Pork Stuffed Tofu

We decided to invite two couples over for dinner one night. It was the same two couples that relocated to the US, at the same time as we did. I decided to cook them a Chinese dinner. This is where the trouble began - they weren’t expecting traditional Chinese food.

My menu consisted of rice served with steamed lap cheung (Chinese pork sausage), steamed fish with ginger and spring (green) onions, stuffed tofu, braised shiitake mushrooms, stir fried choi sum (Chinese greens), jiaozi and Szechuan pork balls. For dessert - tang yuan (glutinous rice balls with peanut filling in a sweet broth) and to finish everything off with tea, I made Chinese almond cookies.

I believe that our guests were expecting Westernized Chinese food, such as fried rice or chow mein. Whilst holding dinner parties, I’ve experienced two reasons for silence - something tastes absolutely fantastic and they want to enjoy every minute of it OR something tastes rather unusual. Let’s just say it was more of the latter. This experience, although highly humorous, went down in our books as “the dinner that went down like a fart in an elevator”.