blue_dolphin

The Amá Spice Mix in his book of the same name calls for the following dried chiles 8 arbol chiles 5 guajillo chiles 5 New Mexico chiles 5 chipotle chiles 4 chiles negro 4 mulato chiles 4 pasilla de Oaxaca chiles 4 cascabel chiles All the chiles are toasted in a 350°F oven for ~ 10 min until brittle and fragrant, stemmed, seeded, ground to a powder and mixed with 1 tsp salt. It's a great mix - very flavorful but not searingly hot, though one could easily add a very spicy variety to boost the heat if that was the goal. Edited to add that this is the main seasoning in the chorizo recipe in the book and it's really fabulous!

Chicken laab from Night + Market with microwave sticky rice, sugar snap peas standing in for the recipe's green beans, cabbage and cucumber. I liked that this recipe specified the order of adding ingredients to the meat, tossing lightly after each addition. Fish sauce and a pinch of sugar go in while the meat is still warm, then it's allowed to cool and the roasted chile powder, shallot, green onions, mint, cilantro and lime juice are added sequentially with the toasted rice powder added last so the sturdier ingredients get more tossing and the herbs are spared until near the end.

I made a half batch, 6" square pan version of the Mexican Chocolate Brownies Stuffed with Dulce de Leche from The Global Pantry Cookbook. They are very rich and gooey but the flavors are great. Two nice things about the recipe are that the batter gets mixed up in the same pan you use to melt the butter and Mexican chocolate and you line the baking pan with foil so there's no sticky pan to scrub. I might try a longer bake time in the next round, you can see how gooey they are. The recipe has you put half the batter in the pan, then drizzle on warmed dulce de leche, then dollop on the remaining batter and gently spread it to cover the dulce de leche. I could work on doing a better job with the spreading as you can see I got some dulce de leche bubbling up around the edges and looking like some sort of fungus: The photo in the book actually has the same thing going on but since I used Cacao Berry's Extra Brute cocoa powder, my brownies are darker so the dulce de leche stands out more. I need to stash these in the freezer to save myself from them 🙃

I'm no help on those particular chiles or powder but a couple of things strike me about that list that @Duvel linked to. One is the specification of so many ground chile powders. It seems like you'd get better flavor by using whole chiles and grinding them yourself instead of dusty old ground stuff. And why are the devil's penis and bird's eye chiles the only ones where whole chiles are actually specified. And why use smoked paprika instead of a chipotle or pasilla de Oaxaca for a smoky element? Maybe all this is revealed somewhere in his voluminous intro to the recipe? As far as subs go, one of the seed websites says it's thought that the devil's penis pepper is a cross between a peter pepper (a little hot) and a devil's tongue pepper (very hot) so something like a habanero is probably going to be in the heat range and they taste good, too. In my experience with making blended chile powders from various cookbooks, when they call for 8 or more different dried chiles, it's OK to roll with it and substitute if needed. The flavors and heat levels of chiles vary from season to season and also depend on where they are grown so there's no guarantee that adhering religiously to that particular 15+ year old recipe is going to give you an identical result and even if it did, you might not like it and want to make your own tweaks. I've been making Josef Centeno's 8-chile spice mix from his book, Amá for a number of years now. Sometimes I have all 8, sometimes I substitute one or two or add an extra one I'd like to try. It's always really good! Anyway, good luck with the chili! It sounds like quite the endeavor. I hope you'll take photos and share the whole epic saga with us!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this book and others you're considering once you've wrapped up your research. Maybe over in the Cookbooks area? People are often asking about cookbooks for young cooks so I think it would be useful for others as well. I haven't seen this book yet but have been enjoying her Cooking 101 YouTube videos on the NYTCooking channel.

Yesterday, I made the Nam Prik Noom (Roasted Green Chile Dip from Night + Market to use as a base for the Nam Prik Khee Ga used in tacos I had for lunch. Today, I figured I'd dip in to that jar of Nam Prik Noom and build a breakfast around it. I was worried it would be too hot, and it is plenty spicy, but I enjoyed it all. Everything in my bowl came from the suggestion list at the end of the Nam Prik Noom recipe: sticky rice, raw cabbage, steamed cauliflower and zucchini and an egg - the book says hard boiled but you know I couldn't resist having a jammy one 🙃 I was curious to try the microwave sticky rice recipe in the book and was surprised how well it worked, even in my feeble microwave.

