Country 35: China

So as we all know, this project came as a result of the country going into lockdown from COVID19. I've talked about the reasoning behind the dietary requirements of the project multiple times already. I don't eat meat, and my partner has severe allergies to nuts, peanuts, sesame, and shellfish. This project is specifically for non-meat, nut-allergies. There are meals that I've cooked that are specifically for me, and do not cater towards my partner (such as moules frites for Belgium, which featured mussels - my boyfriend is allergic).

For the most part, I do cater towards Nick's allergies. I think I do pretty well, all things considering. I do most of the cooking in our relationship (he does the dishes so it works for me), and I always try to find dishes that both of us will enjoy, and that he won't die from. 

One thing that I do really miss sharing is Asian cuisine. Nick finds it really difficult to eat anything from Asia, and in particular east Asian food is something he tends to avoid. So I was really looking forward to finding some Chinese dishes that he would be able to eat and hopefully enjoy enough to try again in the future. I spent several days looking into different dishes, and found so many that I wanted to try that I ended up making four different things and putting them all on the plate together. 

I was also super careful with my ingredients of choice. I knew I didn't want to include anything that would have sesame or peanut oil in it, so I wanted to get everything fresh and as basic ingredients - that way I would know exactly what sort of things were in each dish, and would prevent anything happening that would trigger an allergic reaction.

And you know what. I was so proud of myself too. I thought I had put in so much care and attention and I was so excited to try all the dishes. I decided on steamed sea bass, Peking-style vegetable dumplings (slightly adapted from the included recipe), General Tso tofu, and these glorious scallion pancakes, as recommended to me by my friend Grace. 

Everything was spectacular. I spent several hours in the kitchen cooking everything (except the scallion pancakes which I ended up cooking the following day because the other three dishes took way longer than I was anticipating). I even had everything pretty much ready to serve at the same time. The flat smelled incredible. I was so excited by what I had cooked, considering I had put so much time into the whole process, from research through to finding the ingredients, and then the cooking as well. 

 

Nick sat down to eat, and carefully put a dumpling into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. And then I freaked out, ran to the pack of bamboo shoots I had chopped up to put in the dumplings, checked the ingredients and burst into tears. After all of my careful planning, I hadn't checked the ingredients for these damn bamboo shoots which, of course, were marinated in a whole bunch of stuff including sesame oil. 

Thankfully, Nick was okay. I spent about 2 hours crying and apologising and hovering over him to make sure he would be okay. He was (understandably) pretty pissed off with me. I made him take some antihistamines, and he kept his epipens next to him the entire time. He didn't have any of the tofu (which had been cooked in the same pan as the dumpling filling) but did try the steamed seabass, which he thought was tasty. So at least that's a bonus. But my god, after 4 years of being in a relationship and OF COURSE the first time I really mucked up dinner also happened to be the first time cooking Chinese food for us both.

It also meant I had way too many leftovers to get through myself, but my best friend was grateful to take some off my hands. Nick is probably never going to eat Chinese food again, but to be honest he has been pretty good with everything I've cooked him since - he makes sure I've double checked the ingredients every so often but I think it's completely unnecessary simply because of the panic I put myself in. 

Anyway, I'm not including any of the recipes for China. I've linked all the original recipes I used above and that way they're easily findable. But they're not going on the blog, because a) there are too many, and b) I feel way too guilty.

On a separate note, I really enjoyed each dish. I thought everything was delicious. I didn't eat anything while it was warm because I was too busy crying and making sure Nick didn't die, but when I did get around to eating something, it was super delicious. So I would make them all again (and indeed, I have made the scallion pancakes on several occasions since), but definitely not without checking the ingredients more thoroughly.