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Everything posted by C. sapidus
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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.
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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.
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Cooking with "Cradle of Flavor"
C. sapidus replied to a topic in Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific: Cooking & Baking
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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Cooking with "Cradle of Flavor"
C. sapidus replied to a topic in Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific: Cooking & Baking
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.
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rasmalaysia: Those eggs are beautiful. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
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rwsweet: I guess you need that monster ribeye and duck fat potatoes to counterbalance those lovely farmer’s market dinners. Tonight we made shrimp simmered in caramel sauce (click) and fried rice. Daikon-carrot pickle, eternal cucumbers, and tomatoes for sides; Chateau Ste. Michelle dry Riesling after dinner.
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This doesn’t hold a candle to the gorgeous yolky goodness upthread, but it was a rare weekday cooked breakfast – a quick omelet with nahm prik pao, fish sauce, scallions, and feta cheese, with a squeeze of lime juice.
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Tonight we made shrimp simmered in caramel sauce (tom kho) and fried rice. Simple and good – Gulf shrimp, sliced onion, caramel sauce, fish sauce, black pepper, and scallions. The shrimp had an interesting texture after simmering in the sauce for 15 minutes – chewy, but not particularly tough. I have read that some Thai seafood dishes seek a similar texture.
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Yunnermeier: Firstly, thank you! We had a discussion about gai pad gaprow on this topic, starting in Post #374 (click). Check out HKDave’s recipe in the following post – perhaps that will be more to your liking. Otherwise, I sent a couple of recipes to you via PM. Best of luck finding the gai pad gaprow of your dreams. Your Thai friend sounds like a great resource, why not ask her for advice?
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Most of tonight’s dinner was from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Yueyang velveted (or passed through oil, if you prefer ) fish (liu yu pian); stir-fried greens with black beans and chiles; eternal cucumbers; and jasmine rice. I couldn’t find halibut, so we used flounder, which flaked into fairly small pieces. Consequently this tasted better than it looked, with the crunch of red bell peppers and the lovely flavors of thinly-sliced ginger and garlic, dried shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. We also made stir-fried greens with black beans and chiles. Every time I use fermented black beans, I always vow to use them more often. The recipe called for water spinach stems. I intended to substitute regular spinach but inadvertently grabbed some arrow-shaped leafy things hiding in the spinach section. The recipe is pretty flexible, so the mystery greens tasted delicious.
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Prawncrackers: I remember your posting that tea-spiced duck once before. As far as I am concerned, you could post it every night of the week – it looks gorgeous. Tonight we made Thai chicken with holy basil (restaurant menus often list this as “chicken kapow” ), Indonesian-style green beans in coconut milk, and jasmine rice. We harvested about half of our holy basil plant in the dark – I bet it will look pretty lopsided in the morning.
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Cooking with "Cradle of Flavor"
C. sapidus replied to a topic in Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific: Cooking & Baking
djyee and Robin: Thanks for keeping track of the recipes made on the thread! You can check off a few more dishes - I have made the Nyonya sambal (10), the braised cabbage with dried shrimp (hmm, but apparently not posted on this thread), Rohati’s crisp-fried potatoes with chile and shallot sambal (10), and the Padang fish curry (10). We didn’t make a whole meal from Cradle of Flavor, but Robin’s picture and description upthread inspired us to make the green beans with coconut milk (sambal goreng buncis). Tender green beans bathed in coconut milk and flavored with sliced shallots, garlic, chiles, ginger, ripe tomato, and a touch of palm sugar. We had lots of ginger, so we used that instead of galangal. Lovely flavors, but next time I might use daun salam leaves and let the green beans get a bit mushier. -
Jamie Lee: No reason to be embarassed! Tamarind water and shrimp paste turn up in innumerable Thai recipes, but I associate hoisin sauce more with Chinese and Vietnamese cooking. I don’t know much about noodles, but The Cook's Thesaurus: Other Asian Noodles (click) discusses noodle substitutions. Tonight we made spicy chicken with basil (gai pad ga-prow) from Thailand the Beautiful. The spice paste contained garlic, shallots, pickled green peppercorns, and lots of jalapenos and Thai bird chiles. Fish sauce, sugar, and about half of our holy basil plant rounded out the flavors. Served with Indonesian-style green beans in coconut milk and jasmine rice.
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Absolutely. I am vicariously enjoying your ability to focus on a particular cuisine, because I lean towards this approach. Fortunately or unfortunately, cooking for family requires a bit more variety. Anyway, Land of Plenty is one of my favorite cookbooks, I hope to learn more about Japanese cooking, and I am very much looking forward to the rest of your foodblog. Is your girlfriend tolerant of the "madness"? Your dinner looks delicious. I love the fact that you cooked an entire Sichuan meal with its full complement of dishes, finishing with a simple soup. I remember reading about this in Ms. Dunlop’s book. For us, cooking a comprehensive meal is usually not an option - I can manage maybe two dishes on weeknights before the howling mob demands to be fed. I can see why you love the place -- access to great raw materials provides such wonderful opportunities. Have you ever suggested particular spices or chiles for the owners to seek out? I also appreciate seeing Montreal through your eyes. We have never visited, but I am quite certain that my middle-school French would be inadequate if we did. Do you speak French?