C. sapidus

Slice off the raised plastic disc with a knife. It will leave a hole big enough to dispense fish sauce by drips. If you are like me, you will enlarge the hole so that you can release great gushing glugs of fish sauce.

doctortim: That looks delicious - details, please? Butter chicken has been on my list since we had an incredible restaurant version that even younger son loved. Did you make your own tandoori chicken?

Marcia: Nice to see you posting again. The butternut squash coconut curry soup looked particularly lovely. Tonight we made a rare Italian meal, from Marcella Hazan: cartwheels with sausage, cream, and tomato; sauteed carrots with vinegar and oregano; and grilled Belgian endive. The box of pasta was labeled “choo choo wheels.” Eh, tasted good anyway.

Sunday night Mrs. C and the boys baked a salmon fillet with an absolutely delicious glaze of maple syrup, soy sauce, honey mustard, and ginger. Baked sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar. Yum. Tonight we made spicy basil chicken (gai pad gaprow) . . . . . . and soup with ground buffalo, sauteed onions, bean sprouts, fish sauce, and long-leaf coriander (canh thit bo nau rau ram, or thereabouts). The soup tasted pretty good, but seemed to be missing something. I may play with the leftovers at breakfast.

Rona: Sorry, I can offer no help whatsoever on hoi tod. I hope someone else can answer, though. We are starting to get light frosts, so we harvested a good chunk of the garden for Kasma's spicy basil chicken (gai pad gaprow). This was chock-full of flavor, as it should be with 10 Thai chiles, 12 garlic cloves, sliced shallots, black soy, fish sauce, white pepper, and huge amounts of basil for a pound of minced chicken thighs. I loved it, but Mrs. C asked me to dial back the chiles next time. Edited for punctuation and politeness.

Dejah – What a beautiful dinner, and what lovely golden-brown chicken. Do you use a charcoal or gas grill? Also, great suggestion to make more of the highly addictive sauce for rendang. By the way, my clean-out-the-fridge stir-fries never look that good. A blues concert sounds like a great way to end the evening.

Doctortim – Your pasta experiments look beautiful, and I will happily take any ricotta-stuffed pasta that you don’t want. Apple crumble, from King Arthur Flour (click). It turned out dark for one or more of the following reasons: a) I am a cinnamon junkie; b) the oven walls were hot from using the broiler; and/or c) I forgot to add brown sugar to the topping (duh), and then over-worked it into more of a glop than a crumble. It still tasted good, and I mixed in some walnuts and finished the last of it for breakfast this AM. Ten servings? Hah! You notice that I didn’t post it on the Dessert thread, right?

Mrs. C requested slipper burgers (chapli kebabs - basically, spicy hamburgers) for dinner. We mixed ground lamb, ground chuck, and chorizo sausage with ground coriander, cumin, and cayenne and finely-minced onions, ginger, garlic, and a variety of chiles from the garden. The boys dislike cilantro, so we left that out. With the gas grill out of gas, I cooked them under the broiler. I ate mine on a toasted English muffin, topped with salsa and Mrs. C’s cabbage salad. The boys ate theirs on a hamburger bun with ketchup. Cabbage salad, chow chow pickle, and rice on the side. We had an extra boy tonight, so no pictures. This afternoon we made our annual fall pilgrimage to Pryor’s orchard, and brought back a half-bushel each of Stayman and Ida Red apples. This led to our annual apple crumble.

Dejah, I look forward to hearing about your coconut grilled chicken. Actually, I look forward to hearing about anything that you make. Anyway, Chris Amirault had some information about Thai basil versus lemon basil way back in Post #17 (click). Emphasis added below. . . . and . . .

This array of six knives works for our family and type of cooking, but I make no claims to universal applicability. In decreasing order of utility: 240 mm gyuto (chef’s knife) – mine 180 mm gyuto (chef’s knife) – Mrs. C and the boys prefer a shorter knife, and we frequently have two gyutos in action at once 90 mm paring knife 150 mm honesuki (boning knife) – we de-bone chicken or pork shoulder frequently and don’t want to chip the gyuto Bone cleaver – surprisingly useful for other tasks like bruising lemongrass and mincing or tenderizing meat 270 mm sujihiki (slicing/carving knife) – The gyuto could handle this task, but I prefer to use separate knives for meat and vegetables I agree with the principle of buying quality, but your four knives would not work for our style of cooking. If we were limited to four knives, we would choose a gyuto, paring knife, honesuki, and bone cleaver.

Kim - Thank you! The tomatoes are "ugly ripe", left out for a few days to soften. They are OK, but I am definitely missing real summer tomatoes. Only what, nine more months to wait?

Tracey: What a delightful quintet of plates to accompany your gochujiang pork. Last night we made a non-spicy dinner for one of elder son’s friends (and, as it turned out, the father, too). We had grilled five-spice pork chops, stir-fried bean sprouts with garlic and shallots, basmati rice, and eternal cucumbers. Tonight, our usual Friday fare: shrimp-fried rice with chorizo, chile jam, onions, garlic, ginger, and scallions. Serve-yourself toppings included carrot-daikon pickle, tomatoes, cucumbers, lime wedges, chopped cilantro, fried shallots, and Sriracha. Mrs. C also made her ever-popular Asian-style cabbage salad.

