C. sapidus

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

Thank you very much, heidih. Pre-peeled garlic would have helped get tonight’s dinner on the table much sooner. I will see if our Asian market carries it. I finished the mango salad for breakfast, and an overnight stay in the fridge mellowed the flavors nicely. The salad was still very spicy, but good spicy – more balanced. Next time I will mix in the dressing earlier and let the salad sit for a while before serving.

Mark/jumanggy: Thank you very much, tilapia is one of my favorite fish, too. I pulled up your Flickr pics, and the crust on your pork loin looks divine. Brenda: Beautiful pork belly - how did you prepare it? Thirty-five cloves of garlic contributed to tonight’s Thai dinner. That has to be some sort of record for our family, and we will probably be social outcasts tomorrow. Anyway, we made sweet and fragrant pork with garlic and crushed black pepper; a very spicy green mango salad, Chiang May style; cukes; and basmati rice. More on Thai Cooking at Home.

Tonight we made pork with garlic and crushed black pepper (mu kratiem phrik Thai) and green mango salad, Chiang Mai style (som tum mamuang), both from True Thai. The pork was simple: mash twenty cloves of garlic to a paste with black pepper; stir-fry the paste; add pork tenderloin medallions, and finish with black soy sauce, palm sugar, and fish sauce. Almost everyone liked this very much, but elder son objected to a faint aftertaste. I did not notice the aftertaste until he pointed it out, but was probably a hint of burned sugar. To avoid this, next time I’ll lower the heat when adding the sauce. The green mango salad had another fifteen cloves of garlic, mashed to a paste with dried shrimp and Serrano chiles. We tossed mango slivers with the spice paste, slightly crushed tomatoes, crushed peanuts, and a dressing of lemon juice, fish sauce, and palm sugar. This was delicious but seriously spicy! Perhaps three weeks of mild food has lowered my tolerance, but next time I’ll use fewer chiles. I have been quite happy with True Thai so far. The writing is clear and straightforward, and I am looking forward to trying a long list of intriguing recipes. Many of the dishes are quite sweet, though – I often cut back on the amount of sugar. Som tum mamuang (left) and mu kratiem phrik Thai (right)

Are you looking for a Vietnamese-language or English-language cookbook? If English, Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table should meet your criteria. It covers the basics nicely and includes many recipes for street foods adapted to the home kitchen. I will second HKDave’s recommendation of Andrea Nguyen’s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, but I have not seen The Little Saigon Cookbook. From several thousand miles away, my impression is that Andrea Nguyen's recipes lean more towards northern Vietnam, whereas Mai Pham's recipes lean more towards southern Vietnam. Since you are in Vietnam, I would be interested to hear your perspective on that.

I used the recipe for Chinese greens, Thai style (click) from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet. This is one of our favorite ways to cook greens, and very flexible - you can cook just about anything green this way, blanch the veggies or not, add chiles or not, etc. Enjoy!

Our house guests leave tomorrow, so we made two of their favorites: ginger chicken (gai pad khing) and Thai-style baby bok choy. This version of ginger chicken was from Thailand the Beautiful. Besides the usual ginger, garlic, onions, mushrooms, fish sauce, white pepper, and sugar, this version added bell peppers and oyster sauce, which were nice additions. Jasmine rice and eternal cukes on the side. Our crappy Whirlpool dishwasher is broken again, so dig the lovely compostable paper plate.

Shelby and Kim: Thank you very much for your kind comments. blixt: Welcome, and what a beautiful first post! Jmahl: That’s some fine looking chili. Mrs. C found a great deal on tilapia, so tonight’s dinner had a great deal of tilapia: Thai red curry with crispy tilapia (tilapia subbed for catfish); tilapia and pork stir-fry with lemongrass and garlic (tilapia subbed for shrimp); and fried tilapia. The jasmine rice, cucumbers, and green salad were completely free of tilapia, however. Thai red curry with crispy tilapia

nonblonde007: You are quite welcome, I think. Hey, there are worse addictions than making *interesting* breakfasts! Anyway, your curry scrambled eggs on lettuce look delicious. Our breakfast was guacamole topped with a fried egg and feta cheese, but Mrs. C started eating the guacamole before I had a chance to grab the camera.

Jamie Lee: We usually compost the parts of the lemon grass that we do not use. I hope your appetite soon returns for a long stay. I had a nice find today at our Asian market: pickled green peppercorns. Now I just need to remember what recipe called for them. Tonight we made crispy catfish curry from True Thai, except we substituted tilapia for catfish. We deep-fried flour-dredged tilapia fillets and set them in a warm oven to rest. For the curry, we stir-fried about 10 cloves of mashed garlic with red curry paste, and then added chicken stock, palm sugar, chopped red bell peppers, bamboo shoots, and mushroom soy sauce. When we mixed in a cup and a half of Thai basil the aroma was incredible. This curry had great flavor but could have used more heat. True Thai was written in 1995, so the red curry paste calls for dried New Mexico and Japanese chiles (I used dried bird chiles instead of Japanese chiles). Next time I will use phrik haeng or “goat peppers” instead of the New Mexico chiles – that should give it some kick. Crispy tilapia curry (pla duk tod krop phat phed)

saucee: Thanks, and enjoy your ceviche. Today’s late lunch/early dinner: red curry shrimp with tomatoes, scallions, limes, cilantro, and lettuce. I cracked coconut cream, fried the curry paste with brown sugar, and seasoned it with fish sauce. This was a test for a recent batch or red curry paste. Nice flavor, but too mild – I should grind in more chiles before using the rest of the curry paste.