C. sapidus

Glowing fruit and a 20-minute Chinese feast – nice! Tonight was our first Sichuan meal in a while: spicy braised rainbow trout with whole garlic; and stir-fried spinach with chile and Sichuan peppercorn. Rice and cukes rounded out the meal. Yes, all those roundish objects are whole garlic cloves, three whole heads of garlic fried in their skins and then peeled and braised with the fish. Everything disappeared quickly. More on Chinese eats at home (clicky).

Dinner from Land of Plenty: spicy braised rainbow trout with whole garlic (da suan shao yu); stir-fried spinach with chile and Sichuan pepper; rice and cucumbers. The trout was slashed and marinated in salt and Shaoxing wine while prepping the other ingredients. We separated three heads of garlic and fried the cloves until soft, and then fried the trout until the skin tightened. After cleaning the wok, we braised the fish and garlic in a sauce of toban djan, ginger, chicken stock, dark soy, and sugar. When the fish and garlic when done, we reduced and thickened the sauce, then finished with sliced scallions and Chinkiang vinegar. The fish was lovely, and the sauce had complex flavors and plenty of heat. Best of all, the boys approved. Spicy rainbow trout braised with whole garlic

If you like Thai salads, make green papaya salad (som tam or som dtam).

Marcia – Thank you very much, and best wishes for your relocation. May you have graceful movers and well-labeled boxes. Brenda and Jamie Lee – Thanks for the kind words. AllanSantos – Welcome to dinner, the ceviche looks particularly nice. We just returned from Wisconsin for a family reunion and 80th birthday party. For fifty hungry guests, Mrs. C made her ever-popular cabbage salad. I made five-spice chicken wings and hjshorter’s delicious cilantro-peanut sauce (click). Thanks for posting the recipe, Heather – folks raved about the sauce. We used freshly-picked mint from the hosts' garden. The hosts provided brats, burgers, ribs, beer, pesto salad . . . . SIL made the birthday carrot cake with lemon-cream cheese icing, beautifully decorated with flowers from the garden. Forgot to take pictures, of course.

No posts since yesterday, how unusual. Tonight we made chicken in southern-style red curry, served with basmati rice, cucumbers, and garden tomatoes. Wow, this was freaking delicious. Details on Thai Cooking at Home.

Like Heidih, we try to buy just enough produce to last a week at most. Shaking excess water from scallions and cilantro seems to greatly prolong their life. Onions, shallots, and garlic last indefinitely in a wicker basket above the fridge, and even ginger remains good a week up there. Best of all, they don’t take up valuable fridge real estate. Dejah, we store kaffir lime leaves in the freezer, stacked and tightly wrapped in a plastic bag. Of course, the best place to store kaffir lime leaves is on your own tree.

Elie (FoodMan): Wow, that looks like a delicious meal. Dan: Thank you so much for the picture of sawtooth herb. Our Asian market carries it (unmarked, of course), so with your ID I can now start using it. Tonight we made chicken in southern-style red curry, from True Thai. The coconut milk-based curry included sliced chicken thighs, kaffir lime leaves, halved Serrano chiles, palm sugar, fish sauce, and generous amounts of Thai basil. With lots of turmeric, this tasted like a cross between an Indian curry and a Thai red curry. Absolutely delicious. The curry paste was relatively simple (probably an oxymoron ), containing dried red chiles (guajillos and a small hot Indian variety), lemon grass, galangal, garlic, shallots, and lots of turmeric. The recipe includes an interesting technique: ingredients were briefly pounded in the mortar to break down the fibers, and then finished in the food processor. This worked nicely. I also discovered why the red curry paste that I made a while ago lacked heat. I have two bags of guajillo chiles, one labeled (in very small letters) “mild” and the other labeled “medium”. Apparently, I used the mild guajillo chiles last time. With the medium guajillo chiles, tonight’s curry had just the right amount of kick. I should get a kitchen scale to facilitate converting from Mexican guajillo chiles to the smaller Thai phrik haeng. Chicken in southern-style red curry (Kaeng phed kai meng dai)

Can't beat good garden tomatoes! Do try pickled scallions if you can find them - they add a nice tangy crunch. For this morning's breakfast, I had pickled scallions over leftover rice with chile-tamarind paste and fried shallots. Oddly delicious. Good save! I am so glad that you liked the "recipe".

Work interfered with ambitious dinner plans, so we had self-service eggs with bacon. Mine was scrambled eggs with chorizo, chile-tamarind paste, pickled scallions, chopped yellow tomato, fish sauce, Serrano chiles, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. Tangy and aromatic, with varied textures and complex heat – quite satisfying. Eternal cukes, of course. We also cooked yard-long beans Vietnamese-style: blanched and stir-fried with garlic, beaten egg, fish sauce, and sugar, and then covered and steamed until tender. The boys approved moderately.

