C. sapidus

Robin: Thanks for the kind words Your “meat candy” and pickle party sounds like a blast! One of the things that I appreciate about Cradle of Flavor is the clarity and detail of the directions. This makes the book an excellent guide for ventures into new culinary realms. If you are looking for a fairly easy whole fish recipe, check out the pan-seared mackerel with chiles and garlic (chuan-chuan). We have never found whole mackerel, but the recipe works nicely with fish fillets – just adjust cooking time. The past few weekends have been packed with activities other than cooking, but I hope to try one of the grilled or fried chicken recipes from CoF this weekend.

I can see why - that's beautiful. We had our usual fried rice Friday with cukes, tomatoes, and lime wedges. We also stir-fried shrimp with salt, sugar, scallions, and smoked paprika and heated up yesterday’s red curry with beef and green peppercorns.

I notice that you did not mention chiles – do you prefer sauces that are not spicy?

Brenda: Your shrimp curry breakfast looks scrumptious. Percyn: Holy crap, I will be happy to help you clean out your fridge. Any time. Really. The other day we made breakfast for lunch – green curry scrambled eggs. I whipped up something resembling green curry in about ten minutes. I think the “curry” paste had Serrano chiles, ginger, cilantro stems, and garlic, seasoned with fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar. Feta cheese and cilantro for garnish.

eynkiora: Beautiful potstickers, and welcome to Dinner! Thai week, continued: tonight we made an unusual (at least to me) dish: red curry with beef and pickled green peppercorns, from True Thai. With bamboo shoots, slivered serrano chiles, tender beef, coconut milk, palm sugar, fish sauce, Sriracha, and lots of Thai basil, this was a delicious and varied mix of flavors and textures. I am so looking forward to having some for breakfast. More on Thai Cooking at Home. The boys hit their Thai food limit the previous night, so Mrs. C made them pasta and meatballs. Stir-fried baby mustard greens and jasmine rice rounded out the meal. Apologies for the blurry pic.

Tonight we made red curry with beef and green peppercorns (kaeng phed neua phrik Thai on), from True Thai. This was an absolutely delicious mixture of flavors and textures. I had never used pickled green peppercorns before, but they added nice crunchy jolts of flavor. Bamboo shoots added texture and a hint of bitterness; slivered Serrano chiles and a squirt of Sriracha added some heat; palm sugar and fish sauce rounded out the flavors; thinly-sliced tender beef pulled it all together; and a bag full of Thai basil made everything smell wonderful. I will definitely make this again. Kaeng phed neua phrik Thai on

Thank you very much, heidih. Pre-peeled garlic would have helped get tonight’s dinner on the table much sooner. I will see if our Asian market carries it. I finished the mango salad for breakfast, and an overnight stay in the fridge mellowed the flavors nicely. The salad was still very spicy, but good spicy – more balanced. Next time I will mix in the dressing earlier and let the salad sit for a while before serving.

Mark/jumanggy: Thank you very much, tilapia is one of my favorite fish, too. I pulled up your Flickr pics, and the crust on your pork loin looks divine. Brenda: Beautiful pork belly - how did you prepare it? Thirty-five cloves of garlic contributed to tonight’s Thai dinner. That has to be some sort of record for our family, and we will probably be social outcasts tomorrow. Anyway, we made sweet and fragrant pork with garlic and crushed black pepper; a very spicy green mango salad, Chiang May style; cukes; and basmati rice. More on Thai Cooking at Home.

Tonight we made pork with garlic and crushed black pepper (mu kratiem phrik Thai) and green mango salad, Chiang Mai style (som tum mamuang), both from True Thai. The pork was simple: mash twenty cloves of garlic to a paste with black pepper; stir-fry the paste; add pork tenderloin medallions, and finish with black soy sauce, palm sugar, and fish sauce. Almost everyone liked this very much, but elder son objected to a faint aftertaste. I did not notice the aftertaste until he pointed it out, but was probably a hint of burned sugar. To avoid this, next time I’ll lower the heat when adding the sauce. The green mango salad had another fifteen cloves of garlic, mashed to a paste with dried shrimp and Serrano chiles. We tossed mango slivers with the spice paste, slightly crushed tomatoes, crushed peanuts, and a dressing of lemon juice, fish sauce, and palm sugar. This was delicious but seriously spicy! Perhaps three weeks of mild food has lowered my tolerance, but next time I’ll use fewer chiles. I have been quite happy with True Thai so far. The writing is clear and straightforward, and I am looking forward to trying a long list of intriguing recipes. Many of the dishes are quite sweet, though – I often cut back on the amount of sugar. Som tum mamuang (left) and mu kratiem phrik Thai (right)

