C. sapidus

Fish sauce and a wide variety of Asian cookbooks - sounds like my kind of place! I noticed a few Indian cookbooks - do you cook Indian food often, and do you have any trouble getting ingredients for Indian food?

alanamoana: The wonder is that the shortbread turned out. What you didn’t see was pound cake -- nobody did. After lining up all of the ingredients and dumping sugar and butter in a bowl, I discovered that our hand mixer was dead. I couldn’t figure out how to “cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy” without a mixer, so no pound cake. That would be a more typical outcome of my baking projects. GTO: Thank you – I like the edges, too. Mrs. Crab bought some Scottish shortbread with “stem ginger” that was very good. Ginger shortbread will probably be my next baking project. Does anyone know if “stem ginger” is the same as candied ginger? Does anyone have a reliable recipe for ginger shortbread?

Sourdough buttermilk pancakes sound so delicious. And mimosas, too, of course.

Lemon vanilla pistachio shortbread. A modest effort from one with much to be modest about when it come to baking.

Thanks! The recipe is from Mai Pham's Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, reproduced here (link).

I love the gross-out food ideas, but this isn’t one of them. While visiting my mother on Christmas eve and chatting around the kitchen table, my sister constructed this gingerbread, fruitcake, and sugar cookie replica of a Russian cathedral. I had suggested using onions for the onion domes, but my idea was rejected as inedible.

First, I want to thank guppymo for starting this thread and sharing so much delicious Vietnamese food. We love Vietnamese food and make it at home from time to time. If others are cooking Vietnamese food, this would be a great place to compare notes -- like on Chinese Eats at Home (link) and Thai Cooking at Home (link). With that in mind, we grilled five-spice chicken today. We cook this frequently, but this batch was the best so far. Apparently, the secret is to marinate the chicken overnight and grill over a medium to low-medium flame. The lower heat crisped the chicken skin while preserved the haunting aroma of freshly-toasted and ground star anise. The ginger, garlic, and five-spice flavors permeated down to the bone, and the meat was tender and juicy. Gosh, I hope this is repeatable. Vietnamese five-spice chicken (ga ngu vi huong) Edited to add links.

Awesome! The Atlantic tuna available to us just isn't the same. Probably a year, but she passed through Honolulu regularly for a couple of years afterwards. Cool, thanks. Feel free to tell the food-related parts of the long story, if you like.

MiFi: That looks delicious! We had bricklayer’s eggs (huevos al albanil). Yes, again – they are that good. Roasted Poblano chile rajas were a great addition.

SuzySushi: As many do, we honeymooned in Hawaii. Mrs. Crab had lived in Honolulu, so we spent most of our time on the Big Island and Maui. The delicious aromas of Plumeria and white ginger evoke many pleasant memories, as did your beautiful pictures – thank you! We had some amazing Thai and Pacific Rim food in Hawaii. I loved the seared ahi tuna, and especially liked the beefy ahi poke, sold from a roadside stand that had probably never seen a health inspector. I look forward to seeing your favorites among the diverse cuisines of your beautiful island. How did you happen to wind up in Hawaii?

The green curry leftovers made a delicious breakfast. The colors in this picture are closer to reality - I'm still not sure why the picture upthread came out fluorescent yellow. [Manager note: this conversation continues in Thai Cooking at Home, 2007 - 2012]

The golf ball-sized eggplants. Kasma Loha-unchit's Easy Green Curry recipe calls for pea eggplants. When I asked at Thai Grocery why I hadn't seen them in a while, I was told that they could no longer import them. Why would they be banned? Kim D: Thanks – I like halved or quartered Thai eggplants in green curry, but I have not used them for an eggplant-based dish. Unfortunately, I am the only one in the family that likes the texture of long-cooked eggplant. I would love to try the pea-sized eggplants, too, but I have never seen them in the stores. jmolinari: Lucky you! This past summer we grew cilantro mostly for the roots. If no roots are available, we just use the stems in curry paste. I have not done any side-by-side comparison, so I’m not sure how using cilantro roots or stems changes the complex flavors of a Thai curry.

Could it be that, excessive amounts of salt from the anchovies/Worcestershire as well as additional salt you may have added, have been the culprits? ← Yes, I would guess that the salt was the culprit, and the anchovy paste is probably the saltiest ingredient that you used. For an interesting experiment: 1. Make the same mixture without the anchovy paste. Does it emulsify? 2. Add the anchovy paste at the end and see if it breaks the emulsion. 3. If the emulsion breaks, add lecithin or another emulsifier and see if you can re-emulsify the mixture. C'mon, Chris, do it for science!

Sheena: If in doubt, order the larb. I use larb gai as quick way to judge Thai restaurants. Kim D: Are you using the green golf ball-sized eggplants or the long violet-colored ones for the "best eggplant dish ever"? Tonight we made David Thompson’s green curry of chicken with baby corn. I’m not sure why the picture is lurid yellow – the curry looked greener in real life. I used fresh baby corn, and thinned the curry with homemade chicken stock. The recipe called for two tablespoons of the curry paste, but I used about five tablespoons to get the flavor right. Next time I’ll probably increase everything in the curry paste except the chilies – the curry had just the right amount of heat, but needed more body. We served the curry with jasmine rice, and asparagus with a cooked sauce of lime, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and sesame oil. Green curry of chicken with baby corn (geng gwio warn gai)

Percy: Um, no recipe really, but it was inspired by Sichuan dry-fried green beans. After stir-frying the vegetables, bacon, and aromatics in a very hot wok, I lowered the heat and started dumping in sauces until it tasted right and the beans were crunchy-tender. Turned off the heat and mixed in sesame oil and Chankiang vinegar. Sorry, I didn't measure anything and probaly couldn't make that exact concoction again if I tried. ETA: Ah Leung has a pictorial on Sichuan dry-fried green beans (link). By the way, scrambled eggs and Serrano ham looks and sounds delicious.

