Deep frying is the way to do pot stickers. Pan fry? Steam? That takes too long and requires too much fussing. This way, you put them in the oil for 3-4 minutes and then take them out again. Period. It takes longer to heat the deep fryer up than it does to cook them.
...and they're nice and crispy.
The egg roll, too--crispy outside, not soggy the way they come from the microwave. A man could get used to this.
Check on me in three months and see if I can still move under my own power. Also, check to make sure there's still hemoglobin in my blood, and that it hasn't been entirely replaced with cholesterol.
For the dipping sauce, you need about two tablespoons of teriyaki, a dash of vinegar, a couple drops of mongolian fire oil, and perhaps a quarter teaspoon of powdered ginger. Whisk that together with a fork and you've got a perfectly acceptable sauce for the pot stickers.
It does mean, however, that I'm going to have to hie myself back out to Orland Park to the oriental grocery store there and pick up another bag of pot stickers. I got this bag in September and the only thing keeping me from eating them all in that time was the fact that cooking said pot stickers is a time-consuming process.
But if all I have to do is plug in an appliance, wait 10 minutes, then deep-fry them for three--they're gonna get et in pretty short order, I think.
* * *
So last night, after logging out of WoW, I turned my attention to the LD player again.
See, I didn't actually binge on anime until much later in the evening. I talked with Og about a few technical matters and caught up with life stuff; once he'd logged out I worked on the LD player and got it working, then wrote the post about video quality.
Then I logged on to WoW to see what was up. I ended up being on until about 2:30 AM, and then--after digging out the LDs--sat down to watch a few things.
First up: Tenchi Muyo TV. ...I have remembered why the TM franchise is among my top 5 series.
Next: the first ep of You're Under Arrest! Dub version.
Then: eps 1 and 2 of the Oh! My Goddess! OVA. Dub version.
I am reminded, now, why I got so heavily into anime that even 18 years later I am still a big fan of it. I wasn't watching anime last night; I was visiting with old friends I haven't seen in a long time.
There is a sensation I get from these series that I don't get from any other video entertainment. I feel a connection with these characters that I don't feel with the characters from other series. The closest I can come to that is the characters from Firefly; if that's how Joss Whedon does things with his other series it makes perfect sense that his stuff is so popular.
And the feeling of connection I have with Firefly is a pale imitation of the connection I have to TM.
All the anime I watched last night was animated the old fashioned way: ink and paint on acetate. And I can't help but think that's a factor.
Animation done on a computer looks beautiful. 90% of the heavy lifting with computer animation is getting the character designs down and then building the character model so that it moves correctly. After all that's done, you only need backgrounds and a lot of programming to animate.
Set toon at X in such-and-such a position, establish "beginning key". Then set toon at Y in a different position, and establish "ending key". Tell computer, "generate Z many frames between X and Y." Walk away and have coffee and a donut. Come back, make sure it's animating correctly, tweak any issues, then send it to the server farm for rendering.
Repeat.
This generates anime quickly and efficiently, and it looks gorgeous...and somehow it has lost a lot of--for lack of a better term--heart. I think this is why Miyazaki still insists on cel-based animation for his movies; it's expensive, but a person draws each frame.
It's not something you can measure. It's not a S/N ratio or an end float or a contrast setting; it's indefinable.
Or maybe it's just because this is the stuff that I watched when anime was still really new to me. The closest I've managed to come to this feeling with a modern series is the cast of Haruhi, because I've watched it a number of times--but that still pales to how it felt to sit there and watch two eps of Tenchi TV.
So I know I'm going to watch the entirety of the TV series, and I'm going to watch all of O!MG! and YUA, and there's a crapton of other stuff I haven't even touched on yet.
I am so glad I bought this thing.