mamster

Excellent, gknl and snowangel. snow, I like that we each larbed a different ingredient, if I may use "larb" as a verb. gknl, the tuna confit sounds excellent. I'd definitely like to do another of these, but I'm hoping someone else will organize the next one. Not that it was any trouble doing this one; I'd just like to be at the mercy of someone else's ingredients, since I already know what I like.

That's okay, Jin. Hey, even if Jim and I are the only ones who remembered, at least we ate well.

It's spoiler time! Just to shake up everyone's expectations, I made a Thai meal. Sort of. One of the dishes was Chinese, one vaguely Caribbean, and another, despite some Thai flavoring elements, came out awfully Eastern European. Here's the menu. Some of the translations were done by me, which means they're wrong, so don't go saying them to your Thai friends because you will have inadvertently said, "Mustn't I clone your rutabaga?" HAMACHI CEVICHE WITH GREEN PAPAYA AND PECANS yam pla malakaw First dish and already I'm cheating. Okay, green papaya is nobody's idea of a "pantry ingredient," but what I had in mind was this amuse-bouche I had at Lumiere last year. It was a small square of raw yellowfin tuna topped with som tam, Thai papaya salad. Making it into ceviche and adding toasted pecans were my ideas. The pecans worked pretty well, as did a bit of coconut milk and chopped jalapeño, but I don't have the ceviche concept down, because every bite was a blast of lime juice before any flavors peeked through. Once the raw sourness had died down a bit, it was good. Presumably I needed to drain it better and add some sugar. Yes, it's served on a napa cabbage leaf. KABOCHA-LENTIL SOUP WITH COCONUT MILK geng bouad mak fak kham You know what I need around here? A soup tureen. I'm always serving soup out of a metal stockpot or a big pyrex bowl. That's about the worst thing you could say about this soup though, because it rocked. I made homemade chicken stock earlier in the day (Asian-style, with scallions, ginger, and star anise) and combined it 50-50 with coconut milk (Chaokoh). The recipe was based on one in Thai Food by David Thompson. You pound a paste of dried shrimp, shallots, cilantro, and white peppercorns, and dissolve that in the broth. I cooked the lentils about an hour and added the cubed squash halfway through. The result was smooth as silk, with the squash still in coherent cubes that dissolved the second they hit your tongue. The lentils didn't add much, but they didn't hurt. That was the toughest ingredient for me, by far. Peeling kabocha squash is a near-death experience. I eventually settled on a paring knife. Tips, anyone? CHICKEN SALAD larb gai What's a day without larb? This was actually a last-minute addition. It was also cheating, since while I was shopping I planned to save time by buying ground chicken, and I did, but all they had on hand at Uwajimaya was white meat. There were some thighbones in the carcasses I used to make stock, though. This was a very straightforward chicken larb, with lime juice, fish sauce, shallots, and cilantro. In fact, I made a bowl of chopped ginger, scallions, and cilantro and just dipped in to garnish everything. You can see the remnants in this photo. Napa cabbage leaves for wrapping. That cabbage gets around. STEWED MUSHROOMS WITH CHILE DIP tom het pa gap prik dam This was also based on a recipe from Thai Food, page 262. I was intrigued by the author's suggestion that "the paste in this dish can either be dissolved in the broth or served as a sauce to be eaten with the simmered mushrooms." Since I already had a soup on the menu, I served it that way. I quartered the cremini mushrooms and simmered them in chicken broth, then drained most of the broth and served them with the chile paste on the side. The paste consisted of dried red chiles, galangal, shallots, garlic, shrimp paste, and salt. A little bit went a long way. SICHUAN-STYLE POTATO SHREDS pad man farang Originally I was planning to recreate a dish I'd eaten at Grand Sichuan International, which consisted of thick slivers of potato stir-fried with ground pork. I was going to replace the pork with chicken and use the chicken and potatoes in one go. Then I remembered a different dish I'd had at Grand Sichuan, qiang tu dou si in Chinese, which had thinner potato shreds and no meat. I looked in Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuanese Cookery and of course there it was. You slice the peeled potatoes ultra-thin on the mandoline, then julienne to make gossamer threads. Stir-fry in peanut oil with dried red chiles, sichuan peppercorns, and fish sauce (okay, the original recipe used salt). When it comes off the heat, stir in some sesame oil. I think the idea is not to brown the potato, just barely cook it through, but I let it take on a little color. This isn't a very strongly-flavored dish but makes a good foil for some more pungent Sichuan or Thai dishes. BRAISED NAPA CABBAGE AND BACON tom pak kaat khao plii moo The remaining cabbage went into a saucepan with some thin-sliced bacon and roasted chile paste (nam prik pow). I added a dash of lime juice as it came off the heat to cut the richness a bit, but it was still kind of sludgy. Napa isn't really the best cabbage for this sort of thing, nor is is this remotely a Thai dish, but it wasn't bad. JASMINE RICE khao suay From the rice cooker. Clockwise from upper left: potatoes, ceviche, soup, mushrooms, larb, chile paste for mushrooms, cabbage. Yes, this photo sucks. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS This is the most cooking I've ever done in one day. Despite cleaning as I went, I soiled almost every dish in the house and spent almost an hour doing dishes after dinner. It was also a blast. Part of the fun was the fact that most of these dishes didn't have to be served piping hot, so if I put them on the table a few minutes apart, it didn't matter. (Although when I said that to Laurie, she said some of the dishes should have been hotter. Am I hot or not?) The big winners were the soup and the larb. If you'd like more specific recipes for any of these dishes, please let me know. They were mostly improvised. Three were book-inspired, but except for the potatoes, I changed the recipes so much I would have no qualms about publishing them as my own (though I'd mention the inspiration). Ingredient usage went well. I used all of the two quarts of stock I made, and all I ended up with in the drawer was some galangal and green papaya. And some bacon, but there's no chance of that going to waste. We had a friend over for the meal, and this was way more than enough food for three, but I've been steadily eating the leftovers. Here's a PDF of the menu that I set out on the table. rai khan aharn Okay, post your results!

