Saturday, January 28, 2012

Minced Pigeon

Well, it's been a long time since I updated this blog, mostly because I just plain got busy in 2011, but also because I had misplaced some of the photos I took of dishes I had made.  This dish was made over a year ago, but I'm pretty sure I remember enough to do the write-up.

The minced pigeon recipe does not actually call for pigeon, but says that it was traditionally pigeon, but now is more commonly chicken.  I did find some sources of squab on-line, just in case.

You can see the rest of the ingredients are pretty straightforward, 2 chicken livers, chopped onion, mushroom, water chestnuts (fresh, not canned), peas, lettuce, and rice noodles.  The dry noodles are cooked until they "pop" and are golden, and are served around the dish.  diners wrap up noodles and meat in lettuce leaves and eat with their hands.  The sauce is a straightforward soy + stock + cornstarch model.

So how'd it work?


Well, the rice noodles never popped.  Some did, but 90% did not.  I can't say for sure what went wrong, but my bet is that the oil wasn't hot enough.  Next time I'll shoot for an oil temp of 400.  The internet says to test with a bit of noodle to see if it puffs instantly.  A great video can be found here.  The upshot was that most of the noodles were too hard, and a bit oily.

The chicken itself was good, but uninspired.  A sort of Chinese chicken a la King.  Don't think I was thrilled enough by the potential of this one to try again with the noodles.

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