The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [25]
But that fall, I wanted to treat these friends of mine to something altogether new: a quaint four-person dinner at my apartment.
The main course, I’d decided, would be the Taiwanese dish san bei gi, paired with some simple sauteed green beans. Translated as “three cup chicken,” the dish is a savory braise of chicken with one cup of rice wine, one cup of sesame oil, and one cup of soy sauce, hence the name “three cup.” The intense flavor of the dish really came from the smothering portion of fresh Thai basil leaves, whole garlic cloves, and thick strips of ginger that were cooked into the sauce. It seemed like a nice, yet easy dish to kick off the fall with, and since it was so similar to a lot of the stir-fries I learned how to cook from my mother, I figured it would be pretty intuitive to prepare. I secretly hoped my friends wouldn’t know this, though, and would be as blown away as I’d been when I experienced the real stuff in Taiwan.
Ben came early with the beer and wine. He began to clear the living room table of the stacks of CDs and mail, something I had neglected to notice in the midst of getting the food prepared.
“Thanks!” I yelled to Ben. Next I put him to work at finding enough chairs from around the apartment to make sure everyone would have a seat. I stared at the stack of stuff I’d piled on the kitchen counter. This was a quick dish to prepare, so I didn’t want to start it too early. But I supposed I could get some of the ingredients lined up, ready to toss into the pan. I began slicing the ginger into hearty slabs. The chicken was already portioned out in pieces, a whole cut-up fryer. The authentic version of san bei gi was made with small, roughly thumb-sized chunks of chicken legs, which were hacked straight through the bone by a skilled chef or butcher. Once they were cooked, the tender meat surrounding the bone easily fell away with a poke from one’s chopsticks or a bite.
I looked at the chicken-leg pieces and looked at my dull, five-year-old knife. It didn’t have to be served that way, I decided.
My doorbell rang at eight o’clock on the dot. At the moment, I had raw chicken tenaciously clasped with tongs in one hand and in the other a bottle of beer that I was trying to set down. The sesame oil was splattering away in a large pan on the stove.
“Ben!” I squealed. “You get the door!”
He went downstairs to let them in. A minute later, Richard and Sam were standing in my tight living room, with orangish painted walls and a large square coffee table that took up almost all of its traffic space.
“Should I take my shoes off?” Richard asked.
Just behind him, I noticed the cat rearing its body into a tight, spiky ball.
“Mreeeowww!”
The cat lunged at Richard’s ankles, clawing at his laces in three lightning-fast jabs, then quickly scampered into the hallway, stopped, and stared back, as if admiring his work.
I’d been roommates with Erin in many different housing situations, at separate times, beginning with our sophomore year of college. But before we shared this apartment, I’d never lived with her cat, Dracula. She had adopted him as a kitten just a year before, and in the first few days he’d been with her, he’d shown the combative streak that inspired his name. Of course he had been only a cute, cuddly kitten then. Now he was a full-sized, slithering, tiger-coated devil.
“Is there something wrong with your cat?” Sam asked.
I looked at Dracula. His marbled brown-and-black coat shone under the harsh overhead light in the narrow hallway. He had inquisitive eyes, and they were now looking into mine as if to ask whose side I was on—his or theirs. He lowered his hind legs into a clenched position once again and looked ready to spring at any moment.
“Uh, just ignore Dracula,” I said. “He’s better with new people if you just ignore him.”
“His name is Dracula?” Sam asked.
“I was ignoring him. I didn’t even know he was there,” Richard said.
I muttered an apology, and then remembered