C. sapidus

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!

Ce’nedra: Thank you! Yes, I got the impression that you had a lot of favorites. Would you mind shipping some of your apple, cinnamon, and sour cream cake half-way around the world? monavano: That is a gorgeous picture! I was supposed to make dinner tonight, but had to work late, eating leftover chicken and rice at my desk. When I finally arrived home, Mrs. C fried Asian eggplant slices after dredging them in Fish and Critter Fry, crushed Utz Red Hot Potato Chips, and panko. Good stuff - she claims that Cat Cora did something similar on Iron Chef. Yup, she’s a nut.

Wow, beautiful dinners everywhere! With Rachel’s Mexican foodblog as motivation, we made pollo en escabeche and arroz blanco from Mexican Everyday. Caramelized onions and carrots, halved garlic cloves, pickled jalapenos, vinegar, black pepper, allspice, and Mexican oregano made a lively combination with braised chicken thighs. Arroz blanco is my new favorite. Fry dry jasmine rice with a chopped white onion and garlic, add chicken stock and salt, bring to a boil, and finish in a 350F oven, resulting in wonderful taste and texture. Cucumbers and the last garden tomatoes on the side. Edited 'cuz I forgot about the carrots.

djyee100: Wow, you have been busy, and your meals look so good! I need to try the Javanese sambal, the eggplant pickle, and the stir-fried bean sprouts – thanks for the nudge. You were smart to cut up the green beans in coconut milk. I left mine whole, and they were difficult to shove in my mouth at a suitable pace. Prawncrackers: Isn’t beef rendang amazing stuff? The chicken and especially potato rendang are also indescribable – you just have to try them. Macadamia nuts are closely related to candlenuts, so you can substitute them if available. Looking forward to more from both of you. And Robin, of course. Tap. Tap. Tap.

RRO – Aw, you have no reason to feel that way – I would be proud to serve your mezze plate. In fact, we had a memorable restaurant meal that looked very similar to yours. Peter – Thanks! Beautiful dinner - gotta be the fresh turkeys. Marcia – I am glad that you are still posting. Best wishes that whatever is keeping you from the kitchen shall soon pass. Doctortim – That does it, I need to make some Indian food. Nakji – That looks very appealing. Tell me about garlic scapes – are they more garlicky or scallion-y?

For small prep (chopped garlic, chiles, etc.) I am breaking my way through Mrs. C’s swinging bachelorette collection of what would be tea saucers, except they lack the indentation for the teacup. Like many here, we use Pyrex custard cups or Corelware soup bowls for larger prep items. I also use a Corelware bowl for trimmings headed for the compost bin. Most of the Pyrex and Corelware has survived 20 years of abuse in the kitchen. I can’t wait to break the last of the tea saucers so I can replace them with square stackable containers. Square for space efficiency, and stackable so that I can line up ingredients vertically rather than horizontally.

Your quick filet of beef looks like a delicious quick main course. We have made a similar-looking dish with shrimp and ancho chiles, but I imagine that salsa morita (or the chipotle equivalent) would substitute nicely. I am enjoying this very much, and you have inspired me to dig up a map of Mexico to better follow along.

Doctortim: Beautiful dal and roti – I would love to see more of your Indian food explorations. Brenda: Nice wings! We invited family over for a small dinner party last night, mostly Thai and Vietnamese food. No pictures at dinner, but here is what the surviving leftovers looked like this morning. Shrimp soup with Napa cabbage, from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. I made this earlier in the afternoon, reheated the soup to just below a simmer, and added the shrimp before dinner. This gave the shrimp a particularly delicate texture. Larb gai (from Thai Food), served over Boston lettuce leaves last night, cucumbers this morning. This was my brother’s first larb-making experience, and he did a great job. Chicken in southern-style red curry (from True Thai), with jasmine rice. I adore this dish, with its rich chile-turmeric-coconut milk sauce and beguiling aromas of kaffir lime leaves and Thai basil (including the first leaves harvested from our kaffir lime plant). Stir-fried beef with spices, also from Thai Food. Thinly-sliced flank steak marinated with cumin, coriander, and fish sauce, and then stir-fried with chile jam, roasted shallots, and cilantro. This was Mrs. C’s favorite of the evening. We also made garlicky oven-roasted chicken from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. This is so easy and so good; we should just make it every week. The pre-school nephews inhaled the chicken as fast as their mother could pull meat off the bone. Other stuff that was not pictured: Mrs. C served cucumbers, pears, and apples before dinner; roasted eggplant with rosemary and garlic; and served ice cream for dessert. We are getting better at dinner party logistics. The curry was made ahead and reheated, he baked chicken and shrimp soup required minimal last-minute fiddling, and I resisted my normal urge to try a bunch of new dishes. The real key, though, was putting my brother to work making the larb.

We made some Thai food for a dinner party last night. My brother made chicken larb (larb gai) Stir-fried beef with spices (Neua pat nahm prik pao kaeck) Chicken in Southern-style red curry {kaeng phed kai meng dai)

Rachel, one of my first cookbooks was Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking, so I am very excited to follow along with you this week. I understand that Mexican cuisine varies quite a bit regionally. Do you find many of the regional cooking styles represented in Mexico City, or are the cooking styles tied to local ingredients?

Judiu: Thank you, and thanks for the tip about lime juice and plantains. I had not heard of that, but I will give it a try next time.

Marlene: Wow, those biscuits look light and flaky as the dickens. Pasta looks delicious, too. Despite the sweltering summer heat, everyone’s cool-weather meals inspired our dinner tonight: chicken in Oaxacan yellow mole with green beans and potatoes, from Mexican Everyday. Guajillo chiles provided gentle heat; and onions, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, cumin, and cilantro contributed lovely aromas. The boys approved. I found wonderfully black and mushy plantains at the Latino market, and decided to try fried plantains. I never made them before, but they turned out sweet enough to be both a vegetable and a dessert. The boys approved again.

I am enjoying the hearty fall meals and lovely seafood. Tonight the boys requested ribs. We also had eternal cucumbers (long gone by dinnertime), and Rohati’s crisp-fried potatoes with chile and shallot sambal (from Cradle of Flavor (click). For dessert, I helped the boys make hot fudge sauce for ice cream sundaes. Home-made Russian imperial stout for me (picture from yesterday). Apparently, we brewed two cases of beer and completely forgot about the second case. Bonus beer!

Tonight we made another vegetable dish from Cradle of Flavor: Rohati’s crisp-fried potatoes with chile and shallot sambal (kentang balado). We used a mix of store-bought and home-grown chiles for the paste – maybe six Holland, two Anaheim, and four Kashmiri chiles. Grown from seed, the Kashmiri chiles added a lot of flavor while keeping the heat level manageable for the boys. We have made this before, and it is one of my favorites. Frying the potato wedges a few at a time takes a while; otherwise, this comes together pretty quickly. The boys preferred the fried potato wedges without the sauce (“Tastes just like French fries!” ). Kentang balado

Gabriel, thanks for sharing a week of your life. Over the course of a foodblog, life usually intrudes in some way – illness, car trouble, camera trouble, computer problems, job school, family, etc. This slice-of-life aspect is one of the things that make foodblogs endlessly fascinating. You showed us a snapshot of your life, your current culinary quests, and some delicious cooking. I learned a lot about Montreal and its impressive food scene. No apology needed - ya done good. For what it is worth, at your stage of life, I was living on takeout food, jazzed-up frozen pizza, and fettuccine Alfredo. Keep exploring, keep having fun in the kitchen, and please keep sharing your culinary adventures and what you learn from them.