Chile-tamarind sauce This was inspired by a recipe in Victor Sodsook's True Thai, but I fiddled with the ingredients and proportions. Use this sauce on seafood – fried fish, shrimp, even crab cakes. 2 T oil 1 head (not clove, head) garlic, peeled and finely chopped or smashed to paste in a mortar 2 T chile-tamarind paste (nahm phrik pao) - more if you are feeling reckless 1 red bell pepper, finely chopped 6 scallions, cut into short sections 2 T palm sugar 1/4 c chicken stock, preferably Asian-style 1 T fish sauce cilantro and/or basil (to taste) Heat a wok or saucepan to medium-high, swirl in the oil, and stir-fry the garlic until fragrant. Add the chile-tamarind paste and stir-fry briefly (um, make sure you have a good hood fan). Add the chicken stock and palm sugar and stir-fry until the sugar dissolves. Add the bell peppers and scallions and stir-fry briefly. Add the fish sauce, bring to a boil, and turn off the heat when the texture and soupiness are to your liking. Let the sauce cool a bit and adjust the sweet-salty balance with sugar and/or fish sauce. Garnish with cilantro and/or Thai basil. Keywords: Thai, Hot and Spicy, Sauce ( RG2019 )

Sentiamo: OK, I’m asking three months late, but would you mind sharing the recipe for your “best in the world” sate sauce? Tonight we made fish with fresh tomato sauce (ca chien sot chuan got), from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Pan-fried tilapia fillets, topped with a cornstarch-thickened sauce of shallots, garlic, pickled scallions, fish sauce, chicken stock, sugar, and chopped yellow tomatoes, with cilantro and slivered scallions for garnish. Not bad, but I would not make this again unless I could find excellent tomatoes. I would also punch up the chiles and fish sauce a bit – the sauce was surprisingly tame until I added more fish sauce and some chile-tamarind paste the next morning. ETA: follow-up.

Monavano, I can wait for fall, but your minestrone looks great. Jensen, roasted Poblanos are one of my favorite things on earth. Yum. Brenda, welcome to the larb club! Vietnamese tonight – tilapia fillets with fresh tomato sauce. Pickings were slim at the farmer’s market (too much rain lately), but I found some decent-looking yellow tomatoes. As I was finishing the sauce, Mrs. C walked in from the back yard with two stunningly beautiful tomatoes. The sauce would have been much better with the backyard tomatoes, but the fish turned out beautifully tender. If we make this again, I will season the fish with salt and pepper before frying. And check for ripe tomatoes. ETA: A dash of fish sauce and a healthy dab of chile-tamarind paste brightened up the leftovers considerably for breakfast. Served with corn, jasmine rice, cukes (disappeared before dinner), and the stunning garden tomatoes.

First of all, thanks to the gracious hosts, efficient organizers, and delightful guests. We had a wonderful time. Charles, I enjoyed both of your crab cakes and sauces even though they were competing with your ice cream and Mrs. Busboy’s delicious peach crisp. The mango sauce was particularly swell, so thanks for posting the recipe. I have never eaten so many delicious and varied crab cakes before, so picking a favorite would be like asking whether I prefer to breathe in or breathe out. By my usual criteria, bavila’s crab cakes scored highly because they had the biggest hunks of crab (and sauteing in butter didn’t hurt, either). Heather’s cilantro-peanut sauce deserves special mention – I could eat that every day of the week (and since she posted the recipe, probably will ). I will try to get Mrs. C to codify her never-the-same-way-twice salad, perhaps this evening. I am a relative newbie at making crab cakes, so both of my versions were straight out of John Shields’ Chesapeake Bay Cooking (click for web links): Gertie's Crab Cakes (clicky) (which did have a hint of Penzey’s Old Bay clone, plus a little smoked paprika). These held together nicely despite very little filler, causing a shift of allegiance from my previous method . . . . . . . Faidley's World-Famous Crab Cakes (clicky). These have a bit more filler than Gertie’s, but I wanted to be sure that at least one batch of crab cakes did not fall apart. For the tartar sauce (recipe in Faidley’s link), I made my first-ever batch of homemade mayonnaise, with The Way to Cook guiding me through the process uneventfully. I did tart up the tartar sauce a bit, adding chopped cornichons, capers, and chives. The chile-tamarind sauce started from a recipe in Victor Sodsook's True Thai, but I have fiddled with it enough to post here: 2-3 Tablespoons oil 1 head (not clove – head) garlic, peeled and finely chopped or mashed in a mortar 2-3 Tablespoons chile-tamarind paste (or more if you are feeling reckless) 1 red bell pepper, finely chopped 6 scallions, cut into short sections 2 Tablespoons palm sugar ¼ cup chicken stock, preferably Asian-style 1-2 Tablespoons fish sauce cilantro and/or Thai basil to taste Heat a wok to medium-high, swirl in the oil, and stir-fry the garlic until fragrant. Add the chile-tamarind paste and stir-fry briefly (um, make sure you have a good hood fan). Add the chicken stock and palm sugar and stir-fry until the sugar dissolves. Add the bell peppers and scallions and stir-fry briefly. Add the fish sauce, bring to a boil, and turn off the heat when the texture and soupiness are to your liking. Let the sauce cool a bit, then adjust the sweet-salty balance with sugar and/or fish sauce. Garnish with cilantro and/or Thai basil. Yes, do let's do this again.