Ah Leung and Sheetz: Thanks for the advice on cooking fish without tearing the skin – I have properly annotated the recipe for next time. XiaoLing: Your “proper dinner” looks like a feast to me! Tonight I poached chicken thighs with crushed ginger and scallion whites. After freezing the poaching liquid in 1-cup aliquots for stock, I shredded most of the chicken to make strange-flavor chicken (guai wei ji si, also known as “bang bang” chicken – bang bang ji si) from Land of Plenty. The remaining chicken went into Thai fried rice, served with sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, lime wedges, and Sriracha. I used tahini for the strange-flavor sauce – does anyone know how the taste of tahini compares with that of Chinese sesame paste? The chicken was delicious – how could it not be with light soy sauce, Chankiang vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil, and ground roasted Sichuan pepper in the sauce, served over slivered scallion whites and topped with toasted sesame seeds. We will definitely make this again.

Ah Leung: Thank you for your kind words and advice! We got the plate (and a second, larger one) from an office gift exchange. This was the first time we used it. Do you mean to hold the fish on a "spatula" of some sort while immersed in the oil before laying it in the wok? "Above the oil" wouldn't have any effect. To suspend the fish before releasing it allows the skin to coat with oil, cook and firm up. This prevents the fish from sticking to the wok. BTW, where's our venerable jo-mel? Dejah: Yes, I had a similar question and would like to learn more about this method.

Tonight we had trout braised in chili bean sauce (dou ban xian yu), yard-long beans in spicy caramel fish sauce, and jasmine rice. The trout, from Land of Plenty, was tender and delicious, and the sauce was wonderful over rice. The yard-long beans had typical Thai flavors – spicy, salty, and sweet (thanks, Shaya!). This was the first time I had cooked whole fish in a wok. It was tricky to maneuver the fish, but my technique improved after tearing the skin on the first flip. Trout braised in chili bean sauce (dou ban xian yu)

nakji: I was hoping that you would answer the question about Vietnamese breakfast. Ann_T: Mmm, ham and cheddar omelet. I haven’t been able to cook for the past few days, so I made an, um, unusual breakfast: yard-long beans stir-fried with bacon, ginger, shallots, garlic, chili bean paste, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and maybe some other things, and finished with Chankiang vinegar and sesame oil. I was probably trying to pack several days worth of flavor into one meal. Came pretty close, too. Breakfast went nicely with ca phe sua nong (hot Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk).

Sheena: Fish sauce definitely makes me salivate. Disturbingly, my brain now responds this way to other “fermented” meats. While cutting the grass last summer, I smelled what I thought was fish sauce every time I passed the open kitchen window. I thought that my wife was heating up leftover green curry, and my mouth began to water. When I cut a few more rows, it became obvious that the saliva-inducing aroma was not coming from the kitchen – it was coming from a dead and, um, fermenting bird. Even knowing the source of the odor, my mouth kept watering. As soon as the lawn was finished I ran inside and heated up some green curry (with extra fish sauce). No, I didn’t eat the dead bird.

Lonnie: According to Mai Pham, Vietnamese breakfast may include beef stew with star anise and basil (thit bo kho) and a French baguette, sticky rice with mung beans and fresh coconut (xoi dau xanh dua), or pho. I have also read that fried rice is a common breakfast in SE Asia.This morning we had King Arthur Flour's “biscuits for breakfast.” This time the dough was more firm, and the biscuits puffed up and flaked nicely (Ann_T – thanks for the helpful suggestions). A touch more cream would probably have helped the batter. I know that biscuits are pretty basic baking, but I’m a pretty basic baker so any success is quite encouraging. Mrs. Crab made cinnamon buttered honey to drizzle over the biscuits. Mmmm.

Bob: Thank you for sharing beautiful pictures, mouth-watering food, witty writing, and for opening some eyes (definitely including mine) to Turkish food and culture. I did not realize that chilies were used so frequently in Turkish cooking. Are many Turkish foods spicy-hot, or are they more well-seasoned without a lot of chile heat? Did you mention the derivation of "Sazji"? Thanks!

Dejah: That looks delicious, but I could not figure out which recipe you made. What is it called in the Land of Plenty? Thanks!

Our office has “breakfast club” every other Friday. This was my week to bring food, so I made three cheese pies: sausage and roasted Poblano chile (front right); jumbo lump crab and sauteed Shiitake mushroom (front left); and pure jumbo lump crab (back). I used Gruyere cheese, half milk and half heavy cream, and flavored with minced onions, salt, paprika, and cayenne. One of these days I'll try making a pie crust.

Gabriel: Cucumber salad (ajat dtaeng gwa) is infinitely variable, but here is a recipe (link) that is pretty close to what I make. I usually use bird chilies, but a milder chile would provide more chile flavor for the same amount of heat. Cucumber salad serves as a refreshing palate-cleanser, so keep the flavors light. The flavor profile that I like has a balance between sweet and sour, with heat in the background and just enough salt to balance the flavors. Kasma Loha-unchit has an excellent exercise in balancing Thai flavors (link). Do try ginger with the cucumber salad next time, it really adds a lot.