C. sapidus

Vietnamese food includes some wonderful savory dishes with caramel sauce. Here is an example from Viet World Kitchen. Here is something that I made: fish in claypot (copper pot, really) from Mai Pham's Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table.

I use peanut oil for Asian stir-frying, and olive oil, butter, or sausage fat for everything else. The local Asian market recently started stocking Lion and Globe peanut oil. Edit: comma

ChryZ: That is AWESOME on so many levels. Wow. Just wow.

This thread inspired me to make crab cakes for the first time. We used a pound of jumbo lump crabmeat, broiled half of the crab cakes (left side of the plate) and sautéed the other half in olive oil (front right). The family preferred broiled, but the fried crab cakes were easier to flip. More information here (post #16954).

Andie: I must have missed this - would you be so kind as to explain why you prefer Bourgeat to other copper manufacturers such as Falk Culinaire? Thanks!

72 cookbooks here. I counted Joy of Cooking (paperback) only once, even though it has long since divided into two half-books. Additions during the past six months: Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by James Oseland Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham Chesapeake Bay Cooking by John Shields Killer Cocktails by Dave Wondrich (Splificator) Cocinia de la Familia by Marilyn Tausend Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop (fiore)

OMG - I had completely forgotten about porcupine meatballs. Mom used to make them pretty often. I liked them, as I recall.

I'm envious. We have a couple of Latino markets in town, but their dried chilies are pretty, well, dry. There is a Latino grocery in Milwaukee that has the freshest, most pliable dried chilies I have ever seen. I'll try a mail order to see how Kalyustans compares. Awesome! Thanks for de-lurking. Thanks, Michael. I can foresee many happy hours browsing their web site.

We recently bought the "Try Me" copper sauciere from Falk. I have only used it a couple of times, but love it already. Copper did a noticeably better job of making caramel and reducing two cups of apple cider down to two tablespoons of syrup. I don't plan to sweat the aesthetics, but love the control that copper provides. Unfortunately, Falk drastically increased its prices as of 9/26/06. Falk Culinair pricing. This source appears to have better prices on Falk copperware.

Wow, Kalustyans looks like my kind of place. I’ll have to check it out next time I visit. Penzeys is my benchmark for spice stores (we go when we visit Wisconsin), but Kalustyans looks like it has more variety, especially in the chiles and beans. Do they carry whole dried Mexican chilies (pasillas, guajillos, anchos, etc.)?

Omelet with fish sauce and kejap manis. The filling was slivered shallots, garlic, and Fresno chilies sautéed and then caramelized with fish sauce and kejap manis.

Late breakfast: Apple crumble from the King Arthur Flour cookbook. Cider boiled down to syrup with mulling spices added a nice flavor. The crumble was delicious, but the filling was a bit sweet. Next time I’ll make more crumble and reduce the amount of brown sugar in the filling. For me, about half fruit and half crumble is about right. My baking baking aptitude and experience are quite limited, so I am inordinately proud of this modest accomplishment.

Domestic Goddess: Like in the Phillipines, Maryland crabs are also steamed. Old Bay is a dry spice mix, so “drowned” was probably a figure of speech -- some places dump a thick layer of Old Bay on the crabs before steaming them. By the way, your dipping sauce sounds really good. chappie and SheenaGreena: I have to stick up for crab cakes. A well-made crab cake is heavenly – nearly pure lump crab meat with barely enough binder to keep it from falling apart. All in all, I also prefer steamed crabs. Picking sweet crab meat is the perfect excuse to spend hours drinking cold beer and swapping lies with friends and family.

At home under the weather, I made some comfort food (yes, I have odd comforts). Omelet with feta cheese and fish sauce, topped with fried shallots and Sriracha. Jasmine rice, steamed with coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves and sliced ginger. I feel better already.

So if crab mustard is the filtered essence of Chesapeake muck, perhaps we should investigate with scuba gear and a straw. I suspect that only seafood can turn muck into delicacy. Yes, I love the crab mustard. We eat crabs rarely enough that I’ll take my chances, toxicologically speaking. For those of you who pick crab meat for use in other dishes, how does the crab meat survive the journey past your mouth? I don’t think I could do that. If I pick it, it gets eaten immediately. Yes, I used to make a dipping sauce with Old Bay and vinegar. Now I just eat the crabs. The best crabs I ever had were very lightly seasoned. A friend’s brother who runs a crab boat picked out the biggest and best for us, and the crabs were steamed in the back yard. Nothing to interfere with the sweet crab meat. Mmmmmmm.

