Back to the Stove

I cooked last night, Manhattan in hand, and felt immeasurably better.

I made a vaguely Thai stir fry of pork, tofu, onion, garlic, purple cabbage from the garden, red bell pepper, green beans, cilantro, and rice noodles. I marinated the pork first in sugar and fish sauce. For sauce I used a blend of fish sauce, chile-garlic paste, and water. Not bad. The whole thing was slightly greasy, but at least it was homemade and home-chopped and very therapeutic to make.

I don't know how it got to be late December. Fortunately, I get to spend the next week cooking. Should be fun. A buche de Noël, lemon meringue pie, tamales, huevos rancheros, Anasazi beans...I'll keep you posted.

Election Night Eating

Patty ate one of the cat's toys, a tiny white mouse on wheels.

The cat hasn't been eating her canned food lately, so Patty ate that, too.

Lawson and I are going to eat takeout from Bangkok Restaurant, the little hole-in-the-wall Thai place by our house. It's not the greatest ever, but the semi-Americanized staples are good: pad thai, masaman curry, pad see ew. Maybe tonight I'll branch out to a red curry.

We were in the mountains this weekend. Sunday night we saw Billy Bragg in Asheville; before the show we ate at a mixed noodle joint that was pretty okay. My spicy wonton noodle soup had wonderful soft homemade wontons full of ginger and pork and sesame oil, but the broth was kind of bland.

Otherwise, we ate sandwiches and cheese and fresh North Carolin apples and things like that. And because we spent two days sawing and hauling trees and branches and cutting a new trail, we ate big breakfasts of fried eggs, bacon, and toast. Many, many calories were consumed and burned. It was fun.

Green Curry with Flounder

Surprisingly, this was a last-minute collaboration on a night when I didn't think we were going to end up cooking anything.

I softened carrots, a few cloves of garlic, and red bell peppers in peanut oil, then added chopped lemongrass, keffir lime leaves, galangal, and Thai basil, all of which Lawson minced finely. Then I added a tablespoon of premade green curry paste and a can of coconut milk and half a can of water.

I simmered that for about 20 minutes.

Then I briefly boiled some rice noodles I'd been soaking. I seasoned the curry with fish sauce. I added 3/4 pound of flounder to the curry and cooked it for about 5 minutes. At the end I stirred in chopped cilantro and topped it with more Thai basil.

Thai Beef Rolls with Sweet Chile Sauce

Lawson made these grilled, Thai basil-wrapped meatballs last week. The chile sauce was very sweet -- tasted just like the Maggi sweet chile sauce I love to put on burgers, except with a fresher lime flavor. And the meatballs were perfect. He used more mint than the recipe calls for, and added some Thai basil to the meat mixture. I highly recommend the recipe.

We tried using some lemongrass stalks as skewers for a few of the meatballs, but there was no discernible flavor difference.

I made jasmine rice, and I invented a simple new okra recipe to deal with some slightly tougher pods: sauteed cumin, garlic, and a dried red chile, followed by sliced okra and enough water to keep things from sticking -- around 1/8 cup. I covered the whole thing and cooked it for 15-20 minutes. Touch of salt. Delicious.

Thai Pork and Tofu Stir Fry

My stir frying is getting better, bit by bit. Again I used the largest skillet we have instead of the wok because of our stupid smooth-topped stove. The skillet allows for much more surface contact with the stove. However, the skillet is well-seasoned, but not as perfectly as the wok, so unfortunately I think I use more oil with it than I would with a wok. The larger base makes for more oil, too. But it's still a better option for getting a hot, hot pan and maneuvering it on and off the heat.

This was not a super-official recipe, just a combination of a Mai Pham recipe and things from a few other Thai cookbooks.

I marinated some pork chunks in lime juice, fish sauce, and lime zest. I used rib meat but removed most of the fat.

I sliced the tofu, sprayed it with olive oil cooking spray, and baked the pieces at 400 for about 15 minutes, then sprinkled it with a little shoyu. I could have stir-fried it, too, but I wanted that toasty dryness it gets from being baked -- I thought that would soak up the stir-fry flavors better.

I heated peanut oil until it smoked and stir-fried the pork, then removed it.

I then stir-fried a Vidalia onion cut into rings, several Thai and one Japanese eggplant from the garden, assorted fresh red garden chiles of varying degrees of heat, one clove of garlic, and about 1/2 cup of Thai basil. (I prepped all this beforehand, of course.)

