplaceland, where only
 ML> the desperate would stop, so there was little incentive
 ML> to produce excellence, or even edible food. I don't

Sometimes places like that are winners, sometimes losers. We found a
good bbq place just into western NC coming in from TN last year. It was
about 4 miles from the state line, way too far to go for a repeat meal
unless we happened to be in the area. But we would go back, if we were
closer.

 ML> recall the details of everyone else's food, but my roast
 ML> beef tasted like putrefied potroast; worse, the stuff you
 ML> would pick out of your teeth after eating that. The next
 ML> time I went past, some years later, there was no trace of
 ML> the restaurant.

And no tears shed. Back in 2007, we went up to the Swansboro (NC) area;
we were living in Savannah at the time. We'd not been to visit since
1985--found that one of our favorite places was still going strong
(T&W's Oyster Bar), another had closed down (Seafarer's Restaurant) and
a third (Mooore's BBQ, up in New Bern) had expanded big time but the
quality of food seemed to have dropped somewhat. Captain Charlie's in
downtown old Swansboro was still going; our first apartment was right
beside the kitchen side.

 RH> The way I fugured, if Steve couldn't eat it, it was too hot. Then too,
 RH> you may have a higher heat tolerance than he does.
 ML> I have a higher heat enjoyment than most; tolerance I don't
 ML> know about, though I suspect it to be relatively high.
 RH> I don't know if you would have enjoyed those sloppy joes or not. We
 RH> figured it wasn't a waste of money to pitch them if nobody could eat
 RH> them.

 ML> For the rest of you mere mortals, dilution would be the key.

Nothing in the house could have diluted it enough to be edible; it was
easier just to write that meal off as a should have never happened one.

 ML> XO Sauce
 RH> Is there any particular dish this goes with or is it a multi purpose
 RH> sauce like the standard white sauce (or cream of soup) in American
 RH> cooking?

 ML> It's a source of concentrated umami - you might dip bits that
 ML> needed a little kick into it; another use would be to pile
 ML> onto delicate food, such as vegetables, or bland food, such
 ML> as noodles. Or it could be the main ingredient in fried rice
 ML> (conpoy fried rice uses shredded dried scallops as the main
 ML> flavoring, but a premade XO sauce would provide much the same
 ML> effect).

I see, and will appreciate it more next time I see it on a menu.


 ML> By the way, XO stands for extra old, a designation used for
 ML> some of the finest Cognacs and other brandies. During one of
 ML> the waves of Asian fashion that favored Western things
 ML> (actually more an idolatry of Western things), someone or
 ML> other became familiar with Hennessy and Courvoisier XO as
 ML> the pinnacle of European culture and bestowed the designation
 ML> on this sauce as the pinnacle of the Asian, which it might
 ML> well be. I've been known to eat a cup of it with my dim sum,
 ML> which pretty well eats up the profits of the restaurant. What
 ML> I do let them know beforehand is that if they gave me a
 ML> similar amount of roasted chile oil, they could satisfy me
 ML> just as well for 1% of the price.

I may have had it in something but not known or appreciated at the time.
I'll know better now.


 ML> XO Sauce
 ML> cat: Chinese, condiment, shellfish, pork, celebrity
 ML> yield: 1 large batch, maybe 5 c

It actually looks easy--if you take your time to do it right. Would it
freeeze well?

---
Catch you later,
Ruth
rchaffly{at}earthlink{dot}net  FIDO 1:396/45.28


... 90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.

--- PPoint 3.01
 * Origin: Sew! That's My Point (1:396/45.28)