C. sapidus

Beautiful meals all around, with a special shout-out for the salmon ceviche and all of the gorgeous tomatoes. Tonight we made a Vietnamese pork stir-fry, jasmine rice, and a tomato and cucumber salad. We marinated thinly-sliced pork shoulder in fish sauce and sugar, and then stir-fried the pork with garlic and lemongrass. With bowls of nuoc cham, chopped cilantro, and mint on the side, this was simple and satisfying.

John Dennison (johnnyd) in Maine?

Gabriel: Thank you! Glad to have you back on line, both for the food (all of which look wonderful) and for the sage advice. It took me a while to figure out the grilled catfish – at first glance I thought the slashes were the spiky teeth of some prehistoric lizard jaw. How did you make the sweet/hot/sour sauce? Also, I have never made fish balls - how involved is the process? Part of tonight’s dinner was from True Thai – grilled shrimp salad with green mango and Thai emeralds dressing (yam kung pao kap mamuang). The salad included slivered green mango, shallots, and mint. The “Thai emeralds dressing” added mashed cilantro stems to our usual mixture of garlic, chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, and palm sugar.

Prawncrackers: Crab and chorizo – two of my favorite things in the universe, together at last. Percyn: Thanks! Beautiful lobster roll, and I think we have the same cutting board. Tonight we made grilled shrimp salad with green mango and Thai emeralds dressing (Yam kung pao kap mamuang), and spicy tamarind shrimp. Elder son made the basmati rice, and of course we had cucumbers. The boys preferred the grilled shrimp, which were simply skewered and grilled in their shells. No seasoning, just shrimp. I can see that becoming a regular summer meal.

Glorious pictures indeed, and thanks for posting this. I occasionally make baklava the old-fashioned way, but easy baklava sounds dangerous! I hope you don't mind a few questions: 1. How does the taste/texture compare to baklava made by the traditional brush-butter-on-each-sheet method? 2. Why use a mixture of margarine and butter rather than just butter? By the way, boiling the syrup with cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, etc. makes for a particularly delicious baklava.

Mark, I am absolutely drooling at the rijsttafel pictures and can’t wait to hear your commentary. Yard-long beans and kouseband seem to be the same thing, with the scientific name of Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis. Plant trivia: yard-long beans are usually harvested at about a foot and a half (sesquipedalis in Latin). According to this website (click) yard-long beans are “a favorite of the Surinam kitchen.” And so it goes full circle. Sandy, your knowledge of the food business is comprehensive, but we found the sambals at an Asian market. Our family shopped at Giant Food since I was a wee lad, but unfortunately their stores – especially the produce section – have gone downhill since Royal Ahold’s takeover. We now drive past Giant to shop elsewhere.

MizD: Caveat: I am probably the last person on the planet to give advice about cooking "plain" food. However. If you have time to make a separate meal for yourself, will E try a taste if it looks non-threatening? If so, some lightly-seasoned Vietnamese dishes might not be too far outside E's comfort zone. Perhaps a toned-down version of kho (caramel-braised chicken, salmon, or pork), or even better, a not-so-garlicky garlicky oven-roasted chicken (ga ro-ti). You did not mention a grill, but I wonder if E would like veggies that had been lightly marinated and broiled, or perhaps broiled fruit (or butternut squash) with a sweet glaze for dessert. Keep on making the world a better place, one meal at a time.

Clarias are apparently species of SE Asian catfish. The can looked something like this (link to Importfood.com). I like to keep cans of fish or eel in chile sauce around for a quick protein breakfast when we don't have suitable leftovers. Sure, spicy dishes are perfect when it is blazing hot. Or freezing cold. Or anywhere in between!

Are you familiar with the eG Culinary Institute course on Basic Knife Skills? The method for "mincing a shallot" works nicely. If a uniformly fine dice is needed, I use the technique shown for dicing an onion, except I find it easier and safer to do the horizontal cut first. If the middle of the shallot keeps slipping out, you might want to peel off one more outer layer or check out Chad's Knife Maintenance and Sharpening course.

Brenda: Pho for breakfast – I am insanely jealous! Have you mentioned your breakfast habits to the neighbors? Bill: Buttermilk pie sounds like just the thing under the circumstances. I spent the morning with the dishwasher repairman, and I fervently hope that his latest effort have fixed our problematic Whirlpool for the next decade or so. With time on my hands, I emptied out the produce drawers with a highly experimental batch of fried rice. I cracked coconut cream and fried Thai chiles, garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, chile jam, tamarind, and palm sugar. When the bell peppers began to soften I added the mushrooms and rice, and then scrambled in an egg. Off the heat, I seasoned with Thai basil, mint leaves, scallions, and fish sauce. Topped with a can of “fried clarias fish with chilli” and served with a lime wedge. Spicy!

First, best wishes to Mara for a speedy recovery. This has been a particularly enjoyable blog so far, and I am looking forward to the rest of your week. Your discursive writing rewards close reading, and I both enjoy and envy your fantastic international markets. The cooking of Surinam seems to have strong similarities to that of Trinidad, as described by a friend from that island. So much of what you have described is surprising and/or revelatory – the fascinating history of the Indische kitchen, the lack of jalapenos in Amsterdam, the demographics of Suriname, and the availability of the same brands of Indonesian sambals in Amsterdam and Maryland. I noticed what looks like yard-long beans – one of my favorite veggies – at Toko Hangalampoe. Do you often cook with yard-long beans? Did you speak Dutch before moving to Amsterdam, or did you learn by necessity?