I added half a standard package of rice noodles, which had been soaking in hot water for half an hour before I drained them and gave them a minute or two to dry. Those noodles really, really wanted to stick to the skillet, but I added a little more oil and stirred well. Not letting up here was important: those noodles have to be chewy, chewy, chewy or there's no point in stir-frying rice noodles.

Toward the end I added the pork and tofu, poured in a sauce made of fish sauce, shoyu, and sugar, and tossed in another 1/2 cup of Thai basil. Because it wasn't picante enough, I added some dried red pepper flakes, too.

It was delicious, but it can be much better. I'll keep working.

Satay Triple Threat and Indian Okra II

I like when one meal feeds another -- when something left over can be used again in a new way. There are lots of brilliant examples of doubled meals: spaghetti sandwiches, your post-Thanksgiving turkey chowder, rice pudding.

It wasn't quite so magical as those examples, but the peanut dipping sauce I made Saturday to go with Lawson's shrimp-vegetable kebabs and stir-fried noodles became the dressing for Sunday's salad: another iteration of the Thai watermelon salad. This time the salad had hard-boiled egg, raw red pepper, watermelon, arugula, and Thai basil. I served it with Indian curried okra.

We still have some peanut sauce left. I don't know what's next for it -- a topping for chocolate ice cream? In a burrito with lettuce, black beans, tomatoes, chiles, and pumpkin seeds?

Anyway, yesterday I was happier with the okra. Here's my modified version of Madhur Jaffrey's Sweet and Sour Okra.

Indian Curried Okra

Mash in a mortar and pestle to form a paste:
-5 cloves garlic
-1-2 small dried red chiles
-1 teaspoon coriander seeds
-1 teaspoon salt
-1 tablespoon water, if needed

(Jaffrey had me pureeing garlic and chiles and 4 T water in a blender, but getting such a small amount of liquid out of my blender was awful. Plus, then the blender smelled like garlic and red chiles. With cleaning and scraping factored in, the mortar and pestle took less time.)

Stir in:
-1/2 teaspoon turmeric

Heat over medium in large skillet with lid:
-3 tablespoons oil

When hot, add:
-2 teaspoons cumin seeds

When they seeds begin to sputter and fry, turn down heat, add the paste, and stir, letting it fry but not burn for about a minute.

Add:
-1 pound okra, rinsed, tops chopped off and pods sliced into 3/4" pieces
-1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
-1 teaspoon sugar
-a few tablespoons of water

Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until okra is tender. Add more salt and lemon juice if necessary.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Rice

This is roasted tomato soup, another recent recipeless creation. With a sunny side up egg on top, it made for a light but complete meal.

I destemmed about 12 tomatoes and squeezed the seeds out into the compost bucket. I then roasted them under the broiler, holes down, until they got blackened and juicy. Meanwhile I sauteed a Vidalia onion, then added the tomatoes and their juices, some chicken stock, some fresh basil, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. After it was heated and the flavors had mingled, I pureed it in the blender, then added some big basil leaves. I added cooked white rice to each bowl and put an egg on top.

The soup would have been better with some more interesting, less classic spices. Basil was fine and summery, but I think cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, and cilantro would be good, especially with the rice and egg.

It continues to be unbearably, record-breakingly hot here. The last night my parents were here we made a vaguely herby-noodly Vietnamese dish, another infinitely adaptable Lawson specialty: cold rice noodles, grilled scallops, mint, cilantro, Thai basil, red onion, cucumber, and red pepper, all sliced in a bowl and dressed with fish sauce, cider vinegar, and chopped peanuts. We passed the fresh herbs around on a big plate and drank a lot of wine.

Thai Stir-Fried Okra, Eggplant, and Tomatoes

Lawson is much better with the wok than I am, so he usually does the stir-frying around here. He's fun to watch. As you can see here, he moves at superhero speed.

He roasted the eggplant first to soften it -- without precooking, it seems to stay tough and soak up too much oil. He then stir-fried onions, okra, the roasted eggplant, and tomato in some chile-garlic-basil paste he made last year. A little fish sauce, chicken broth, and fresh Thai basil finished it. We served it over plain white rice.

The chile-garlic-basil paste is based on this amazing product we found at the local Asian market a few years ago: Por Kwan brand sweet chile basil paste. It consists of basil leaves, garlic, fresh chiles, salt, and oil. The Por Kwan is almost as good as Lawson's garden-sourced reproduction.