Crayfish? Crawfish?

Farmer's market is one of my favorite places to go on Saturday mornings. I usually go with a casual dress, hat, sunglasses along with my straw purse and reusable bags. I will get coffee at the farmer's market while I walk between the stands. Since I had to go to San Francisco this Saturday, I went to the farmer's market downtown instead. The market under the freeway was crowded by merchants, professional farmer's market shoppers, and shoppers like me that mainly go for the experience.

As I walked among the stands, I realized that there were some seafood and meat stands that I have never noticed before (the few times that I have been to downtown's farmer's market, they weren't there) One of them was a live crayfish stand with boxes and boxes of crawfish (switching the terms up to be fair) Whenever I see fresh "sea"food, I just can't help myself but purchase them so I bought 3lbs of the crawfish so I can cook for our guest of honor, Danielle, for lunch.

Since this was the first time that I attempt cooking crayfish, something interesting was bound to happen. I got home with the live crawfish and sat them in the sink to clean them. One of the crayfish got out of the bag and fell into the garbage disposal. I panicked and didn't know how to get it out of the garbage disposal! After a few screams and attempts to get the crawfish to bite on the utensils, Danielle suggested tongs while laughing in the back watching this goes down. I finally got the crayfish out of the garbage disposal and it had vegetables firmly clamped in both of its claws... As I cleaned the crayfish, I decided to go with two flavors just to be safe since this is the first time trying to cook them. The first dish was the white wine, parsley, garlic recipe which I cook the mussels with and the second sauce was made up on the fly where chili and garlic were the main spices in which I sauteed the crawfish with okra. Lunch was the two flavored crayfish, wine, and a cucumber from our planter.

This was Danielle's first time trying crawfish so something funny was bound to happen... Jim and I showed Danielle how to access the crustacean "meat" and a few crayfish into Danielle's lunch, the crawfish ended up over her shoulder on the carpet. We looked at one another in surprise, remembering the scene in Pretty Woman, and laughed... Danielle didn't end up eating much of the crayfish but she enjoyed the okra and the flavors. Next time we'll cook something that's easier to cook and eat!

Grown-up Cooking

I gave up on Chinese cooking after Jim and I moved to Sacramento. Jim enjoys sandwiches and cooking for myself was just too much trouble. So, it has been six to seven years since I cooked Chinese dishes. I have learned to cook simpler dishes that use ingredients that don't require too many spices or cooking time over these years.

For the pool party on July 5th, I wanted to make a few traditional Taiwanese dishes for some of the guests to try. However, I didn't know how I was going to do that since there are a lot of traditional Taiwanese courses that should only be attempted by parents and grown-ups that have a lot of cooking experience. These dishes often include ingredients such as intestines, tripe, and body parts such as feet, ears, tails, etc. As you can imagine, making a dish with these ingredients without cooking experience and plenty of pratice can make the course disastrous.

To attempt these traditional dishes, I picked up a small amount of beef tripe, tendon, and pig feet for the party. I was prepared to throw everything away if these dishes turned out badly, which would not have surprised me... I called mom for the receipe and then I washed, pan fried, boiled, and simmered the ingredients in different spices for hours. The final dishes tasted surprisingly good; as if the dishes were made by a grown-up with a lot of cooking experience. The dishes were a hit at the pool party and at the office so I can finally claim that I have it in me to cook good traditional Taiwanese courses like a grown up! I made up my mind to continue making Taiwanese dishes for myself and possibly bring it to the office for others to share...