Family Cooking Night: Chinese food

As a final big meal before Thing1 goes back to UIUC, we had our first "the whole family cooks" night.

Ma Po Tofu from an Encyclopedia of Chinese Food which I'd made once about 22 years ago and liked

Hot and Sour Soup from a recipe from the defunct Chinese grocer on Howard (and Western?) where I took a class about 20 years ago

Pot stickers - just threw stuff together

Thing2 and MrsF made the Tofu (it called for 4 "squares" of tofu -- how big is a square? We used two 1 lb tubs, and it looked about right). Lots of mise en place for this, a good thing to learn about cooking

Thing1 made the soup -- again a fair amount of mise work, shredding bits of stuff and getting the broth, thickener and hot and sour together.

I made the dumplings from whatever ground pork was left from the other two dishes (yes, ground pork was probably wrong for the soup, but it was a shortcut in shopping since I only needed 3 oz), bamboo shoots and leeks also left from the other dishes, white pepper and garlic.

Just about when everything was ready, and we were about to add the tofu to the Ma Po... we realized nobody made rice. So we sat down to soup and dumplings, put the wok on hold, and had appetizers while waiting for rice.

It all came out terrific. A 'fresh' batch of soup compared to most restaurants had nice distinct flavors of mushrooms and lily buds, but lacked some depth of broth due to using canned. The hot and sour levels were right on.

The Ma Po was delicious (IMHO, LSC could use more leeks, mine could use more hot oil).

The pot stickers were nothing special, but tasty.

We're thinking about Mexican for Spring Break when Thing1 comes back again.

Joel,

An enchanting way to close the winter holiday break.

Thanks for advising us.

Regards,