. . . underestimate the power of a Preethi mixie. Returning from the ice rink with a passel of boys, we decided to warm everyone up with a big batch of Mexican hot chocolate. Mexican chocolate comes in a thick wheel. One adds a quarter of the chocolate wheel to a cup of hot milk in the blender, and then blends the mixture until frothy. I have done this many, many times with our old blender. For my birthday, Mrs. Crab gave me a new Preethi mixer/grinder, which is WAY more powerful than the old blender. I found this out the hard way. First batch: hit the pulse button, BLAMMO! Sticky hot chocolate everywhere. Hmm, maybe I didn’t hold the lid down hard enough. Second batch: leaning on the lid with all my might, hit the pulse buttn, BLAMMO! More hot chocolate everywhere. By the third batch, I figured out the trick: breathe on the pulse button for a microsecond. This breaks up the chocolate chunks. Do it again, just in case. After that, blend away. The frothy, cinnamon-scented hot chocolate was wonderful. The walls, window, and coffee maker cleaned up nicely.

Actually, Aretha "stole" it from Otis Redding. Um, and Otis' band was Booker T and the MGs, and their big hit was Green Onions, which are edible, which makes this music trivia interruption food-related. Sorry - resume copyright discourse.

Austin: Your essays on the Muslim restaurant are wonderful. I had read one, but missed the other so thanks for providing the links. If Amazon ships to Bangkok reasonably, they have James Oseland's book in stock (click). Pan: I haven’t run across a Malaysian restaurant in the DC area, although I have had some excellent Indonesian food.

Austin: Thanks for the kind words! Visiting Bangkok and eating Thai-Muslim food sounds wonderful. Is the restaurant more southern Thai or Malaysian? I’m curious because I just started reading James Oseland’s Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. I am fascinated with the interrelationships and influences between Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Indian cooking. Visiting Thailand is high on my list of things to do before I croak. Unfortunately, commitments on the home front dictate that any international exploration for the next few years must take place from the comfort of our kitchen. How long do you expect to stay in Bangkok, anyway?

Epazote grows like a weed in Maryland, too. I grew it once. Towards the end of summer, an ominous profusion of seed pods formed on the plant. What with one thing and another, I failed to snip off the seed pods and the seeds scattered. The following spring, the veggie patch was covered with a zillion epazote seedlings, easily identifiable by their distinctive aroma. Fortunately, no seedlings returned the following year. Compared with Melbourne, Maryland summers wetter and the winters are probably colder.

Mystery Science Theater 3000. Wikipedia entry. For the truly obsessive

For grinding dry spices, I would pick up a cheap coffee grinder. No, knowing myself, I would do extensive research, check Consumer Reports, and then buy a cheap coffee grinder. We have only replaced the coffee grinder once in 30 years. The current model is a Krups, for what it is worth. Anyway, my wife gave me a Preethi ChefPro Plus for my birthday. The grinder was back-ordered for a few weeks, but arrived yesterday and the many pieces are sitting expectantly on the counter. I am hoping it will be able to handle some or all of the following tasks: 1. Grind dry spices and toasted chilies (so I don’t have to clean the coffee grinder with rice every time I grind spices) 2. Chop ice and make Indian lassi 3. Grind Thai curry pastes as finely as a mortar and pestle 4. Grind soaked chilies so finely that I don’t need to strain the skins when making Mexican moles I will experiment and report.

Yup, and lunch, and maybe tomorrow's breakfast, too. Right here: Care to help a lad? (click)ETA: When I made the Panang curry for dinner, I was hurrying to feed hungry guests and rushed the final adjustment of seasonings. At breakfast, the curry was a little salty so I added a squeeze of lime and a touch of palm sugar. Man, the flavors really jumped out. I know that the final seasoning can make the flavors sing, but I often don’t take sufficient time in the mad rush to get everything on the table. Must. Do. Better. Next. Time.

For a midnight snack, I had Asia on a plate. Clockwise from top left: Austin’s Panang curry with shrimp; Vietnamese green mango salad with beef; Chinese-influenced salt and pepper shrimp; and Basmati rice. I highly recommend Austin’s Panang curry recipe - the instructions are clear, and the curry tastes absolutely delicious. With a bigger plate, I could probably have covered more of Asia. These were leftovers from an extremely pleasant dinner party described here (post #16548).