Like standing in the DMV queue and being asked (judged simultaneously too) if I wanted to be an organ donor. Or whether to leave my BJ apartment on a PM2.5 hazardous day for groceries or starve with cheese crackers. Or whether to spend the last scrap of my monthly budget on the air purifier we really do NEED versus the new iPhone I really do WANT. Nobody said being an adult is easy.
So years of life-defining choices as such have boiled down to this moment – I find myself standing in the kitchen in BJ (how the hell did I end up here…?), deciding which is the better way to form an Asian meat pie.
Like maybe how it brings me back to a perfect bistro setting on a perfect corner in Paris, or maybe how I found a rustic-charm, free-range chicken farm in outskirt BJ where we took our dogs to spend a leisurely weekend. But, NO. I’ve never had such a dish that’s remotely close in Paris. And these eggs were bought from Taobao because I was too lazy to do grocery, and delivered by a postman who left it in front of my door step because I was too lazy to open the door. What brings me to share this recipe which I’ve already made several times before, is that this time… it’s gonna be served in this beeeautiful, over hundreds RMB black iron skillet that I found on Taobao for 35RMB!!!!
As much as I would like to apply total professionalism to this little web space of mine, a chain of unfortunate events has delayed this particular story, which I’m very excited about, for days. But now the demon-like jet lag is slowly but surely departing my body, and my dear boy is on his way to hopefully complete recovery, let me get back to the happier things in life. Like my satellite that comes with complete HD Food Network Channel. I wish I could take total credit for this dish, but it came from a little segment featuring a little Italian restaurant in the Lower East Side. I mean of course, why didn’t I think of this?! It’s the reincarnation of the Cajun dirty rice, reborn as an Italian in pasta form! Of course! Totally makes sense! Their sauce is a combination of liver puree and duck stock that delivers the brownish “dirt-look”. But why not make it even richer with this incredibly comforting and aromatic duck ragu that I make ALL the time.
Then came the effort the correct it. And then, TOTAL insomnia. As I tried pushing through the day without submitting to the brain-paralyzing exhaustion, the nights remained sleepless where I go in-and-out of consciousness and wake up feeling even more tired than the day before. The cherry on my cake was, on top of this build up of 14 days without proper sleep, that my oldest son, 11-year-old Maltese, Dumpling had to go through a completely unexpected surgery yesterday. If I haven’t properly introduced myself, this IS the top three on my worst-things-that-could-happen list. So all in all, the past week has been… really poor.