Thanks, JAZ. I'll definitely try that next time. Will they kick me out of the gourmet society if I admit that I don't have sherry vinegar in the house? I'd like to, but haven't gotten around to researching which one to get and how much to spend. Maybe I should start a thread.

Southern girl, thanks so much for posting this report. I've never been to Alan Wong's, but he did once call Sur La Table when I was working there and ordered a dozen egg toppers. Do you suppose that when the king's guard came to accuse a commoner of eating the forbidden fish, the commoner put a hand innocently over his chest and said, "Moi?"

Jinmyo, if you think you've caught me in a contradiction now, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until I write a column ranting against poorly conceived fusion food and then publish a recipe for "Thai flapjacks." Anna N, that sounds like the advice about having bread in the oven when you're trying to sell your house. With the advent of frozen La Brea bread, I guess more houses are selling than ever before. Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. Not to be too much of a classic recipe thief, but if any of you have suggestions for future columns (once we figure out what this column is going to be about, of course), please do let me know. I have a feeling the next one will have something to do with the six mystery basket dishes I cooked on Saturday.

Absolutely, bond girl. I'm cooking my butt off this afternoon, I will have you all know.

gknl, country-style ribs should work just as well as whole shoulder, and you're right--loin won't be as good. I doubt frozen will be a problem. Country-style ribs are sometimes sold boneless and sometimes bone-in, but it's never a lot of bone.

If anyone's been wanting to try that Gray Kunz recipe but are scared of all the steps, there's a simplified version in Best American Recipes 2002-2003. I haven't gotten around to trying that one either, but I really want to. Soba, I usually braise my short ribs in porter and throw in some lentils and wheat berries, as suggested by Mark Strausman in The Campagna Table.

I ended up with the Chicken Marsala, which was cooked perfectly and had some nice chunks of pancetta in the sauce. The parsley mashed potatoes were dull (but I'm not really a mash fan), but the steamed brussels sprouts were great. The service was great--I thought our waitress had the earnest demeanor of the beginner but handled our orders like a pro (except for not knowing they were out of scallops, but that wasn't her fault). That hot and sour was absolutely the best I've ever had. Scratch-made stock; high quality shrimp; the right balance of salty, sour, and hot; and a good mix of vegetables.