Jamie Lee, balancing Thai flavors takes a lot of practice (enjoyable practice, as you mentioned). Sometimes, the balancing act is not intuitive - for example, sugar can balance out an excess of sour or hot. You may want to check out Balancing Flavors: An Exercise from Kasma Loha-Unchit's wonderful site. David Thompson has a similar exercise in his book. Good luck finding your calm, yet spicy, salty, sour, sweet spiritual center.

Thank you Brenda. The "lovely yellow thing" is a yellow cherry tomato from the farmer's market. The tomatoes were quite lovely - next best thing to home-grown, and we may not have home-grown until fall if we don't start getting some rain soon.

KristiB50: Yay, more larb! Do you prefer chunks to ground/minced? Salad of Kirby cukes, shallots, lemongrass, purple bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes from the farmer’s market. Salad dressing/dipping sauce of mashed garlic, Serrano chiles, and palm sugar with fish sauce and lemon juice. Five-spice pork chops served with jasmine rice and dipping sauce. Mrs. C declared one of the thicker pork chops “the best she ever had.” Elder son was less effusive, “I usually don’t like pork chops but these are pretty good.” Da boyz are a tough audience.

Whoa, Sabang – we used to go there frequently. It sounds like we were discontemporaneous neighbors. I also feel your pain - missing the dining options in Maryland's DC 'burbs is what motivated me to learn to cook. Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland, is a wonderful cookbook that includes recipes from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Crouching Tyler started a thread on Cooking with 'Cradle of Flavor', One Recipe at a Time.

Jamie Lee: Why thank you, kind lady, but I’m a food-lover, not a food-warrior. I have a bunch of Thai cookbooks, but picking one would be difficult because each has pros and cons. How about two? Thai Food by David Thompson – the ultimate Thai cooking reference, but more of a weekend than a weeknight cookbook. I would suggest getting this book and one of the following: True Thai: The Modern Art of Thai Cooking by Victor Sodsook – I have just started using this book, and like it very much with one caveat: it is an old book, so the recipes call for Mexican rather than Thai chiles. The book has a lot of fascinating recipes that I can’t wait to try, and I have been very happy with all of the recipes we have tried so far. Crying Tiger: Thai Recipes from the Heart by Supatra Johnson – this is a very casual book with lots of weeknight meals and an emphasis on northeast Thailand (Issan) cuisine. Thailand: The Beautiful by Panurat Poladitmontr – I received this recently and have not yet used it, but the recipes look good, it has lots of beautiful pictures, and others speak highly of it. Edit: fixed to provide eGullet-friendly Amazon links. On the tree front, I love sourwoods but I would prefer to be an American beech (except for the lack of fall color and disadvantage of kids carving their initials in my bark – ouch!)

Octaveman: That’s some beautiful larb. You should post how you made it on the Larb Laab Larp thread.

Grilled beef salad (yam neua), from True Thai. More on Dinner!

Thick-cut strip steaks grilled medium rare. Plain for the boys, . . . . . . thinly-sliced for the grownups, . . . . . . and mixed with lemongrass, mint, red onion, tomatoes, and greens from the farmer’s market. The dressing was cilantro stems, chiles, garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce, white pepper, and lemon juice. One of our favorite summer meals. Jasmine rice for sopping up the dressing.

Robin: Thanks for the kind words Your “meat candy” and pickle party sounds like a blast! One of the things that I appreciate about Cradle of Flavor is the clarity and detail of the directions. This makes the book an excellent guide for ventures into new culinary realms. If you are looking for a fairly easy whole fish recipe, check out the pan-seared mackerel with chiles and garlic (chuan-chuan). We have never found whole mackerel, but the recipe works nicely with fish fillets – just adjust cooking time. The past few weekends have been packed with activities other than cooking, but I hope to try one of the grilled or fried chicken recipes from CoF this weekend.

I can see why - that's beautiful. We had our usual fried rice Friday with cukes, tomatoes, and lime wedges. We also stir-fried shrimp with salt, sugar, scallions, and smoked paprika and heated up yesterday’s red curry with beef and green peppercorns.

I notice that you did not mention chiles – do you prefer sauces that are not spicy?

Brenda: Your shrimp curry breakfast looks scrumptious. Percyn: Holy crap, I will be happy to help you clean out your fridge. Any time. Really. The other day we made breakfast for lunch – green curry scrambled eggs. I whipped up something resembling green curry in about ten minutes. I think the “curry” paste had Serrano chiles, ginger, cilantro stems, and garlic, seasoned with fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar. Feta cheese and cilantro for garnish.

eynkiora: Beautiful potstickers, and welcome to Dinner! Thai week, continued: tonight we made an unusual (at least to me) dish: red curry with beef and pickled green peppercorns, from True Thai. With bamboo shoots, slivered serrano chiles, tender beef, coconut milk, palm sugar, fish sauce, Sriracha, and lots of Thai basil, this was a delicious and varied mix of flavors and textures. I am so looking forward to having some for breakfast. More on Thai Cooking at Home. The boys hit their Thai food limit the previous night, so Mrs. C made them pasta and meatballs. Stir-fried baby mustard greens and jasmine rice rounded out the meal. Apologies for the blurry pic.

Tonight we made red curry with beef and green peppercorns (kaeng phed neua phrik Thai on), from True Thai. This was an absolutely delicious mixture of flavors and textures. I had never used pickled green peppercorns before, but they added nice crunchy jolts of flavor. Bamboo shoots added texture and a hint of bitterness; slivered Serrano chiles and a squirt of Sriracha added some heat; palm sugar and fish sauce rounded out the flavors; thinly-sliced tender beef pulled it all together; and a bag full of Thai basil made everything smell wonderful. I will definitely make this again. Kaeng phed neua phrik Thai on