C. sapidus

Red curry with bay scallops; stir-fried beef with spices; bean sprout salad; eternal cucumbers, and jasmine rice. More on Thai Cooking at Home (click).

Words to live by. The search for a basic red curry paste is officially over, and David Thompson’s recipe is the winner (Thai Food, page 149). Chopped ingredients, ready to be ground - clockwise from the top: lemongrass, galangal in brine, lime zest, garlic, and shallots, with salt and “goat chiles” (deseeded and soaked in hot water) in the center. The Preethi did a wonderful job of grinding ingredients to a smooth paste with assistance from a few tablespoons of the chile soaking water. I loosely followed the recipe for chuu chii hoi shenn, cracking the coconut cream, frying the paste with palm sugar, seasoning with fish sauce, adding more coconut milk, and simmering until reduced. Just before serving I added the scallops and slivered kaffir lime leaves. When the scallops were just cooked through I garnished with coconut cream and slivers of bird chiles and kaffir lime leaves. Rich, spicy, fragrant, and delicious. The boys love stir-fried beef with spices (neua pat nahm prik pao kaek). This is quick and easy, but remarkably good. Roast and grind cumin and coriander seeds; marinate beef slices with the ground spices and fish sauce; and stir-fry with nahm prik pao, deep-fried shallots, and white pepper. For the bean sprout salad, we roasted peanuts and grated coconut in a low oven until golden brown, and then pounded them to a paste in the mortar. We mixed the paste with coconut cream and rice vinegar, and tossed with bean sprouts, sliced shallots, and cilantro. Red curry with bay scallops; stir-fried beef with spices; bean sprout salad; cucumbers; jasmine rice

I have enjoyed your foodblog very much and will be sorry to see it end. I love your writing style, and you give a wonderful sense of your slice of the world. That sushi looked amazing and I would love to have those choices available around here. Since we don't, I usually get mostly unagi, which is delicious and harder to mess up. That sounds like a good solution. Another possibility (a pricier one, unfortunately), is a thick end-grain cutting board on rubber legs. Chinese round cutting boards (the ones that look like a thick slice from a tree) are another possibility, but may be prone to splitting. Great job, and I look forward to your last day! ETA: Um, that didn't come out right. I look forward to today, not to the ending of the blog. You know what I mean.

Elder son had his last basketball game of the season, so we made a quick dinner. We roasted Portobello mushrooms in a dry wok, and stir-fried the shrimp with ancho chile powder, salt, and a little sugar. Eternal cucumbers, grape tomatoes, lime wedges, and a squirt of Sriracha. Shrimp-fried rice with roasted Portobello mushrooms

Pierogi, somehow I missed that the chipotle meatballs contained bacon; I just added them to the list for next week. Nice Indian meal, too. Is that cumin on your raita? Live It Up, thank you and welcome back! Chris Hennes, looks good to me, but we usually eat family-style. The meat salad theme continues: roasted mushroom salad with bacon, red onion, avocado, and spinach. Dressing of lime juice, olive oil, and Mexican oregano, warmed in the microwave. Blue cheese and walnuts for the grownups. Grilled ribeye steaks with garlicky ancho chile rub. Store-bought bread and butter.

Wow, tons of beautiful meals. Nishla, I do hope you will find the time to post more often. Your dinners always look fantastic (especially the scallops, but I am a sucker for seafood). Pan-seared trout fillets with Poblano chiles, garlic, and ginger (chuan-chuan), adapted from Cradle of Flavor. Stir-fried asparagus with garlic and fermented bean paste, jasmine rice, and eternal cucumbers. We also reheated the last of the ribs, wrapped in foil in a 250 degree oven.

Smallworld: My sister spent a year in Japan, so I find it a fascinating mix of the familiar and the unexpected. Thank you for sharing your slice of the country. Your meals look deliciously varied and healthy (well, except for rare outbreak of artificial coloring ). Not food-related, but I love the honor system vegetable stand and the apparently unlocked bicycles. Very cool.

Susan, Mrs. C used Granny Smith apples and Lingonsaft, a lingonberry drink concentrate from Ikea. Kim, thanks, I look forward to seeing your ribs. Um, don’t take that the wrong way. Meredithla, thank you! Your salsa sounds amazing - I imagine that it was wonderful with seared tuna. You should have a swordfish ceviche recipe by now. Ann_T, you are very kind. I am just glad that I pulled up your dinner pictures after lunch rather than before. Otherwise, anyone standing between me and the cafeteria might have been trampled. I meant to buy a megapack of chicken wings for stock, but mistakenly bought five pounds of chicken thighs. The boys cook dinner Sunday nights and the dishwasher was still busted, so they made the peppery grilled chicken from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Elder son is a soy sauce fiend, so he substituted soy sauce for fish sauce and grilled the thighs on the bone.

David Ross, thank you very much! That salad is beautiful. Did you make the lovely croutons? jayejo, welcome to Dinner! Your sea bass looks absolutely luscious. I do hope you will make a habit of sharing your meals with us.

Mrs. C and grandma collaborated on a delicious salad – spinach, shredded carrots, lingonberry-soaked apples, walnuts, and blue cheese, tossed with raspberry vinaigrette. Grandma leaves tomorrow. For her "last meal", we fired up the bullet and smoked pork ribs (click). Mrs. C's biscuits and Braised endive with prosciutto accompanied the ribs. We used disposable plates because our piece-of-crap Whirlpool dishwasher died again – third time in three years.

Another batch of pork back ribs, rubbed overnight with Magic Dust and smoked in the bullet with hickory chunks. On a breezy afternoon, the bullet held steady at 250F all day.

