improvised stir fry sauce

Last night was a sauce experiment. Neither an abject failure nor a stunning success, this experiment provided me with an exciting new canvas for my second favorite form of creative play.

The meal had four components: Steamed greens and rutabegas; a stir-fried mirepoix with garlic and ginger; tofu coated in potato flour and deep fried at 350 degrees; all on a bed of rice.

The steamed vegetables and rice should be straightforward. For the tofu, I simply sliced it and, still wet, coated each piece with potato flour. Then into the deep frier! (I got a Cool Daddy in a holiday gift-exchange, so now I have a cover, a handy basket for lowering food in, and best of all: temperature control!)

For the stir fry, the ginger splashed in the hot oil first, shortly followed by garlic. When it had browned, both were removed. Then a mixture of coarsely chopped (half inch chunks) onions, carrots and celery, with light soy sauce. The ginger and garlic were added back into the mix for a few minutes, then the entire mixture removed.

Now, the sauce. On the side, I had mixed together a paste of about equal parts potato flour and water. The first step for making the sauce involved flavoring the already-flavored oil with dried and crushed (and deseeded!) serrano peppers. Let them sizzle for just a minute (and try not to choke as the blast of pepper gas meets your lungs--this is what democracy looks like!) and then pour in: about two tablespoons dark soy sauce, an equal amount of cooking sherry, a tablespoon or less of honey, and a splash of sesame oil. Use the potato flour paste to thicken the sauce after it has cooked for a few minutes.

Actually, don't do that, because it didn't turn out so well. Cooking sherry always has salt added, so the entire mixture turned out way too salty. Next time I will use either port or mirin. Either of those will also mean less honey. I also added too much sesame oil--next time I will carefully measure out less than a teaspoon. But, as I said, this did show promise as a rich, thick syrup that could go well with future stir fries.

Over the next few days, I will be making, in succession: 12 quarts of beef stock, 8 of which will then immediately go into sauce espagnole, with the other four to be later added to the sauce espagnole and further reduced to yield five quarts of demi-glace. These will be ladelled into two-cup mason jars and frozen for future use. The entire process should take about 12-15 hours, and will constitute something of a weekend for myself after I meet with my advisor on Monday.

I have not been keeping up with the weather, so I have nothing to say about that. My apologies.