le blog de tranny

I’m curious to see if owning an iPhone 4 S will make me a better blogger. Being able to instagr.am one’s photos – which have been taken with a fairly decent cell phone camera – and upload them instantaneously, well, that ain’t nothin’. That means I can edit photos and blog at the airport, or on Bart, or while lying in bed…

Christmas Lunch in Garden Grove
It seems like the feast my step-mom prepares for each of the two big holidays becomes more and more meat/offal-centric with each passing year. On Thanksgiving she made mushroom soup, whole-roasted duck, salmon, papaya salad with liver, and veal to go along with my step-sister’s deep-fried turkey. This year she made something even more exotic…

[deep-fried quail]

[trotters and assorted cuts of pig/cow for soup]

[delicious lemongrass scented tendon]

These delicious meat parts went into some homemade bun bo hue. I really need to get this recipe from my step-mom.

[bun bo hue]

But here’s what really got me – there was another very special dish in this spread that I’d never seen or even heard of before. My step-siblings jokingly referred to it as duck “pizza”…

[yeah, that's blood]

Gelatinous until you scoop some off the plate, this concoction of duck blood and various duck parts is finished off with lime juice and eaten with sesame chips. Yes, I ate quite a bit of it. It was delicious. I understood that this dish could only be made with very fresh duck blood, but didn’t realize just how fresh until my step-brother explained to me the process of preparing this dish. You take a live duck, pick the feathers off its neck, slit its throat, and hold it over a bucket, draining all the blood out while the poor duck is still struggling. Then you cook up its liver, its meat and various other organs and, in the words of Mary-Kate and Ashley, PUT IT ON DA PIZZA. Anyway, this is how the dish is traditionally prepared. I think this time my step-mom just bought fresh blood from the Asian market, though it was likely extracted in this same way. Inhumane? Yes. Delicious? Yes. But I doubt I’ll indulge in this dish next year.

Lastly, what Vietnamese Christmas meal is complete without a bûche de Noel? My step-brother’s wife actually made this herself. Pretty impressive in my humble opinion.

Day After Christmas Meal in Rolling Hills
You might’ve noticed a recurring theme in my celebrations of the big American holidays: they always include a big Vietnamese meal with my dad’s side of the family and a big Italian meal at my mom and step-dad’s house. (Dad’s surname is Italian after all.) This year was no exception, except this time Anais came over to help with the cooking (and to help me kill a rosé, a Rochiolo chardonnay, and a 2007 Napa cab).

We made a raw kale salad, eggplant parmesan and veal and pork meatballs. My mom made garlic bread.

[for the recipe, see: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2011/12/raw-kale-salad-with-walnuts-pecorino-and-lemon.html]

Nothing better than a hearty meal with an old friend eh?

And in case you’re curious, here’s a few more photos from my SoCal Christmas:

[our living Christmas tree aka rosemary bush - he's just a baby now]

[opening presents in my parents' backyard]

[santa gave me a full set of shun knives!!]

Not sayin’ I’m going to do all my posts like this from now on – the backlog of photos on my camera right now is ridiculous – but it was nice to get things down on paper without having to open up a photo editor on my computer. I love technology!!!