C. sapidus

Thank you! I really appreciate your advice and encouragement. Interesting – I don’t think that I have seen kraphrao leaves here. Do you know if they are exported, or what other names they might be called? That is excellent advice. I am better at “adding and tasting” when I make something familiar, but I need to work on “adding and tasting” when I try something new. Eventually doing so will become second nature, but I have to fight my tendency to follow the recipe when cooking something for the first time. Wow, the power of corporate symbols. I take it that scallops are not native to Thailand? Are scallops used frequently in Thai cooking? I’ll look out for wider rice noodles next time. Few fresh Asian noodles are available locally, but we have a wide assortment of dried noodles. Can I soak or blanch dried rice noodles before stir-frying them?Thanks!

. . . one of the greatest movie lines, ever. Two years ago we hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. Mom had hosted for the past 40 years, so we were uncertain how she would respond to the idea of changing family tradition. When we gently broached the subject, Mom threw her arms in the air and shouted, “Yay!” Pretty demonstrative for a reserved daughter of Britain. I can’t remember everything we served, but roast capon, Bourbon sweet potatoes with Bourbon-spiked orange sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, curried butternut squash soup, pistachio shortbread, and mulled wine linger in memory. Last Thanksgiving our kitchen was gutted for renovation, so my brother and his wife gracefully hosted. This year we will take a road trip to honor my mother-in-law’s last Thanksgiving in Wisconsin before she comes to live with us. In Wisconsin, I usually make two batches of the Bourbon sweet potatoes: one with walnuts and one without for a nut-allergic nephew. The Wisconsin relatives have their traditional holiday spread, so I am happy to fill in with side dishes or desserts. In various years I have made quiche, baklava, flan, or grilled salmon with basil cream sauce. I usually cook an after-Thanksgiving meal in Wisconsin. One year I made dum aloo and sookha keema for a visiting Indian physician. In other years I have made Mexican bricklayer’s eggs or Thai red curry. Fortunately, the relations are quite tolerant of my culinary whims. This year we will drive to Wisconsin in a rented van packed with the boys, our two old dogs, a granite mortar and pestle, and a cooler full of Thai chilies, fish sauce, shrimp paste, lemongrass, and palm sugar. I haven’t decided whether to make a Vietnamese or Thai meal. Next year, we will host Thanksgiving again. The house addition should be finished so out-of-town guests will have room to sleep off a big meal. We hope to begin establishing family traditions that the boys will treasure, or perhaps complain about on eGullet in 2026.

Stir-fried noodles with chicken and yard-long beans (pad si ew) adapted from Thai Food. On the pictured batch I forgot to stir-fry the egg with the noodles, so I stir-fried the egg separately. I used fresh banh pho noodles, cutting them into smaller segments after the first batch to minimize clumping. Is there another type of noodle that is more appropriate for this dish? A key step was adding enough chicken stock at the end to distribute the soy sauces uniformly and avoid salty spots. Garnishing with Sriracha and cashews after picture-time provided a little heat and crunch. I also added fried shallots when eating leftovers for breakfast. This was my first time stir-frying noodles, so it was a learning experience. I liked the mix of flavors, textures, and temperatures – resilient noodles, seared chicken thighs, cool bean sprouts, firm yard-long beans, and the salty-garlicky-chickeny sauce. I’ll probably try pad Thai and a few other Thai noodle dishes, but the family seems to prefer fried rice to fried noodles. Pad si ew with yard-long beans

NYC Mike: Have you tried Sriracha or sambal oelek? For sweet and salty, you could try kecap manis. If you want to make your own, here are some fish sauce-based chile sauces from Kasma Loha-unchit, and and nam prik from Chez Pim. Is that the sort of thing you are looking for?

