Some recipes

won ton (Rachel) (described by Mark)

ground pork, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, green onion, won ton wrappers (if your local grocery store has run out of wrappers, you can try getting some from a Chinese restaurant, which is what we had to do this year!!)

Mix together the ground pork (can also use ground turkey), soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil and chopped green onion. I didn't see Rachel do it, but I believe that she did it without measuring (but with some tasting) after long experience. There are many fancy ways to wrap the filling, but the easiest and perfectly fine way is to make a simple triangle wrap. Fry in canola oil. If you have left over filling, you can pan fry them as little 1-1.5" burgers on an iron skillet.

Vietnamese rice paper rolls (modified slightly from Vegetarian Planet, Didi Emmons)

carrots
jicama
mint
dry roasted peanuts (already shelled)
rice noodles
round rice papers (about 8" diameter)

shred vegetables and herbs. break peanuts into pieces using mortar or pestle or similar.
bring 1/2" water to boil in a frying pan big enough to hold rice paper
dip one rice paper at a time into boiling water; remove with chopsticks after about 10 sec
spread out the rice paper before it becomes a sticky mess.
add a combination of shredded vegetables, noodles, mint and peanuts onto the rice paper, and wrap as an egg roll. Dip in cilantro chile dipping sauce (see below).

cilantro chile dipping sauce

garlic
cilantro
limes
thai fish sauce
sugar
dried hot red peppers

Squeeze lime juice and put into a mixing bowl. Chop cilantro and garlic and put it into bowl. Pour in some fish sauce; taste as go along, stop when the fish sauce taste is definitely there. Add sugar, again tasting as you go along. Stop when the "edge" of the fish sauce is neutralized by the sugar. For guidelines on amounts (ie, a real recipe), see Vegetarian Planet.

seared tuna (Tom) (described by Mark)

fresh tuna steak (Cataumet Fish Market), wasabi, iron skillet

Heat skillet to appropriate hotness (this is pretty hot; the whole process requires some stove top intuition). (I don't know what oil Tom used). Sear the tuna so that about 1/8" is cooked but interior is not. Slice into pieces as if it were sashimi. Arrange attractively on a dish with smears of wasabi on the edges of the dish.

grilled bread

3 parts flour, 1 part water, salt, yeast

Mix the flour and water then knead it. (If you want to skip the messy initial part, you can mix 1.5 parts flour with 1 part water, yeast, salt and stir in a bowl with a fork, then add the rest of the flour.) Fine tune the flour and water mixture so that the dough ball doesn't stick to your hands (too much water) or doesn't stick together (too much flour). You can keep kneading it, but once it has made a good dough (just a few minutes, not 10--30 min as some cook books say), it's OK to stop (at least for this kind of bread). Let the dough rise (usually, at least 30 min). break off small pieces, flatten and put on grill. It cooks pretty fast.

onion bhajis

gram flour (chickpea), water, salt, ground cumin, onion

mix together gram flour, water, salt, ground cumin to make frying batter. Cut the onion: (for orientation, let onion be brain with axis along main axis of brain) hemisect onion, then make coronal slices and then cut those slices into thirds radially (it doesn't really matter how you do this, it's just a little better if the onions aren't diced into small pieces). Coat onion, fry at 350 F.

raita

cucumbers, plain yogurt, cilantro, cumin seeds

Peel cucumbers, cut in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds with a spoon, then cut into small cubes. Mix with plain yogurt. Heat the cumin seeds in a small frying pan (without oil) until they begin to brown and release their aroma. Put into the yogurt mixture along with chopped cilantro. Cool this down in refrigerator (or freezer if people are arriving soon).

"tropical slaw"

"asian slaw"

Sorbet

See the movie!

bring a dewar of liquid nitrogen
lemonade (we used paul newman's lemonade) or grapefruit juice (tropicana at this party)
sugar
large slotted spoon, large wooden salad fork, or similar.

In a big bowl, pour in the juice and add sugar. unfortunately, we have no measurements on this, but you must add some, because the frozen juice doesn't taste sweet enough. on the other hand, you don't need to add that much. add the liquid nitrogen and stir with the slotted spoon. The whole process takes about five minutes, and will require adding liquid nitrogen several times. The purpose of stirring is to speed up the freezing and also to prevent local formation of ice chunks.

 

From previous years

2000

1999

1998

1997