Slightly better than yesterday, I was more organized and didn't have to run around in our little kitchen not knowing what my next step would be, meanwhile burning the food on the stove. Although, I could have cooked everything in a more sensible order so that I didn't have to put the onions back to the saucepan where I just cooked the mushrooms only to find out that I should have put the beef into the mushroom saucepan and let the onions simmering in another pan. The problem is, I don't have a third pan! So when I say that my cooking would be "made-do" not only because I don't measure according to the recipes and don't have the correct herbs, I'm also dealing with limited equipments here. Nonetheless, I don intend to change the herbs situation by reminding myself to shop for herbs before I cook next time so that I won't have to put oregano in everything.
Some notes about this dish. I didn't find small white onions, but one big one worked just as well. And I must say, which I forgot to mention yesterday, how wonderful the idea was to buy sliced mushrooms instead of regular ones. Saved so much time!!! About the meat, thank God today's beef is in a much better shape than yesterday's chicken. Only perhaps I could have cooked it a bit longer since it was not as tender as I imagined. Then again, Chinese and American may have different standard of beef's tenderness, which is why my roommate said it was fine and loved the dish. Since I'm all about proximity I must mention again that I do not have French white wine but used Chinese White cooking rice wine instead. Now that I'm looking back at the recipe, I also realize that when making the sauce, I was not generous enough with the cornstarch, despite the fact that the front of my shirt is marked with a thin white trail and my struggles to open the cornstarch box properly; which, by the way, is not yet properly closed either. (I was not very good at opening new packages today; I didn't know how to use the can opener to open the chicken broth and Emily did it for me.) Furthermore, I used water instead of chicken broth to mix the cornstarch! Oh NO! That's why I still have some broth left in the can!!! Duhhhhh!!!
Oh well, all in all, it was another fine dish. I'm not very hard on myself you may have found out. That's because I'm so overloaded with school work I'd be happy just to have the time to cook. No one should be too hard on oneself. I'm just super easy-going, even with myself. Maybe I should make that my motto.
P.S. I watched Julie & Julia while cooking and eating. It was a magical feeling when Julie and I were both browning the mushrooms in Julia's way. When Julie put the butter under Julia's picture, I could almost smell the butter in my dish. All of a sudden, I felt my life was lightening up. Even now that I have to return to my research for expository writing, it doesn't feel as bad. In fact, it may be conducive to my writing because I may write my first definition argument something about cooking! Wouldn't that be fun!
A.P.S. Our next door neighbor, my roommate's classmate just brought us cheddar apple scone! Perfect timing for Dessert!
The rice is some left-over brown rice I was trying to finish, and went well with the beef.
The chef with the dish and the wine! Maybe I'm too narcissistic calling myself a chef, but I'm being encouraging. Besides, everyone should be optimistic, right? Right!
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