Sorry, I split it off because there's supposed to be an embargo on spoilers in the main topic until everyone has had a chance to cook (the deadline is Tuesday).

One week left! (Is that a good enough excuse to bump this back up to the top?)

I thought I was picky until I read this thread. Actually, I was a fairly picky kid, although I always loved vegetables. The things that I still find revolting are tuna salad, anything else with jarred mayonnaise, dill (but dill pickles are fine, for some reason), ketchup, and probably more than anything else, American potato salad. It's generally unfair to dismiss a whole cuisine, but I will make an exception for American church potluck food. Both of my parents hate beets. They say their relationship is based on mutual hatred of beets. I love beets. Call me Johnny Rebel.

I think this is often called Pasta alla Gricia. There's a recipe in the Babbo Cookbook for pasta with sauteed parsnips and pancetta. It would be awesome with some good guanciale. Sigh, Ninth Avenue is what I miss more about New York than anything else.

Scallion pancakes go with everything. Homemade stock is very important. Every time I've made hot and sour and home and been disappointed, it was because I'd resorted to canned stock. I think canned stock is fine for a lot of things, but not this.

I think the best way to highlight it would be carbonara.

My ideal dinnertime is probably 6:30. Laurie and I recently had a big special meal that started at 9:00, and it was a real pain. No amount of snacking can adequately prepare you. Does anybody else here like an early lunch? I usually eat lunch between 11 and 11:30, but I have no qualms about digging in to a couple of slices of pizza at 10:15, and then I'm good until dinner. The amount of breakfast I eat doesn't seem to matter much, although the time I wake up does.

I'm generally skeptical of any magazine that is required to have a turkey on the cover of the November issue. Buy an imagination, folks. No one has mentioned Cooking Light. A friend of mine has a sub, and if you ignore the nutritional supplement ads and articles about exercise regimens, the same way you ignore the ski vacation articles in Gourmet, there's actually some good stuff--particularly vegetable dishes, which they can handle with more finesse than the veg magazines because they put bacon in when necessary.

Unlike Gourmet or Cook's Illustrated, I've noticed that VT does a lot of health reporting and incorporates the latest nutritional research into articles. How do you decide what information is sufficiently well-supported to make the cut? Do you have staff nutritionists?

Yes, to clarify, I do want to try the Square 1 menu. I've done the One World Japanese menu before, and it's fine, but you already get to eat Japanese noodles at those prices.

We could also just go down and demand he sell us a big sack of BBQ pork. As much as I love banh mi, I've never had a desire to make them at home. Presumably I would if I didn't live a short bus ride from seventeen banh mi places.

Okay, I'm jumping in late, and I don't want to derail this important real estate discussion, but this one's easy. If I say to myself, "Man, our waiter is really upselling," it's bad. If I buy what he's selling without thinking about it, it's good. It comes down to the fact that dealing with a really good salesperson is a pleasure, and dealing with a bad one (e.g., scripted telemarketer) is not.

I know, I got a great deal on a pair of shrinkwrapped Jeep Cherokees. It's funny to see the "Kirkland Signature" products all over the US, because Kirkland is nothing more or less than a Seattle suburb that happens to be Costco headquarters. It makes as much sense as "Yonkers Signature." What would be great is if Costco were a Portland company and the brand was "Beaverton Signature." Nobody's mentioned the free samples, have they? Has anyone had anything good recently?

Actually, I prefer the homemade ones, which aren't quite translucent. The translucent ones always dissolve in my hand. Got any tricks?

FG, I've been in one of those check brawls with a big group of Chinese and Chinese-Americans. The newspaper was supposed to be paying, so I grabbed the check, setting off a prolonged argument in Chinese, English, and several pidgins that we invented over the course of the battle. Eventually I was allowed to pay on the condition that other people at the table were allowed to stuff twenties into Laurie's coat pocket and we would pretend not to notice. I've never been to China, but when we took friends to Thailand we quickly adopted the custom of fighting over the bill. It's fun, and the bill was never more than $25.