jmolinari: Thank you, and condolences on the spousal spice incompatibility. In our family, younger son has the lowest spice tolerance. Sometimes we spice to his tolerance and adjust seasonings at the table with slivered chilies, a spicy dipping sauce, or Sriracha. Other times we will spice the dish normally (hot) and he can dilute it to taste with rice or coconut rice. For Thai meat salads, we usually set some of the meat aside for the boys, and then spice up the salad properly. Another possibility is Thai fried rice, which is delicious, typically not spicy, and a great way to use up leftovers. Thai Food has several pages of fried rice recipes. Also, Panang and Mussaman curries can have a lot of flavor without too much heat. sarensho: Sounds good! I expect that oyster sauce would lend some nice umami to a vegetable stir-fry. I look forward to trying it. NYC Mike: I'm happy to share recipes (respecting eGullet copyright policy, of course). Are you looking for curry pastes (e.g., red, green, Panang, etc.) or chili pastes (like table sauces or dipping sauces)?

Oh do tell. And we hope to see Thai food on eGullet shortly thereafter.

Thank you. I stir-fried the snow peas with mashed garlic and salt, simmered for a minute or so with a little stock (or water), light soy sauce, and sugar, and then finished with white pepper. This has become our default vegetable stir-fry because it is so quick and tasty. Baby asparagus are very good stir-fried this way, and probably broccoli or yard-long beans, too. Tougher vegetables can be blanched first. Red curry with thin-shaved beef sounds delicious.

Try grinding some raw rice. I do that when switching between grinding spices and grinding coffee. More than you ever wanted to know: CoffeeGeek guide to using a pour-over filter (link).

Get a Melitta pour-over filter: 10 cups of coffee for the low, low price of $12.99. Best bang for the buck around. Caveat: I have only used the 2-cup Melitta units, but they make very good drip coffee. Link: Melitta manual coffee makers

More from David Thompson’s Thai Food: red curry of scallops; stir-fried snow peas; and rice. The curry paste was rich, fragrant, and delicate enough not to overpower the scallops. I held back half of the fish sauce for final adjustment of seasoning, and probably should have done the same with the palm sugar. We found fresh scallops at a roadside stand. My wife (who may be biased) said they were the best scallops she had ever eaten. Red curry of scallops (chuu chii hoi shenn)

End-grain hardwood cutting boards work just fine with Japanese knives. End-grain is very forgiving because the knife blade can penetrate the cutting board between the wood fibers. When the blade is removed, the fibers seem to resume their original position, more or less. Some folks here swear by soft plastic cutting boards, but I haven't tried them. Japanese knife blades tend to be very hard, which allows them to be very sharp. Harder steel is also usually more brittle. Japanese knife blades are often thinner and lighter than German knife blades. You can reduce the chances of damaging the blade by not cutting bones or hard-frozen hunks of meat, and not twisting the blade when cutting. We are slowly replacing our old Chicago Cutlery set with Japanese knives.

Another potential problem with pot fillers: what happens if they start leaking? If your sink faucet leaks, the water runs into the sink. If your pot filler leaks, the water runs into your range. We installed a small prep sink (basically a bar sink) on the same side of the kitchen as the cook top. Our pass-through galley kitchen gets a lot of traffic, so we wanted to avoid collisions between children, dogs, and big pots of boiling water. Even though the prep sink is small, we have found it to be incredibly useful. Good luck with your renovation.

I made the soy-braised chicken thighs with star anise and orange peel. We had ketjap manis around so we used it. The chicken was tender and juicy, and the sauce was very nice if a bit bland for my taste. Next time I’ll use a few more chilies and perhaps reduce the sauce further. I had to increase the temperature from 325F to 350F before the braising liquid started bubbling. Our oven seems to run cooler compared with others who have cooked from this book. For what it is worth, the oven thermostat and a separate oven thermometer agree exactly. Anyway, here is what it looked like.

HKDave: Excellent! Thank you for the suggestions and translation. I’ll print out your reply and keep it with the recipe. You have given me several ideas to try. I was surprised that the recipe called for light and dark soy sauce, but no fish sauce. I’ll add the salty ingredients while tasting next time. If the dark soy is mostly for color, I can probably cut that back if necessary.

