I'll never be a professional deep fat fry gal

...well, not a this rate.

At issue was a recipe for the next cookery book review. When I saw the recipe for (bloobybloobybloo) I thought--hey, I like the name and it could be tasty because it uses (falalalala) and (bingobongobing). The technique was easy enough: deep fat fry a dumpling.

I'm not afraid of much, culinarily: fugu's the only thing that readily comes to mind. If it's prepared by someone who knows what they're doing, I'll probably be fine...I just don't want to be the one scalpelling away the tetrodotoxin-laden liver and skin and other bits, and then spend the next how many hours worried if I'll ever hear from my friends again.

There are those amongst us who are afraid of one thing or another in the kitchen: yeast, whizzy whirry bladed machines, recipes that require cooking (as opposed to dumping and nuking), spices you can't find at the bigscarymegamart, spices you can find at the bigscarymegamart, using a mandolin without the hand guard, butter...

I know from trawling blogs that deep fat frying isn't necessarily everyone's favourite activity. I'm not sure what it is that bothers some people. Is it the searing hot oil, reminiscent of Mediaeval torture? It is a worry that the inside will be a playground for salmonella while the outside is a beautifully and crisp golden brown? Maybe it's because it uses f-words...two of them...preceded by a d-word.

By no means am I a well-practiced hand at deep fat frying. About once every few months I decide that something needs to be dffed--doughnuts, cutlets, whatevers--and I just do it. Most of the time things are fine, but sometimes my issue is that the end result is a little overdone. Instead of a lovely golden hue reminiscent of a setting sun, it's a burnished honey-cum-blowtorch kissed charcoal briquette. It's usually one or three of a recipe load of goodies, so it's no big deal.

My problem with the (bloobybloobybloo) was that I didn't seal the wrapper edges well enough. A couple of minutes after lowering them into the bubbling fat the spluttering started an all of a sudden my dumplings weren't alone in the pot. They were surrounded by lace-like confetti that emanated from my improperly-sealed dumplings. When all was said and done, I must have lost a good 20 per cent of my fillings from my dumplings. Not enough to render the dumplings hollow shells, but enough to make me sigh.

Then again, dffed (falalalala) is pretty good in its own right.

Still, I don't think I'm quite ready to be a professional deep fat fry gal...yet.



cheers!
jasmine