patrickamory

Hi Blether - I use a second coffee grinder reserved for grinding spices. The Millser would be perfect for making Indian onion-garlic-ginger pastes, but I just haven't been making so many of those recipes lately. I will have to check out that Marcella recipe!

menuinprogress now THAT is a burger. Absolutely gorgeous & delicious looking. Nice proportions too.

As I understand it, oxtails are essential. I haven't made pho, but when I made bo kho, they added an incredible unctuousness and texture to the stew.

Here's my thing on the Millser, many months after buying it: I don't use it that often. Main reason is that even for small amounts, it wants some liquid to really puree anything, including garlic, even using the smallest bowl. The Millser really seems to be made for making smoothies. For the small quantities I generally need, for example garlic, I find myself mincing it, or if I'm really in a rush, pounding it in the Thai granite mortar & pestle. I really thought I needed this device, and aesthetically and appreciatively I still love it... however it has not found a place in my regular cooking routine. I mainly make Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern and Italian dishes... YMMV.

Schwartz's Smoked Meats - a fifth (or is it sixth?) vote. One of the best restaurants in North America.

Catching up here. First, koubideh kebabs (ground lamb with spices), on the sword-like Persian skewers. We did these under the gas broiler (no grills allowed on the 11th floor). Served with rice and fresh bitter oranges to squeeze: And tonight, frijoles borrachos. This is my third time making these to a friend's family recipe. Beans were Good Mother Stallards from Rancho Gordo. The beer the last two times has been Chimay Grand Reserve (the blue label). This was the first time I had both bacon and chicharron for the base. Along with onions, garlic, roasted peeled polanos and tomatoes. Served with rice, fresh limes, chopped cilantro and El Yucateco green hot sauce. I think it's my best yet:

Soba that looks extremely appetizing. Will you be posting a recipe to your blog?

I have to learn to read more closely. Peeled peas! Wow.

Matthew, that looks terrific... both the tortillas and the filling - great photos too.

I'm going to guess two things: (a) you're really good at plating and presentation and (b) you've got excellent light in your kitchen or dining room.

Interesting - we got shelling peas for the kheema upthread, and we shelled a half pound in about 10 minutes. Just bend the pod toward the curve and the peas pop out. Perhaps yours were picked not quite ripe, or too ripe? Now shelling fava beans the previous week - that took forever!

I'm no BBQ expert but just curious - absolutely nobody here uses bourbon, beer or coke in their sauces?

I was also going to recommend Stilton. If you can find "Stichelton," which is made from unpasteurized milk and homemade rennet, then that's even better. Neals Yard Dairy do an amazing one.

Hi khana_hai, I'm not an expert like posters Jenni or V. gautam, but usually the initial spices are meant to flavor the first ingredient more aggressively, and the latter ingredients more subtly. Subsequent spices - and their preparation - flavor the subsequent ingredients. That said, a lot of Indian recipes specify a tadka with some or all of the initial spices added at the very end as a garnish, which gets you that fresh impact again. Often the tadka echoes the earlier spices rather than replicating them exactly - so whereas the main dish might contain ground mustard seeds, the tadka contains whole ones. And other variations. I hope this helps.

Excellent mkayahara - galangal is one thing there is absolutely no substitute for! And once you've had fresh turmeric, it's impossible to go back to the powdered stuff. And Anna - your food photography is terrific. Care to share any secrets?

Nice-looking ribs Prawncrackers!

mkayahara, you can sub regular ginger for krachai if you need to. Or young ginger.

This is a great, great thread, thanks so much. I love traditional French cooking, and both your choice of dishes and your photography are impeccable. Please continue.

Coming from New England, it was a surprise to find that salt pork is virtually impossible to find in New York City. You are handed fatback, which is not the same thing. (I now make my own salt pork from good quality pork belly, so maybe this was good for me.) Suet is also extremely hard to find here. At East Village Meat Market, the butchers told me they used to sell it for bird feed, but now there's no market for it. At Ottomanelli, if you're lucky, they'll wink at you and grab a big handful from a side of porterhouse. At Florence Meat Market, I was sold beef fat that had nothing to do with kidneys (and had a nasty taste of iron to it when rendered).

Looks amazing as usual Bruce... I've got both Thailand the Beautiful and the Kasma books in my Amazon wishlist now, and I guess I'm keeping Hot Sour Salty Sweet, so room needs to be made on the bookshelf. Blueberries already in season down there huh? I'm used to Maine blueberries, it's a July-August thing... those look wonderful.

Went to Bangkok Center Grocery in NYC's Chinatown today... as usual the holy basil bin had already been picked clean at 1 PM. Bought bird chiles, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, coriander with roots on, fresh turmeric and a bunch of other stuff, but none of the more unusual items above was available there or at the southeast Asian grocers on Bayard or Mulberry. Anyone able to find this stuff locally?

First course was Vietnamese chicken salad from Hot Sour Salty Sweet (inspired by the thread devoted to this book - I'm keeping it now): Then on to Delhi with Madhur Jaffrey... plus a Persian influence... Tah-dig! We got fresh peas at the greenmarket yesterday, and shelled them: And added them to the beef kheema with fried onions:

Ack Bruce the last thing I need is more Thai cookbooks! I still have Sodsook in my sell pile. Do I really need to buy this one? Would you recommend it over Kasma's two?

Sourced by Andy Ricker for his new Pok Pok in New York: http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2012/06/andy-ricker-pok-pok-pantry-thai-ingredients-slideshow.html#show-249226 I would seriously kill to lay my hands on some of these, some of which he sources from a Florida grower who imports seeds from Thailand. The larger, softer dried chiles, the homemade shrimp paste (I have considered trying David Thompson's recipe for this), sadao, khao tawng, bai makhok, and apple eggplant that's truly delicious and flavorful eaten raw on its own (the ones I find don't even have much bitterness - they're mainly textural carriers for nahm priks and the like). "Why don't we ever see them at Thai markets? Ricker's theory: the community knows what day and time the herbs come in, and they buy the store out immediately." I think this is exactly true - even to get something as relatively well known as holy basil, you have to get Bangkok Center Grocery in Chinatown here early in the day - the guy has told me that they have a rush on that stuff and it's generally gone by mid-afternoon. So frustrating! But this does make me want to go to Pok Pok - maybe as real Thai cuisine gets more well known here, the ingredients will become more common.

Also - try Ida Davidsen for lunch if you can.