Braised endive with prosciutto: Belgian endive, browned in butter, topped with crisped prosciutto, braised with chicken stock, and finished with a little heavy cream. Good stuff!

We have gone easy on heat during grandma's visit, but tonight I needed a chile fix so we made Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan dry-fried chicken with celery and scallions. I used a bag of Sichuan peppercorns from our local Asian market, but they didn’t have much flavor. Sounds like a good excuse for a Penzeys run. Gan ban ji

Kim, you must be a good cheater, the pot pie and all the fixings look delicious. Sichuan dry-fried chicken (gan ban ji), pickled bean sprouts, jasmine rice. Eternal cucumbers disappeared before dinner. The chicken was good (if too spicy for grandma and younger son), but the Sichuan peppercorns were nearly flavorless. I hope to stop by Penzeys for a new batch this weekend.

Thank you, Klary. The spinach was not cooked in the pan, just tossed with the warm dressing. Of course, the retained heat from a smoking-hot cast iron skillet made the dressing pretty *warm*. Chris, your stir-fry looks and sounds delicious, and kudos on your relentlessly uniform pork matchsticks (even if you cheated by using a meat slicer ). Uniformly shaped objects do facilitate stir-frying, and I like the texture. Compared with chunks, matchsticks have more surface upon which the glaze can glom. Nakji, what about combining garlic scapes with long beans (or would garlic scapes give a nice crunchy texture by themselves)?

Shelby – beautiful color on your bird. Skirt steak salad with wilted spinach, sun-dried tomato, and avocado, from Mexican Everyday. To make the warm dressing, we deglazed the pan with with garlic, canned chipotles, key lime juice, and olive oil. The dressing, meat juices, cubed avocado, and grated pecorino Romano cheese combined into a sublime mixture. Mexican white rice (arroz blanco) completed the meal but failed to sneak into the picture. Elder son came home hungry from basketball practice and devoured two pan-fried T-bone steaks. And rice. *sigh* I remember being able to eat like that.

We made a rare foray into Italian food tonight - parmesan-crusted striped bass fillets (a la Milanaise), topped with a quick tomato-basil sauce. I whizzed up pesto for spaghettini, and Mrs. C sauteed peas with prosciutto, both from Marcella Hazan. The boys liked everything except the pesto, so they reverted to topping their pasta with ketchup. Grandma made cheesecake for dessert. I know what I’m having for breakfast!

Yes! Callinectes sapidus, scientific Latin for tasty beautiful swimmer.

Thank you for a lovely week, Ilana. I truly appreciate the window into your busy life and the tour of Israel’s vibrant food scene. In your spare time (heh), please do consider sharing your savory exploits with those of us on the “other side” of eGullet. But for now, take a well-deserved break.

Beautiful, flaky biscuits - probably even better with mimosas. Oh, my - I feel like I should avert my eyes or something. Last night’s leftovers for breakfast: braised pork riblets with Vietnamese caramel sauce; swordfish satay with coconut milk-based peanut sauce; and buttered home-made bread. Unfortunately, none of the pictures quite captured what a darned tasty meal this was, either fresh last night or microwaved this morning.

tupac17616, beautiful (and delicious-sounding) mussels. Kim Shook, dang, you really did some “out and out” cooking! Mrs. C and Grandma made white bread, which we snacked on all afternoon and enjoyed with dinner, which was basically appetizers: Thai-style swordfish satay, from Fish & Shellfish. We marinated swordfish cubes with Thai chiles, garlic, shallots, sugar, lime, and fish sauce. Quickly grilled and served with peanut sauce, this was meltingly tender, juicy, and delicious. Pork riblets braised in caramel sauce, adapted from All About Braising. The boys intercepted quite a few of the falling-off-the-bone ribs before they reached the table. The sauce needed something, so I reduced it with dark soy sauce and Chinkiang vinegar. Braised leeks with bacon and thyme, from All About Braising. Not bad, but probably better if I had remembered to add butter. Edited for clarity.

Good luck with the move! Enjoy the new kitchen and take lots of pictures when you get settled in.

Klary, no surprise but I second Peter and Mark’s Asian suggestions (especially Thai meat salads with citrus segments or apple eggplants and crushed peanuts and . . .). We usually have shrimp in the freezer, so we often default to salt and pepper shrimp when friends turn up unexpectedly. Having friends help peel the shrimp promotes a sense of shared purpose. Yep, that’s what we tell them. You have more options if the get-together is planned, of course. Steamed, stir-fried, or sauteed seafood can produce a quick and delicious meal. I love to find at least one dish that our guests will enjoy, but that they have never tried before. Giving friends the gift of a new favorite dish makes the occasion special. I am hardly one to give you dessert advice, but Campton Place hot chocolate (click) is delicious and easy. Exploit the shared purpose angle again by having your friends grate the chocolate.

Thank you, Heidi. Ahh, we didn't think of toasting the nuts - that would have been even better. Regarding "health experts": we are talking about a salad full of spinach, how healthy can you get?

Mrs. C and grandma made a delightful salad with spinach, tomatoes, slivered carrots, cucumbers, pecans, walnuts, blue cheese, and raspberry vinaigrette. I adore the combination of blue cheese, nuts, and a fruity salad dressing. Continuing the scallop theme, I sauteed bay scallops a la Provence (dredged in flour and sauteed with parsley and mashed garlic). The scallops turned out sweet and tender, but next time I will cook them in two batches for a better crust. Served with Italian bread to sop up the sauce.