C. sapidus

This thread continues to inspire. Two-egg omelet with Gorgonzola cheese, sauteed shallots, and heavy cream. Coffee and a banana. Mad Professor dubbing in the background. I love taking a day off from work. Sorry about the sloppy plate - I was hungry! Edited to finish the thought.

I believe in setting achievable goals . . . In 2007, I will eat fresh fish and shellfish from the roadside stand that we discovered one week before it closed for the winter. I will make Julie Sahni’s delicious vindaloo for the first time in years. Where did I put that mustard oil, anyway? I will find a reliable local source for dried Thai long chilies (phrik haeng) – a kitchen essential if ever there was one. I will learn to make simple baked goods – biscuits, maybe even no-knead bread. This is the year I will try making mapo tofu. I will taste bitter melon at least once, probably when cooking for myself. I will also taste really good and salty to the dogs after I play volleyball. I will use asafetida. I will give more time to my family. I will add at least one new vegetable to the boys’ “eat willingly” list. We will invite friends and family over for dinner more often, and in smaller manageable groups rather than huge unwieldy invasions. My kids will continue to tolerate, and often enjoy, their dad’s weird cooking. I will teach my kids to expand their cooking skills beyond grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, and omelets. I will read Jeffrey Steingarten or Anthony Bourdain, perhaps both. Also, I will read the introductions to my old cookbooks, many of which contain fascinating culinary and cultural information. Apparently, long ago I read cookbooks strictly for the recipes. Can you imagine? Edited for clarity - the dogs don't play volleyball.

We grilled sirloin steaks for the boys and one of their friends. One of the steaks was pulled early and sliced thinly, mixed with mint, basil, and cilantro and doused in a sauce of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, and roasted chile powder. Afterwards, I realized that I forgot the shallots and roasted rice powder. Oops. To clean out the fridge, we also made Thai fried with shrimp, sausage, egg, scallions, roasted chile paste, fish sauce, and lots of garlic. Beef salad (nahm dtok) and fried rice (kao pat)

rarerollingobject: Thank you! No, the sauce was added last. I heated the dry chiles in the oil; browned and removed the chicken; stir-fried the aromatics, returned the chicken to the wok; and then added the sauce and cooked until chicken was done - maybe 5 minutes total. The wok was so hot that the sauce reduced to a near-glaze on no time. I’ve never had xiao long bao, but yours look beautiful – impatience and greediness seem totally appropriate under the circumstances.

(Answering for Ah Leung) The tutorials are pinned to the top of the China and Chinese Cuisine forum.

sheetz: Wow, indeed. That’s beautiful. Wow. Chicken with Sichuan peppercorns is a favorite from Breath of a Wok. Last time it was a bit mild, so I increased the chile oil and dry chilies. The delicious sauce contains white pepper, black soy, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil, chicken broth, ginger, garlic, scallions, and ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns, cooked down to concentrate the flavors. The bell peppers were dead simple: sliced, stir-fried, and tossed with rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and sesame oil. The recipe called for steaming/boiling and peeling the peppers, but I was lazy. Chicken with Sichuan peppercorns; sweet and sour red bell peppers

Yeah, what Snowangel said. Some simple yet highly flexible Thai stir fries were described a few posts back (and in subsequent posts). Also, a wide variety of vegetables can be served raw, boiled, simmered in coconut milk, grilled, deep-fried, or pickled to accompany a Thai meal. One of my favorites is Thai cucumber relish - boil rice vinegar, sugar, water and salt, and pour over thinly-sliced cucumber, shallots, ginger, chilies, and cilantro. Simple and delicious.

Thank you, Ah Leung. I value your perspective. Sure, eggplant softens to some degree when cooked. I make a grilled/broiled Italian eggplant with garlic, olive oil, and rosemary that my wife loves. Grilling or broiling softens the eggplant, but the texture is more dry than wet. Apparently, that makes all the difference. Thanks, TP! I have been using Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, which has a lot of wonderful recipes and stories. I am hoping to supplement it with Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen..