I plan to cook a few things from David Thompson’s Thai Food this week. Tonight we made stir-fried minced beef with chilies and holy basil (neua pat bai grapao). More details on the Dinner! thread, post #17199. Does anyone know if “grapao” is the same dish that is often called “kapow” in American restaurants? Beef or chicken “kapow” usually bears a three-chile designation in restaurants, but the flavors and heat have typically been underwhelming. If “grapao” is the same as “kapow”, I like Mr. Thompson’s flavor-packed version better. The sauce was quite salty, a bit much so for my taste. I added some sugar to balance the salt, but next time I’ll use unsalted broth and less soy sauce. Perhaps scaling the recipe from one to four servings goofed things up. Does anyone have another suggestion?

Tonight was the perfect example of why we keep frozen meatballs and frozen veggies around. My wife is at a conference, the fridge is empty, and two of the boys’ friends unexpectedly showed up for dinner. The friends are nice kids but picky eaters. No problem: spaghetti and meatballs (jazzed up with garlic, cayenne, and herbs); and peas and corn microwaved with butter. Kids scarf down dinner, and suitably recharged, burst outside to play hide and seek and run and scream. Originally, I had planned to grill drumsticks that were marinating in drained yogurt, onions, ginger, garlic, cayenne, cumin, S&P, and lime juice. That would not have gone over well with the picky eaters. Eh, the drumsticks will be even better tomorrow for lunch.

My purpose is to make the justifiably proud parents a bit prouder. Elder son loves to eat, but prefers to let others do the food preparation. He did express interest in grilled cheese sandwiches, so today I taught him how to make them. He seemed pretty charged up about it, so perhaps his interest will grow over time. Younger son is fascinated with bending the physical universe to his will, and that includes an interest in cooking. He has pretty good knife skills and loves to make scrambled eggs, tea, and instant hot chocolate. He is also the undisputed master of microwaved spaghetti-Os and Jamaican beef patties. He recently discovered Ramen noodles, so we had a soup course at yesterday’s dinner. He considered making more Ramen noodles for breakfast, but wiser counsel prevailed. Younger son has a major sugar Jones, so once he learns to make dessert we will never get him out of the kitchen.

Fish sauce (possibly by association) OK, for real, I've always liked the sounds of guajillo and shashlik. Of course, I could be saying them wrong.

Wow. Susan. Um. Leaking entrails? It reminds me of a dissection that we did in college, except the dissection was . . . cleaner-looking. I thought the baby-poop curry looked pretty darn tasty, by the way.

Lamb saag for breakfast sounds great. I have never understood why most folks prefer certain foods at particular times of day. I’ll be having leftover chicken and potato curry for breakfast tomorrow. I know nothing about medieval and renaissance cooking, so I’m looking forward to learning. Can one assume that more is known about the foods of the aristocracy? Has any information survived about what the common folks ate? Best wishes for the ferrets, too.

We installed glass-fronted cabinets in the dining room to house our modest cookbook collection. The cabinets also house wine glasses and knickknacks. As the cookbook collection grows, the knickknacks will be displaced. The filing system is idiosyncratic, combining subject matter and size. Categories include general cookbooks, international cookbooks, fruits and vegetables, alcoholic beverages, and an embarrassingly small baking section. These divisions will change as the collection invades new territory. Music is simpler because CDs and LPs are each uniformly sized. Since size is not a factor, music can be filed alphabetical by artist name within genres. Occasional inconsistencies surface, e.g., King Tubby is filed under “K”, but Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf reside together under “W”.

I'm hardly an expert, but it seems that most Indian recipes specify a customized spice mixture for each dish. You may want to check out an Indian cookbook or three and try some of the recipes. There is an excellent thread on the India and Indian Cuisine forum: Indian cooking books, a compilation of discussions. Indian cuisine is incredibly varied and complex, so there is no shortage of opinions on the India forum.

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.