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Food/Film Review: Stir-Fry & Die Hard
I have never seen Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. Likewise, I have never prepared stir-fried noodles, and even bought a wok for the occasion.
Die Hard follows John McClane, a New York cop who finally heads out to California to visit his wife and kids for Christmas, but gets caught up in a heist of sorts in his wives’s office building during a Christmas party. Realizing he’s locked in, and a lot of lives are at stake, he has to figure out how to take these criminals down one by one with very little weaponry or help from the outside world, all while pissing off their leader through a walkie-talkie, Hans Gruber.
Stir-Fried Noodles are equally action packed, starting with a marinade of soy, rice vinegar and crushed garlic for your meat or tofu to soak in, stir frying some cooked or soaked rice noodles then putting aside, making a small dish of soy, chili sauce and sugar for the noodles, cooking your meat or tofu thoroughly, and finally adding your veggies and noodles with the spicy sauce, and serving immediately, garnish with peanuts if you so chose.
Die Hard was a delightful surprise, being an action film from the ‘80s, I thought I knew what I was going to get. Even though how it’s going to end is fairly obvious, it’s such a fun ride getting there. There’s funny moments, action packed sequences and outrageous characters such as the party hard limo driver Argyle, the hyperactive news crew, the frat boy FBI agents Johnson & Johnson (“no, the other one”) and especially the impeccable Hans Gruber, played beautifully by Alan Rickman.
As far as action film villains go, he is incredibly human, in the way he straight-faced bullshits the cops on the phone with his demands, then puts the phone down for a second to point out he has no idea what he’s talking about.
The Stir-Fry was full of it’s own surprises and heart pounding action. Time is a factor and you never seem to have enough, while noodles are cooking, is that sauce ready? Is the chicken done yet, we gotta get these veggies chopped. Where the bean sprouts pre-washed? Oh no…!
Off all ’80s action stars, Bruce Willis remains the most enduring. I’m not so much waiting for his next crazy action sequence as I empathize with him, hoping he can just make it through alive. He gets really beat up in this film and you feel it. It’s to the point that you know his communication with the beat cop on the walkie-talkie (played by the Family Matters dad Reginald VelJohnson) is the only thing keeping him together, especially as he pulls pieces of shattered glass out of his foot (he spends just about the whole film bare foot… thanks a lot airplane suggestion guy… ASSHOLE!)
The noodles turned out really good too, they were the perfect density, not too hard, not falling apart, but the main star was the chicken, which had the most flavoring from the marinade.
Both the film and the food were a thrill to partake in. I can’t recommend them enough, and look forward to enjoying them again.
Score: 5/5
Posted in Food/Film Review, Reviews
Tagged bruce willis, cooking, die hard, dinner and a movie, film review, food review, hans gruber, movie review, stir-fry, wok
3 Comments
Does cooking have to be hard?
My argument is no. Here’s what you gotta do. Suppose you want to make a meal of mashed potatoes, steak, and salad.
Mashed potatoes
- Rinse and clean the outside of the potatoes.
- Cut into smaller pieces, e.g. discs 1 inch thick.
- Boil the potatoes in salty water (add a lot of salt here). Do this for 14 minutes. You want to boil water beforehand and drop potatoes into already boiling water.
- Take the potatoes out / drain the water. If you want, remove the skin now (or you can peel the potatoes beforehand).
- Add lots of butter. Repeat after me: the secret is butter. If a restaurant makes amazing mashed potatoes, it’s probably because they added a lot of butter.
- Mash. Easier if you have a masher thingamabob.
- Optionally… add pepper, spices (e.g. garlic), etc.
It’s not so complicated. Remember to add butter.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/4491354934/
Save time by making a big batch at once. Store what you don’t eat in the fridge.
Steak
Thou shalt buy good quality meat. Buying good ingredients will make your cooking taste a lot better. At supermarkets, beef of different quality may be sold at the same price. Sometimes higher quality beef gets mixed in. Stick to buying that meat. Also check out the Halal and Kosher sections.
Look for marbling. If there is a lot of fat mixed in with the muscle, that is a good sign. Fat is delicious.
Other factors can affect the taste of beef, such as whether it was grass-fed or grain-fed, whether the animal was stressed when it was killed (this affects the rigor mortis process), dry aging, etc. You can get really high quality meat by going to high-end supermarkets or specialty butchers.
When cooking the steak, use butter instead of oil. Butter makes almost all foods taste better. You can also add salt, pepper, garlic, seasoning, etc.
Cooking the steak to a particular doneness is a skill. You poke the steak as you cook it (e.g. in a pan). When it is raw on the inside, the steak will feel very soft. When it is overcooked, it will feel rubbery. Rare and medium rare is somewhere in between. If you haven’t got the hang of it yet, you can always take the steak out early and cut into it to check its doneness.
After cooking the steak, you may want to leave it alone for a few minutes (you let the meat “rest”). When it is cooler, it will bleed less juices when you cut it.
Salad
Use salad mix. Add dressing (optional).
Yes… I am too lazy to wash and cut salad. But you can do that if you want. If you want more interesting salads, go to allrecipes.com and look for good salad recipes.
Key points
Save time by making large batches at once. But don’t do this for food that doesn’t taste as good after it has been refrigerated (e.g. steak).
Two big reasons why restaurant food tastes good is because [1] the chefs source good ingredients and [2] butter is the secret.