I got white sea bass in my fish share this week and used some to make these crispy fish tacos from Night + Market. In the book, he uses a tempura-like batter and deep fries the fish. I made a breading from the toasted rice powder in the book and a bit of cornmeal. Marinated the fish first in buttermilk with lime zest and garlic. In place of a salsa verde, he uses Nam Prik Khee Ga, which he translates in the header notes as "crow shit nam prik," named apparently for its appearance with charred bits of chile, etc. I could have done without that description but the stuff is indeed very good here. The pico de gallo is fairly standard, though he adds sugar, which I skipped. I made the crema from a recipe in Nopalito (just Greek yogurt, lime juice and salt) and made the tortillas with Masienda yellow masa harina. All in all, it was more work than my usual fish tacos but always fun to try something a little bit different.

I'm here to report that I tried the famous peach cream cheese on all three flavors of cookie thins. All good but Triple Ginger for the win! Vanilla was also excellent, as has been reported above. I really like the lemon cookies and they were good with the cream cheese but the others were better. I also found the grilled sardines, no thanks to whomever on the TJ's staff decided to relocate the tinned fish to the bottom 2 shelves. I had to crouch down with my butt practically on the floor in order to read the labels. Bad spot for those tiny cans. I meant to complain on the way out but got involved in a convo with the cashier about the peach cream cheese and cookie thins. She was very excited about trying it!

Pad Grapow (aka Ka Prao/Krapao/Krapow/Gaprao etc) Chicken from Night + Market topped with a crispy fried egg. I didn't have any holy basil or regular basil so I used Thai basil. This recipe differs from others I've read in relying on Prik Tum, a hot, garlicky paste made by smashing and cooking down chiles and garlic in oil in a larger batch rather than just what's needed for this single recipe. . You blitz 3 large jalapeños, 3/4 cup Thai bird's eye chilies, 3/4 cup garlic cloves and 1/2 Tbsp salt in a blender or processor then simmer that in a cup of oil for 45 min or so before seasoning with white pepper. It seems like a Thai version of Hamburger Helper 🙃 as it transformed some ground chicken and green beans into a delicious meal.

Thanks, @rotuts! This recipe says to heat about an inch of oil into the wok. I had about 1/2 inch and it still worked well to crisp the edges without having the yolk get stuck to the bottom and break!

I made this recipe for grilled cauliflower steaks with green harissa from Food52: Then I threw one of those Thai-style crispy fried eggs on top and called it breakfast

I saw that yesterday. I was shocked as Rob seemed to be putting down such deep roots with growers and the community at large. Also sorry I didn’t have a chance to visit. I continue to be impressed with his commitment to doing what’s right and interested to see what's next.

Thanks, that's helpful! The noodles were fresh-ish. I got these at the Thai grocery store. They weren't in the fridge in the store but I put them in the fridge when I got home. I did see a tip to separate them out before refrigerating but I was too lazy! I microwaved the ones I used briefly, covered with a damp paper towel, so I could get them apart. That may have added some moisture. Maybe I can skip the paper towel and set them out to dry off for a while before cooking? Any other suggestions?

A few lunches I didn't get around to posting in a timely manner. Mussels Marinières Rosé from Eric Ripert's Seafood Simple. I liked the use of rosé here. I used a Tavel for both flavor and color. He adds some flour to the broth "to give it texture and richness," not something I thought was necessary. These mussels from my fish share were really great so I won't bitch too much about the unnecessary flour. Pad See Ew from Night + Market This was very tasty, though in my efforts to get a nice char, which I achieved, I had issues with the noodles sticking to the wok. Still had chewy and flavorful noodles but I need to work on both my wok seasoning and technique. I got halibut in my fish share but the hot weather made me make simple stuff. Halibut sandwich with a cabbage and watermelon radish slaw dressed with yuzu kosho mayo. The rest of the halibut went into these coconut-crusted fish fingers from Ottolenghi's Simple. The fish pieces get marinated briefly in lime juice and coconut cream before getting dipped in melted butter, then a coconut/panko mix and finally cooked under the broiler. It was OK, but not something I'd bother with again. Had it with the same slaw as above and mixed up a sauce with plum jam, gochujang, soy sauce and ketchup, the sort of thing I'd use with coconut shrimp. Neglected to put it in the photo.

Pad Thai This one was from Kenji's The Wok. After blabbering on at great length as he does, the recipe itself is presented in a way that's easy to follow but it's got too much stuff in it for my taste. The additions of shrimp paste and preserved radish added a lot of salt. I might consider them in smaller amounts.