Kim D: I would love to hear a follow-up report on your goat curry. Robin: Potatoes would be a fine accompaniment to an eggplant extravaganza. This dish caught my eye the first time around, but a couple of questions. What did you serve with it? Once we served kentang balado with Malaysian pan-seared fish (chuan-chuan) and stir-fried bok choy with garlic and chiles (tumis sayar). More recently, Mrs. C was out of town so me ‘n da boyz had a very non WW-friendly meal of kentang balado and ribs. We can get Holland chiles from the regular grocery store, but we grew the Kashmiri peppers from seeds provided by a friend from India.

Oh, I do enjoy your trip reports. I can see next dieting craze: the Korean “4-B” diet – banchan, broth, bulgogi, and bipedalism. It would probably work pretty well, for anyone who stuck with it and had a serious taste for chiles.

We started going to a neighborhood Chinese restaurant in the early 1970s, and I quickly discovered their Sichuan pork. Man, that stuff opened my eyes to flavor combinations previously unimagined. After enjoying this restaurant’s food for many years, all of their sauces mutated into a sweet brown glop. Put me off “Chinese” food for many years. I had the same reaction the first time I made Fuchsia Dunlop’s version of gan bian niu rou si. This delightful dish reawakened my interest in Chinese food. I look forward to reading the book and trying its version of spicy dry-shredded beef.

Megan, I hope we will be seeing more of you around here. Cucumberphiles unite! Tonight Mrs. C grilled skin-on walleye fillets. The grownups coated our half-fillets with a mixture of green curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice, and basil. Younger son sprinkled his with cinnamon. Elder son kept it simple – salt, pepper, and lime juice. Simpler turned out to be better.

A recent Washington Post article indicates some new thinking on the subject at hand: Consumer Challenge: Making Head or Tail of Fish and Mercury.

Sewage sludge thickened with dryer lint? Wow, congratulations on a worthy contribution.

I get the shakes if we don’t have at least two cans in the cupboard. By the way, do you prefer Chaokoh or Mae Ploy coconut milk?

Susan: You are quite welcome - it was our pleasure, in fact. I think that basil is like garlic – no such thing as too much. Please give a full report if you try the frozen basil in oil. The coconut chicken sauce renders a fair amount of oil while reducing, so a little extra oil probably wouldn’t hurt anything. Our basil utilization strategy is to make lots of basil-intensive meals before frost kills our three (well, two and a half) plants. Kasma’s gai pad gaprow (click) is on tap for next week - a cup of basil per pound of chicken. I’m amazed that you have not yet had a freeze in the great not-yet-frozen North. Here in the sunny semi-South, we are about a week past the average first frost date, and no frost in the forecast. Bean sprouts are a thrifty freebie for your Asian market to give away – a pound of bean sprouts cost about $1 USD around here. djyee100: Thank you! Yes, you have added a few things to my Long List. This looks and sounds delicious! I will look for salted plums around here, but I know duck would require a special trip. For asam gelugor, I usually substitute cardamom. Does anyone know whether that is a reasonably close substitute? Safe travels, you have certainly earned a rest. Yunnermeier: Spot on - the book transliterates the name to itek tim. Same difference, I'm sure.

Cradle of Flavor dinner tonight: grilled coconut chicken with lemon basil; stir-fried bean sprouts with scallions; and jasmine rice. More on Cooking with Cradle of Flavor, One Recipe at a Time.

djyee100: I would love to try those cookies, and warm spiced limeade is definitely on my list. If you get a chance, try plantains that have turned fully black and soft – they taste incredibly sweet. I do appreciate your candid commentary on each of the dishes that you made. Tonight we made grilled coconut chicken with lemon basil (ayam panggang sulawesi), stir-fried bean sprouts with scallions (tauge goreng), and jasmine rice. I was worried that the chicken would be too spicy for the family, so I poured off a lot of the coconut oil. The end result was juicy chicken with subtle heat and a rich lemony flavor. My only complaint: the sauce was so good that I wanted more of it. Perhaps next time I’ll reserve a bit of the sauce and serve it over the chicken. The bean sprouts were quick to make and everyone liked them. They will be a fine addition to our vegetable rotation.

We had a delicious Indian restaurant meal last week, so I dusted off Classic Indian Cooking and made scrambled eggs with cumin and fragrant herbs (ande ki bhorji, with a few modifications). Lightly-scrambled eggs and almost-crunchy onions garnished with slivered chiles, aromatic basil (sub for cilantro), and Patak's mango relish (not pictured). Simple and satisfying.

djyee100: Kasma's recipe looks to be jam-packed with flavor. Thanks for the link - I have added her version to my (very long) list of things to make. Note also that this discussion also continued on the Thai Cooking at Home thread.

tastykimmie: Pork, thanks, I missed that somehow. Rachel: I will look forward to reading more of your writing. You taught me a great deal about Mexico, provided considerable food for thought, and influenced our dinners for the next few weeks. Nice job, and thank you!