quenelle

A quenelle is not just the shape you make ice cream when you wanna be fancy. It is also a creamed fish/meat dumpling. And I would not know this if it weren't for Mandy. As always, her words are beautiful and speak to me on a profoundly emotional level:

"Sichuan cuisine, one of mankind's most glorious, second-to-none cultural riches that - whether a physical location or not - should be recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site."

Her ode to water boiled fish just about sums it up. It's a staple that can't be overlooked. One that I occasionally let slip from the front of my mind, but when someone pushes it back to the forefront, I obsess. Like hot pot, this was something that the rents put on the dinner table so frequently, I'm pretty sure I was just a human bag of chili oil as a child. Add being fed delicious Chinese food every evening to the list of things I will also not take for granted.

So anyways... Mandy's quenelles..

...were so fucking good.

I mostly hate making anything that involves dirtying more than two dishes/pots but these were well worth having to pull out the food processor and strainer. Also having Amy to talk through the steps while she made her version on the other side of facetime.

The fish dumplings, so fluffy, so tender. The creamy oily Sichuan sauce was like an aggressive fragrant curry. I could drink it like a broth.

Substitutions made:

skipped the shrimp for all swai (when I couldn't find cauliflower)

no scallions because they looked wilty and sad at the market

turkey stock instead of chicken stock

a dried shiitake instead of mushroom powder

apricot jam

spicy brown mustard instead of dijon

skipped the pouring oil entirely and just dolloped homemade chili oil on top

also dolloped cilantro oil

I neglected to make rice until the plating was done and somehow still managed to pace myself through two dumplings while making the quickest (slightly mushy) pot of rice I've ever made for the third fluffy guy I happily devoured.

I'm so full. And yet I'm salivating just reminiscing about three hours ago. *dreamy sigh*