6th June 2008 - Meat Roll

Finally, I decided to do the meat roll after thinking about it for the past few weeks. I remembered when I was still in Singapore, I helped Mum with this before and can still remembered how to do it.

We couldn't find minced pork at Marche, so we settled for minced chicken. As usual, the preparation work is the most tedious. Dicing onion, mushrooms, chestnuts, carrots. That's alot of dicing cos my dicing is still very slow. Mum's recipe doesn't call for onions and mushrooms but I had these in my frig for sometime and dun want to waste them.

After all the dicing of onions, carrots and mushrooms and half way through the chestnuts, Sean came over and asked if I need any help. I was about to 'throw down the knife' after 5 chestnuts so I got him to help me with it.

HE MADE IT LOOK SO SIMPLE!!! ARGH!! HOW COME HE DIDN'T COME OVER SOONER??

First of all, he made 'skinning' (can't remember the word to use) the chestnut looked so easy by laying it flat on the chopping board and sliced the outer layer all around and then used the back of the knife to remove the top and bottom. Why didn't i think of it?

THEN, he picked up the apple slicer and started to chop the chestnuts. Within seconds, I had my chopped chestnuts. I was dumbfounded and both of us started to laugh about this afterwards. He is sooo good at improvising.

We both agreed that if i were to do this, I would take 5 times the effort/time to do so. And within these times, I would get frustrated.

Since there were still some mushrooms left, he helped me to dice them as well. No point throwing the small qty away.

Within seconds, they were finely chopped. We looked at each other and laughed.

This is the meat patty with diced onion, mushrooms, carrots, chestnuts and a few other seasonings. I forgot to add an egg and some flour. Wrapped them with beancurd skin and imagined myself savouring the crispy skin later. yum yum. Can't wait. Had to get the veggie and salmon dishes done first before I started to fry the meat roll.

Between the above meat patty and the finished product below, I scalded my left hand with splattering oil and woke Sean up in the process.

He had to help me clean up the stove area and floor.

In the end, we put everything into the oven. Not as crispy as I had wanted but good enough. Taste good considering its my first attempt on my own.

Next one to tackle would be Ngian Dou Fu.

We completed all four seasons of Two and a Half Men today. Our version does not come with Season 5. Gotta keep a look out for Season 5 in the DVD shop.