Are you looking for a Vietnamese-language or English-language cookbook? If English, Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table should meet your criteria. It covers the basics nicely and includes many recipes for street foods adapted to the home kitchen. I will second HKDave’s recommendation of Andrea Nguyen’s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, but I have not seen The Little Saigon Cookbook. From several thousand miles away, my impression is that Andrea Nguyen's recipes lean more towards northern Vietnam, whereas Mai Pham's recipes lean more towards southern Vietnam. Since you are in Vietnam, I would be interested to hear your perspective on that.

I used the recipe for Chinese greens, Thai style (click) from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet. This is one of our favorite ways to cook greens, and very flexible - you can cook just about anything green this way, blanch the veggies or not, add chiles or not, etc. Enjoy!

Our house guests leave tomorrow, so we made two of their favorites: ginger chicken (gai pad khing) and Thai-style baby bok choy. This version of ginger chicken was from Thailand the Beautiful. Besides the usual ginger, garlic, onions, mushrooms, fish sauce, white pepper, and sugar, this version added bell peppers and oyster sauce, which were nice additions. Jasmine rice and eternal cukes on the side. Our crappy Whirlpool dishwasher is broken again, so dig the lovely compostable paper plate.

Shelby and Kim: Thank you very much for your kind comments. blixt: Welcome, and what a beautiful first post! Jmahl: That’s some fine looking chili. Mrs. C found a great deal on tilapia, so tonight’s dinner had a great deal of tilapia: Thai red curry with crispy tilapia (tilapia subbed for catfish); tilapia and pork stir-fry with lemongrass and garlic (tilapia subbed for shrimp); and fried tilapia. The jasmine rice, cucumbers, and green salad were completely free of tilapia, however. Thai red curry with crispy tilapia

nonblonde007: You are quite welcome, I think. Hey, there are worse addictions than making *interesting* breakfasts! Anyway, your curry scrambled eggs on lettuce look delicious. Our breakfast was guacamole topped with a fried egg and feta cheese, but Mrs. C started eating the guacamole before I had a chance to grab the camera.

Jamie Lee: We usually compost the parts of the lemon grass that we do not use. I hope your appetite soon returns for a long stay. I had a nice find today at our Asian market: pickled green peppercorns. Now I just need to remember what recipe called for them. Tonight we made crispy catfish curry from True Thai, except we substituted tilapia for catfish. We deep-fried flour-dredged tilapia fillets and set them in a warm oven to rest. For the curry, we stir-fried about 10 cloves of mashed garlic with red curry paste, and then added chicken stock, palm sugar, chopped red bell peppers, bamboo shoots, and mushroom soy sauce. When we mixed in a cup and a half of Thai basil the aroma was incredible. This curry had great flavor but could have used more heat. True Thai was written in 1995, so the red curry paste calls for dried New Mexico and Japanese chiles (I used dried bird chiles instead of Japanese chiles). Next time I will use phrik haeng or “goat peppers” instead of the New Mexico chiles – that should give it some kick. Crispy tilapia curry (pla duk tod krop phat phed)

saucee: Thanks, and enjoy your ceviche. Today’s late lunch/early dinner: red curry shrimp with tomatoes, scallions, limes, cilantro, and lettuce. I cracked coconut cream, fried the curry paste with brown sugar, and seasoned it with fish sauce. This was a test for a recent batch or red curry paste. Nice flavor, but too mild – I should grind in more chiles before using the rest of the curry paste.

Shelby from Kansas, perhaps?

Doddie: Beautiful bimbimbap! Last night: garlicky oven-roasted chicken and grilled zucchini from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Mrs. C made a delicious side dish – baby potatoes sauteed with ginger-lime dipping sauce. Basmati rice and cucumbers. Tonight: chorizo-fried rice; Thai sweet pork (mu wan); and stir-fried tamarind shrimp (from the Cradle of Flavor thread). For the sweet pork, we stir-fried tenderloin medallions with mashed garlic, fish sauce, palm sugar, and white pepper. Simple and quite good. The grownups enjoyed an Aviation with bitters after dinner. Stir-fried tamarind shrimp (udang asam).