Mmmmm, delicious-looking dinners and fascinating history. Sometimes it is difficult for those of us living in the “new world” to remember that history goes back much further in other parts of the globe.Half of last night’s dinner was Chinese: Fuchsia Dunlop’s fish-fragrant eggplant (yu xiang qie zi). The eggplant was deep-fried until soft and golden, then drained, tossed briefly with the sauce, and finished with sesame oil. I found it delicious, but the rest of the family had issues with the soft texture. Is eggplant normally soft in Chinese cooking, or should I have left more “chew”? Description from the Dinner! thread: Vietnamese pork in claypot was delicious, too, but the family didn’t like the chewy rice noodles. Guess I need to work on their appreciation of different textures.

Teepee: Thanks! I do like some heat with my dinner, but the beef turned out to be flavorful but fairly mild. Heck, even our youngest son, the least chile-tolerant in the family, didn’t complain.

The National Kitchen and Bath Association recommends the following minimum widths: 36” for walkways; 42” for single-cook work aisles; and 48” for multiple cook work aisles. Providing adequate passageways may not leave much room for an island in an 11x14 kitchen unless the long side is open. Our 10x12 kitchen opens to the dining room on the short side. Pre-renovation, a peninsula between the kitchen and dining room was a major bottleneck. After evaluating several island and peninsula configurations, we decided that a galley layout was the most efficient and functional. Good luck!

Teepee: Your photography is amazing, and your dinners look delicious (especially the pork ribs). Please keep posting. Our dinner may have been fusion rather than Chinese, but we had “Genghis Khan” beef and Sichuan dry-fried yard-long beans. The beans were nearly authentic (including ya cai – Tianjin preserved vegetable), except I used our abundant supply of Italian sausage instead of ground pork. The beef was cubed flank steak with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sambal oleek, sesame oil, scallions, Thai chilies, and about a head of sliced garlic. Next time I’ll give it a bit more heat by increasing the sambal oleek or mincing the chilies. Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Chinese stir-fry recipes (at least those in English) often call for whole chilies? I understand that the chilies are supposed to flavor the oil, but that can be done much more efficiently by mincing (or even bruising) fresh chilies or by reducing dried chilies to a paste or powder. Those methods allow the chile flavor and heat to spread uniformly through the dish, rather than remaining concentrated in chile land mines to surprise the unwary. ETA: oops, forgot the picture.

Christian Z: Wow, that is an awe-inspiring pictorial. Your dedication to authenticity while dealing with ingredient limitations is truly inspiring. The finished meal looks absolutely delicious. I’m drooling here. Wow. Mole poblano is one of my favorite things on earth, and I haven’t made it for way too long.

man, i'd completely forgotten that book! i've got one from the '60s or '70s and it really is the bible when it comes to my new mexican cooking. in other words, that's where i learned to make my red and green sauces. ← This one? A Taste of New Mexico Kitchens (Bolerum Books)

Marcella Hazan has a wonderful, simple fettuccine Alfredo. It takes maybe two minutes beyond the time to cook the fettuccine - the residual heat from the fettuccine and from the pot will do all of the cooking necessary. I have been making this so long that my method has probably strayed from the original, but it goes something like this: 1. Cook fettuccine in boiling salted water and strain in a colander 2. Melt butter using residual heat from the pot. 3. Add cooked fettuccine to the pot with the butter and mix. 4. Add heavy cream and mix. 5. Add freshly grated Parmesan a little at a time while mixing. 6. Season with freshly ground pepper and nutmeg, if you like. Since cost is a factor, tell your friend that the recipe also works with asiago cheese (but don’t tell Marcella).

When I have a home office again, it will be decorated with pictures of chiles, crabs, dogs, gardens, and old vinyl album covers – the finer things in life, y’know. I would love to take photographs that were good enough to display.

