Novel cooking
I’ve been enjoying Murakami’s latest novel “1Q84″ and last night I was reading one of his typical scenes. The solitary introverted protagonist prepares a meal for one while meditating on a troubling past memory … hmm … that celery/mushroom/shrimp stir fry sure sounds good … if only I had a live-in BF who is also an amateur chef … oh wait.
A couple of texts between the bedroom and the living room later, a plan was hatched, and it came to fruition less than 24 hours later:
"Then a dash of soy sauce and finally a scattering of Chinese parsley. Tengo performed all these operations on automatic pilot."
Chef and cookbook. The "recipe" is on pages 362-363.
"When the stir-fried shrimp and vegetables were ready, Tengo ... still lost in thought, proceeded to eat the steaming food."
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Tags: 1Q84, Haruki Murakami
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November 27, 2011 at 8:06 pm
For those of you who don’t have the book:
~ 1 pound of shrimp, peeled & rinsed, and “lined up on paper towels like troops in formation”
celery, chopped into “nice” size pieces
shiitake mushrooms, also chopped
(the volume of celery & mushrooms should be slightly larger than the amount of shrimp)
a “large” amount of ginger, chopped fine
cilantro, chopped fine
Heat ~1 T sesame oil in a wok-like pan, then ADD the ginger and cook on LOW heat for a few minutes; turn the heat to HIGH and ADD the celery & mushrooms and a pinch of salt & pepper; when the celery is starting to soften, ADD the shrimp, another pinch of salt & pepper, a “glass” of sake (or your favorite non-alcoholic sweet cooking wine), stir, ADD a dash or two of soy sauce and cook, stirring, until warm & the shrimp are pink; ADD cilantro and stir again. Serve over (or with) white rice or pretty much any way you want.
November 27, 2011 at 8:19 pm
Love it!
November 27, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Ooooh, looks yummy, except for the shrimp (sorry).
November 27, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Oh, very nice. Very nice indeed. Except for the shrimp. And the mushrooms. And the ginger. And the sesame oil. And the pepper. And the sake. And the soy sauce. And the white rice. But the CELERY and the CILANTRO sound fantastic.
And, ahem, why go to all that trouble? Simplify, simplify. Isn’t that what Thoreau once said? CELERY and CILANTRO are always good, just by themselves. (Except for those who might not like CILANTRO. But I do. And everyone likes CELERY, don’t they?)
Um, do you have any leftovers? Leftover CELERY, that is? Ahem. (You know my address.)
November 28, 2011 at 4:46 am
Nice leap from dream to reality. And seriously, did Dan just whip that dish up based on the novel’s description? Sweet.
November 28, 2011 at 8:19 am
you ate seperately, each brooding in isolation, right?
November 28, 2011 at 1:58 pm
you REALLY like this book…and kudos to Dan for playing along
November 28, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Sweet!!! Seriously. A couple of texts and voila– you experience your book in real time. Sweet!