Susan, besides envying your cilantro roots I also covet your access to water spinach – I’ve never seen any around here. Tonight we made stir-fried tamarind shrimp (udang asam), a variation on tuna goreng. The shrimp “must be in the shell” for this recipe, so I was excited to find head-on shrimp at the Mexican grocery (“Una media libra de camarones, por favor.”). Unfortunately, the shrimp turned out mushy. I am not certain whether it was bad shrimp or bad technique, but I suspect the shrimp - they smelled a bit, um, shrimpier than usual. I will try this again if I can find better shrimp.

Our house has a hall closet near the kitchen that we use as a pantry of sorts. This closet works well for dog food but is otherwise fairly useless. The closet is narrow and deep so things get lost, and opening the closet door blocks the main hallway (through the double doors on the right of the picture). When we renovated our kitchen we stole two feet from the narrow end of the dining room and installed Ikea cabinets with pull-out drawers. These cabinets hold a ton of stuff – dry goods, canned goods, small appliances, serving trays, and cookbooks in the glass-fronted upper cabinets. The countertop also works well for dinner parties. Shallow cabinets and/or pull-out drawers are the most efficient way to store things.

Between house guests and two new dogs we haven’t taken dinner pictures lately. Fortunately, the regulars and new contributors have more than picked up the slack. At our house guest’s request, tonight we made ginger chicken (kai phat khing) from True Thai. We stir-fried sliced chicken thighs with a sliced onion and lots of ginger, garlic, mushrooms, and scallions. The sauce contained black soy sauce, fish sauce, rice wine, and a fair amount of sugar. This was surprisingly popular with our ginger- and mushroom-averse boys, and out house guest loved it. I left the chiles out of the stir-fry, and instead made a dipping sauce with chiles, garlic, lime juice, sugar, and fish sauce. Cucumbers and jasmine rice on the side. Last night we grilled garlicky five-spice pork chops, adapted from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Despite changing the cut of meat and modifying the marinade, this was probably the best pork chop I have ever made – tender and juicy, and not the least bit dry. Mrs. C made buttery baby potatoes, and we had cucumbers and a green salad with ginger-lime dipping sauce.

Oh, that looks so delicious! Do you think they would survive in the mail?

Susan, I prefer cucumber relish with ginger, but only when the ginger is young and mellow-tasting. If the ginger is older, the flavor gets harsh and I agree that the cucumber relish is better sans ginger. Cucumber relish on scrambled eggs and tortillas – yep! I haven’t tried cucumber relish on a burger though (yet). I envy your cilantro roots, especially such nice-looking ones. We have to grow our own cilantro if we want roots. The sad thing is that the grocery store used to sell cilantro with roots, but that was before I knew that the roots were useful.

Hi, Jamie! Besides knowing the varieties, when you start chopping the chiles you can eat a tiny chunk from the stem end of the chile. The heat is in the seeds and ribs (placenta), so the tip may not be representative. You may want to have some yogurt or cheese on hand if you try this with bird chiles. For many Thai curries, you separate the cream and "crack" it (cook it until the oil separates) and then fry the curry paste in the oil. Frying the curry paste will mellow the flavors, giving a very different end result compared with boiling the curry paste. You can make sticky rice in a regular steamer. The kind that fits inside a large pot works best. Some folks line the steamer with cheesecloth, but I have not found that necessary. Kasma Loha-Unchit (click) gives instructions on her excellent site. Good luck!

nonblonde007: A belated thank you to a fellow nontraditional breakfast lover. stuart_s: That pastrami salmon look great. PercyN: I can almost taste your chile bean scrambled eggs with larb, I need to try that. The bold color and spicing of your Indian masala eggs is beautiful, too. What are alpha-alpha sprouts? Saturday morning I improvised a red curry paste - I think it had red chile, garlic, shallots, ginger, and shrimp paste. I fried the paste with palm sugar and leftover coconut milk to make red curry scrambled eggs. Sides were more leftovers - carrot daikon pickle and sauteed char siu pork. Edited to add palm sugar.