Beer, steamed crab meat, and saltine crackers = crab cakes. Saltine crackers

This thread is a great idea – there is a similar Thai home cooking thread that has helped many of us to share successes and learn from our less-successful attempts. I recently started experimenting with Chinese food, working from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty and Grace Young’s Breath of a Wok. To cheat, I am posting a few of our recent dinners, and welcome comments and suggestions from the wonderfully experienced cooks here. Apologies if I have mangled Chinese names or cooking traditions. Cashew chicken and tiger-skin green peppers (fu pi qing jiao). I used Poblano peppers – delicious but definitely not traditional. Sichuan dry-fried chicken (gan bian ji). I think this was chicken with Sichuan peppercorns and dry-fried green beans. Salt and pepper shrimp. I believe that eating the shells is traditional, but our sons prefer the shrimp to be shelled before cooking. Gong bao chicken: Dry-fried beef slivers (gan bian niu rou si), chicken in red oil sauce (hong you ji kuai), and tiger-skin peppers (fu pi qing jiao). Some sort of Sichuan chicken (la zi ji, perhaps) with stir-fried bok choy.

Rachel: I-70 and I-65 carried us through your fair city on our way to Wisconsin and a delightful family gathering, marred only by a slow-to-nonexistent internet connection. Returning home to skim your foodblog has whetted my appetite for a more careful reading to come. Your writing is worth it. Back to an earlier question, our boys have a Grammy and a Grammasaurus. Elder son mustered his then-halting English to bestow the latter sobriquet, and it stuck like glue. Fortunately, Grammasaurus doesn’t mind being named after an elderly brontosaurus in the “Land before Time” cartoons. I have my Scottish Granny's shortbread recipe, although I only met her twice. Transcription errors have transformed the recipe into an exercise in adding a little of this and a dusting of that until the dough looks right. The shortbread always tastes good, but never turns out the same way twice. This is probably a fair tribute to a woman who raised three children during the London Blitz, survived an unexploded bomb in the back garden, and accompanied her children and botanist husband to Ghana. Maddy seems to have a great joie de vivre. Our Jack Russell mix observes the humans closely and imitates them (us) with disquieting accuracy. Between naps, he terrorizes the local squirrel and rabbit population. Thank you for sharing your life and wit with us this week.

Pontormo: Excellent idea! In the spirit of this thread, and to purge excess protein after last night’s chili cook-off, I made chayotes al vapor for lunch. This is the sort of Mexican mostly-vegetable fare that I lived on for many years. For me, adding beans, cheese, eggs, a little meat for flavor, and/or lots of spices avoids the feeling that “something is missing” after a mostly-vegetable meal. I would cook this way more often, but the rest of the family is relentlessly carnivorous. The chayote was quickly seared with chilies and onions, covered and steamed in its own juices for a few minutes, and then uncovered and cooked until al dente. I topped with cilantro, feta cheese, and a squeeze of lime. Cooked this way, chayote has a nice texture and comports well with a wide variety of flavors.

Green curry with bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots.

Tzatziki suggests gyros. Since lamb has already been chosen, gotta go with feta cheese.Feta cheese

What have you named your ginger beer variation? Sounds refreshing! ← I'm pretty new at making cocktails, so I wouldn't presume to name a drink. It was nice, though.

Limes were eight for a dollar at the grocery store, so last night we made this Santiago Variation from Cocktail DB. Simple and refreshing. Mrs. Crab doesn’t like full-strength cocktails, so I mixed hers with Jamaican ginger beer, which was also good.

Hey, who put the good tea in our break room, and what are you doing with my knife? I had that same Chicago Cutlery knife for 20 years, but recently replaced it with a Hattori HD (also very light, but much sharper). I envy your taco selection. More Salvadorans and fewer Mexicans have settled here, so we see more pupusas than tacos. I find pupusas a bit heavy - do you have them in your area? Mmm, pumpkin ice cream.