Brenda, your soup looks terrific! The boys love soup, so I should really get better at making it. Probably a good cold-weather project. You are talking about the kimchi, right?

I have always enjoyed your posts, so I am looking forward to this foodblog. I hope you don’t mind my asking a food-related library question. While checking out our library’s cookbook section, I noted a comprehensive mixture of new and classic European and American regional cookbooks, a fair number of Japanese, Mexican, and Indian cookbooks, and a large section aimed at special diets. In contrast, the coverage of China and “elsewhere in Asia/Pacific” was paltry and outdated. It appears that the library bought a bunch of Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean cookbooks 15 years ago. Presumably, no one could find suitable ingredients locally so few borrowed the books. We now have an Asian grocery in town, so I would like to gently suggest that interest in Chinese and SE Asian cookbooks may have increased. To whom would one make such a suggestion most effectively? Oh, and I do hope we will see a tutorial on toast dope preparation. Blog on!

Leftovers for breakfast: kimchi and nuked Poblano beef tips with Cholula. A co-worker donated the kimchi, and I got lots of strange looks for eating it at the boys’ swim team pizza party. I’m off for coffee on the porch with Mrs. C and the dogs before it gets too hot - it is supposed to approach 100F today.

Growing up, we rarely had bread with dinner. Well, except for a glorious but short-lived period when my sister went on a baking kick. But I digress. We had a visitor from Croatia, a water polo recruit, over for dinner. He became very uncomfortable when lunch was served; picking at his food until finally blurting out that he could not eat a meal without bread. I think we found him a bagel.

Jensen: The chorizo dressing was pretty simple. Fry the chorizo, add the garlic, and then shake in a jar with oil, vinegar, Mexican oregano, and a little salt if needed. I will be happy to PM the recipe if you would like more detail. Tonight we made a variation of quick-seared Poblano beef tips (puntas de filete al chile Poblano), from Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday. We pan-seared ribeye cubes, fried onion slices and potato cubes, roasted Poblano chiles, deglazed the pan with oatmeal stout and Worcestershire sauce, and finished with Thai basil. Dee-lish.

Perhaps something from King Arthur Flour? You are a far more accomplished baker than I, but your situation screams "apple crumble" to me.

So many lovely meals! Back-to-school night tonight, so dinner was an odd mix of the available: Sichuan chicken in red-oil sauce; and tomato-cuke-spinach salad with chorizo dressing. Best of all, poaching the chicken yielded lots of ginger- and scallion-flavored stock.

True, but (depending on the source) turds can make excellent compost. I would go with Marlene's suggestion - slice thinly against the grain, marinate briefly, and cook quickly in a smoking-hot pan with some combinatin of garlic, ginger, fish/soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, chiles/chile paste, and a touch of sugar. Finish with scallions, Thai basil, and/or sesame oil. Serve with rice or noodles. Old shoes taste pretty good prepared that way.

Kathleen: What fun – thanks for taking us along for the ride this week.

For brunch we made fried rice with Mexican ingredients – garden tomatoes, white onion, garlic, egg, and three kinds of chiles – chipotle in adobo, Serrano, and Holland – topped with Mexican oregano and capers.

Don't tempt me.

Peter Green - wait, you aren’t making sauerbraten in Thailand, are you? Rob/gfron1, sounds like a great party. Your chapati naan is gorgeous, how did you make it? PercyN, of all your beautiful plates, the roasted garlic jumped out at me. Whoa. We did not cook anything last night, but went out for all-you-can-eat crabs at the source of my avatar. My fingers still smell of crab, and the dogs keep giving me enquiring looks.