Rubbish at experimenting (II) (London)

As a B.A. student, I used to frequent a Chinese restaurant near Russell Square which served a set-meal lunch at an affordable price.  This was a three-minute walk from SOAS, rather than 20 minutes to Chinatown.  My regular order was beef and mixed vegetables in a thick sauce, served over plain rice, because my upbringing in a Buddhist family meant that beef was totally banned from our diet at home in Singapore.  (My first taste of beef was at age 16 when I ventured downtown to a Western-meal restaurant called Cozy Corner on Orchard Road, where I’d have a regular sirloin steak.)  

Unlike the grilled steaks I’d eaten at restaurants and the stir-fried sliced beef I’d tried cooking at home in London, the beef in this dish was tender.  So, after a few more visits when the waiter recognised me and was therefore friendly (the almost-default Chinese reaction to strangers is what I’d call an unfriendly, if not outright hostile, look), I plucked up courage to ask him how they managed to get their beef so tender.  The waiter went off to the kitchen, and came back with the tip from the chef: marinade the beef with some sodium bicarbonate.

My first attempt with the sodium bicarbonate produced a stir-fried beef as tough as before.  Perhaps I hadn’t put in enough of the stuff?  The waiter had said “about a teaspoonful”, so the next time, I put in double that amount.  When I threw the beef into the hot oil, the whole lot started to froth.  I had to rinse the beef under the tap, and start all over again, not daring to add any sodium bicarbonate at all this time.  Chewy beef is still less horrible than frothy beef.

(London 1980)

PS:  I’ve since learned how to produce tender stir-fried beef, lamb and pork, even the cheap cuts, without having to resort to sodium bicarbonate.  But I’m not telling.  (Ditto with my kimchi recipe.)

Cheese sauce: I adore macaroni cheese and cauliflower cheese, so when Pete’s mother served a cauliflower cheese on one of my visits to her place, I asked for the recipe.  Got home, bought the cheese (not cheap on a student’s budget), the cauliflower (not cheap on a student’s budget), the butter and the milk.  Followed the recipe to the letter.  I got a lumpy sauce.  Down the sink  it went.  Started again.  Another lumpy sauce.  Down the drain again.  By the time Pete got home from work around 630pm, I was on my fourth sauce and in floods of tears, just about to chuck it down the sink again.  Fortunately, he took over and managed to rectify it.

(London 1979) 

PS:  I’ve since learned how to make a smooth cheese sauce.  The order of putting together the ingredients is different from the one given by Pete’s mother.