So we just had another taste test yesterday. I think overall it was a success. We got a lot of good feedback and I'm working on nailing down the food cost. Meanwhile a visit to the food stalls at Campbell's farmers market (see last post) has given us a bit of lift. I was overwhelmed just thinking about the portable cooking equipment we'd have to work with, but a quick look around gave us confidence. The general setup of these stalls center around a double or triple propane burner, cutting board on the folding table to the right, and coolers full of supply underneath. Nothing complicated at all and the vendors seemed to do fine. But how are we going to transport everything? The pimp mobile (S2000) is too pimpy and the Camry has no trailer hitch, not to mention we have no storage for a trailer. Oi, the work of an aspiring bun mogol is never done. Anyway, now to some actual cooking.
I got to thinking last week about all the dishes I love that involves an egg yolk. What I love about them is that any dish that has an egg yolk sauces itself.
-eggs over easy with a dash of tabasco
-sour dough toast topped with an egg yolk, a dash of tabasco, quickly followed by a forkful of corned beef hash
-bibimbap
-sundubu
Then at the Belmont market I saw the egg man. The duck eggs caught my eye but I went for the quail eggs. I had seen a recipe for a soft egg ravioli online and had something particular in mind. I bought some dumpling skin, mixed up my kalbi marinade with some ground beef, add the quail egg, and viola!
Here's a bunch of them lined up like precious little storm troopers.
These little suckers took me forever! My intial fascination with these things quickly wore off as the broken yolks spilled everywhere. I had started to dream, rather prematurely now it seems, about being lead through town on a stud as trumpets herald the success of my little invention and now it all came squirting onto my hand. This is the first real dish I've thought up and it sucked spectacularly. I'd start to pinch these potstickers with the care of a bomb squad tech, my mind focused so much that I've reached Shangri La (good weather, nice people, but there were speed cameras everywhere), then my vision starts to fad and POP! Alas some were made with yolk intact but Rosy and I found that there just wasn't enough yolk. It was getting lost in the middle of everything, but when you do get a taste of the yolk it was pretty good. One good thing that's come of this is that I think the kalbi style filling is good enough on its own in the dumpling that we're going to include it in our menu.
PS. Just a quick shout out to Alexis for her bomb-digga-di apple pie, Maighna and Vince for the delicious reds, and Sarah I hope your lips are ok.
PPS. I just thought of another idea to rescue this idea. Stay tuned!
Jon bought some duck eggs--they were ridiculously huge. I think the most memorable quail egg dish was when we all went to Fatty Crab. They had a hand full of quail eggs each topped off with something good.
ReplyDeleteRegarding transportation, I'm not sure if you guys thought of getting an ice cream-like truck to transport and store stuff. They made the folks at Red Hook ball fields get trucks for sanitation reasons I think.
Yay!! Another comment!! Oh yeah that dish at Fatty Crab was really good. Well I think my next step is to make a really eggy custard as a stand in for the yolk and inject/spoon it into the pot sticker before sealing it. There's a dim sum dish like it but it's a desert.
ReplyDeleteYeah I thought about getting a roach coach but that means the S2000 has to go. I'm still trying to figure out if there's anything else I can do. We've got a little more time before we have to start buying equipment since we don't have a business license or tax ID yet.
Thanks for reading!!!
I am looking into the future, and I see nothing but success for the Mechanical Pig! Despite being a vegetarian, it was delish and filling! Props for adding the veggie potstickers to the menu. Word.
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