blue_dolphin

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.

@Maison Rustique, not sure if your cocktail event has happened yet, but I thought I'd follow up on @Tropicalsenior's recommendations after mixing up a little of that anchovy spread to check it out. I agree that a neutral flavor is best and I'd avoid anything too salty as, at least with the anchovies I used, the spread was pretty salty. I didn't have any small tins of anchovies so I weighed out some of these: To me, it tasted best on those little toasts I use for paté, like this: I also tried Triscuits and those Norwegian sourdough rye chips from Trader Joe's. Both were too salty to taste good with the spread, at least to my taste buds. The spread is quite a little umami bomb so I think the small size of those toasts is nice, too. I'm thinking it would probably be pretty great on a bagel, maybe with some cucumbers or something like that but I'll have to bake some in order to try that out!

I agree. I avoid any sandwich that requires jaw dislocation in order to take a bite. Also agree. And any bagel that has the softness and lack of chew to make a good sandwich isn't a bagel worth eating in the first place. Simple is good but I think there are interesting and imaginative additions that can take a sandwich from good to great. I'm a big fan of Max Halley's secret to deliciousness: Hot, Cold, Sweet, Sour, Crunchy, Soft. If you get all of those in a bite of sandwich it will be pretty great. If there's so much crap on it that you can't even bite it, let alone get a bite with everything in it, that's no bueno to me.

The 8 g CO2 cartridges (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) I buy have gone up to around 55 cents each. A 750 ml bottle of Chimay Blue is $14.99 at my local Total Wine so if you were to enjoy three 250 ml servings, it would only add around 10 % to the cost of that bottle. That seems reasonable.

And I’ve only used the smoked trout in tins!

I'll look for the grilled sardines and post when I find them. I like the smoked trout a lot but tend to use it in smaller amounts. My favorite use: Bruschetta With Swiss Chard and Smoked Trout.

@KennethT, every time this commercial pops up, I imagine this is what your place looks like: The reality in your photo is much less dramatic 🤣

That sounds really good and makes me want a martini and it's not even 7 AM yet! My only hesitation would be that the buttered saltines say to serve warm and one of the comments said the leftovers weren't so good. You might want to bake off a few test crackers and let them sit around for a while and see how they hold up. Or just bring an alternate box of crackers you can swap in just in case they go limp.

I have purchased products from Japan, similar to this one (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), in local international or Japanese markets.

I've never seen them with salt on top either but the recipe popped up when I searched. It seems pretty easy and they're kind of handy to have on hand for mini sandwiches so I may give them a try, too. I noticed that one comment said that she'd used her stand mixer instead of kneading by hand and the author replied that he often did that as well so I'll likely do the same.

I like Ford's. And the labels peel off nicely so I can re-use them to bottle up limoncello or eggnog or whatever. Since Beefeater lowered the proof and (maybe just locally) increased their price, I've been using regular Tanqueray London Dry (47.3%) which has the advantage of being a couple bucks cheaper than Beefeater and still has that standard juniper-forward profile.

This recipe has salt on top

Yes, cooking the heck out of that fish would seem wise! To be clear on this dish and the book, the recipes are mostly from Kris Yenbamroong's Night + Market restaurants of that name in Los Angeles. He does draw on the foods and flavors of Thai street food where he lived with family but also on his experience growing up in the Los Angeles Thai restaurant, Talésai, that his immigrant parents opened, with his grandmother helming the kitchen. According to the header notes, it was his grandmother who came up with this idea at Talésai to take the flavor profile of the Thai dish, miang kham, of aromatics and crunchy bits wrapped in betel leaves and apply it to tuna tartare. He has more to say in the header notes, but that's the gist of it. Zero connection is implied to any fish served at a night market in Thailand!

In addition to Penzey's (3/4 cup bag of cinnamon is 2.6 oz, though the different spices vary) Spice House also offers small bags of most of their spices and as an added perk, those bags always ship for free, with no minimum, a nice perk if you only need a couple of things.

Cabbage and kimchi okonomiyaki from Tenderheart This recipe adds kimchi to the cabbage in the pancake and uses a gochujang ketchup that I love (ketchup + gochujang + soy sauce + sesame oil) in place of okonomiyaki sauce. I had the pan a bit too hot so that first side is kind of dark but no harm was done.

Tangy stir-fried cabbage and glass noodles from Tenderheart I doubled the amount of cabbage, slightly reduced the amount of noodles and added tofu

Today's breakfast was the Chicken and Ginger Pad Thai from Alex Guarnaschelli's cookbook, Cook with Me. This is not Pad Thai, nor is it even a good noodle dish. I used tofu instead of chicken and added some sugar snaps but that's not the problem. After the photo, I added a LOT of sambal oelek, which helped, but it still wasn't particularly good. This month, the cookbook club I participate in is cooking from Night + Market by Kris Yenbamroong. He includes a Pad Thai recipe that's rather untraditional, but really works. I decided to cook the other Pad Thai recipes in our club books, of which this is one. I'll spare you the details on this one but after I'm done, I'll post my findings over in the very ancient Pad Thai cook-off topic. Next up is Kenji's recipe from The Wok.

For many years, my boss was a professor from France. One day, at a gathering at his home, we were discussing the quality of croissants from various local bakeries. His little daughter piped up with her judgement that the best croissant was the one that left the most shattered crumbs on the plate. So true!

It’s rare that I dice mass quantities of anything and when I do, it’s the peeling I find more annoying than the dicing. Like big winter squash, tons of potatoes or tomatoes.