seabream

Hi cteavin, I grew up in Portugal but don't recall a dish where crab was boiled with red wine. I searched my favorite Portuguese recipe websites, google.pt and my small collection of Portuguese cookbooks with no luck. However, I can tell you some of the ingredients that would be typical and that would make crab taste "Portuguese" to me. Red wine, onions, parsley and bay leaf, as you mentioned, are present in many Portuguese savory dishes. Same with garlic. Allspice is not so common. Paprika is very common, and some people use cumin too (mostly paired with meat though). Green peppers are common, as well as red wine vinegar and lemon. Chopped Portuguese sausage (chourico mainly, but in the US I would use linguica) is also added to many dishes, even if the dish contains fish/shellfish. And piri piri chillies are also used a lot (in the US I would substitute with Thai bird's eye chillies). If you can't find a recipe for your father's crab dish, hopefully this will help you guess what may have been in it.

Very interesting information. I will have to look for roasted favas at my local Asian market. Thanks loki!

Thanks loki! That sounds like it would get really close to what the recipe calls for. Recently I noticed that Whole Foods sells whole roasted soy beans, so that's another option. Since I started the thread I've made the recipe that calls for the split roasted soy beans without the soy beans (punchy crunchy ginger salad), and it was great. I'm sure it would have been fantastic with the beans, but it was very good without them.

Skate.

I finally started cooking from the book. I made the following dishes: * Tart-sweet chile-garlic sauce * Tender greens salad with crispy fried shallots * Intensely green spinach and tomato salad with peanuts * Succulent pomelo salad * Punchy-crunchy ginger salad * * Smoky napa stir-fry * Egg noodles with pork in coconut sauce * * Golden egg curry * Our favorite dishes so far are the ones marked with *. All of them were solid good though, to make again. I definitely love Burmese flavors, now that I understand them a bit better. Definitely different from food in neighboring countries. What should I make next?

Great info. Thanks so much! Have lots to try, now I need to plan another khao soi dinner.

Thanks for the info and photos. Mine are exactly like your wider one on the left. I will try the recipe again as soon as I get pam for baking and will report back.

Thank you for the great replies! I am intrigued by the puffed noodles - step 2 requires a dehydrator, rigth? What should I be looking for in the package when I buy these noodles? Are they distintly Asian, or could I make fresh Italian-style pasta (eggs, all purpose flour, water) at home and fry it? I don't have a pasta cutter for linguine, but could make spaghetti.

Or should I be using fresh noodles?

I am searching to make the perfect khao soi crispy noodles at home. Today I made my first attempt, where I deep-fried uncooked dried Chinese-style thin egg noodles (the thickness of spaghetti). It wasn't great - the noodles were too hard, like raw dried spaghetti but even harder. Here in Seattle there's a restaurant (called "Little Uncle") that makes a fabulous khao soi where the crispy noodles on top are light and airy, crispy and puffed-up. They are amazing. I would like to achieve something similar at home, and I'm looking for any suggestions of things to try. I am wondering if I'm supposed to boil the pasta before deep-frying. Or maybe par-boil it? I am also wondering if I should be using thicker noodles if I want them to puff up, maybe similar to linguine thickness? Any ideas are welcome!

seabream, The liners have little ridges which are barely visible on the cakes. I remove the liners before serving. I always make a few extra cakes for the next day that I reheat briefly with their liner in a microwave or in a warming drawer. Makes sense. I need to try that

Great idea! Do you use paper lines with ridges? Do you remove the liners before serving?

Great advice - thanks! I never used pam. Will give it a try. I used butter and flour today and the molten cakes stuck quite a bit to the bottom, especially around the perimeter. That certianly contributed to their ugly messy look. Do you use 6 oz straight side ramekins or bigger?

What is the best shape and size for chocolate molten cake ramekins? I am having some trouble getting them to come out pretty with my 6 oz straight side ramekins.They're good for us, but not nice enough to serve when we have guests. A friend of mine made some beautiful and very molten chocolate cakes with 10 oz slope sided ramekins. We're both using the same recipe from "The New Best Recipe" cookbook. I am wondering if the sloped shape makes them come out easier with a nicer final shape, and if the bigger size makes it easier to not overcook them. What ramekins do you use for chocolate molten cakes? Do they come out very molten inside and beautiful enough to serve in a restaurant on the outside?

Thanks you for the replies!

Is coconut oil sold in jars the same thing as "coconut cream" / "thick coconut milk"? Meaning, is it the same as the thicker coconut milk that floats to the top in canned coconut milk? And if so, has anyone tried to split it? Or is it the oil that is obtained after splitting the cream?

Naomi Duguid started her research for this book in 2009, so I am pretty sure the book would have come out regardless of politics. Ethinc food has a way of uniting people through cultural understanding. I heard Naomi say that she was extremely active in her research on every trip she made to Burma, because she always though it could be her last, due to the volatile political situation. I don't find the book that different from previous ones. Sure, the format is a bit different. But the writing style (travel story followed by recipes) is the same, the photography is equally good (in fact, the photographer - Richard Jung - worked on some of her other books), and I am finding the quality of the recipes also similar. The flavors and basic ingredients are different though. Burmese food is quite different from the food of the countries around it. Lots of turmeric and shallots, which suits me just fine because I love both

Patrick - Good to know. Thanks. I will see if I can find blocks of frozen grated coconut at my local Asian store. I also want to try Aroy D coconut milk in cans - I wonder if it's different from the one in tetra brick. I've only used Aroy D in tetra brick packs. Packaged this way, there is pretty much no separation between the milk and the cream, like I have seen in Chaokoh and Mae Ploy cans. The milk is a lot thinner than the one in cans, and in my opinion it tastes great. When I don't make homemade coconut milk, I fry the curry paste in oil, and then use Aroy D coconut milk to complete the curry. I like the results of this method better than using Chaokoh or Mae Ploy canned coconut milk, which, because I cannot crack, lead to an overly thick curry. Kasma recommends using Chaokoh or Mae Ploy cans. In her curry recipes, she says to crack the thicker part on top of the cans. Leela also says that she fries the curry paste in the cracked cream, and she uses Chaokoh canned coconut milk. The green curry photo in the link shows that she has indeed been able to crack the cream. So if they are doing it, it can be done. I'm just not sure what the trick is...

In fact, looking at this site, it seems that the banana stems grow underground - they are not the stems from the leaves.

Yeah, the leaves are always available at my local Asian store. But the stems used for cooking are very different from the leaves. Naomi says that the stems should be peeled and sliced, then soaked in water for an hour and drained.

Thanks Mike! I'm planning to make the lima beans with galangal first, since I have some galangal in the fridge that needs to be consumed. I will report my experiments in the cooking thread about this book.

Fantastic! The golden egg curry does look appetizing, and same with the grated carrot salad!

Patrick - when you got the Aroy D coconut milk to separate, did you buy it in a can or in a tetra brick pack?

Andie - just to be clear: you're able to separate canned coconut milk by heating it in the microwave, and then you're able to crack the cream? Which brand of coconut milk do you use? I've tried to crack Chaokoh, Mae Ploy and Aroy D coconut milk and never had any success. Yes, the thicker cream is always there, at the top of the can. I boil the hell out of it, and it splatters and scorches, but doesn't separate. Curries made this way don't look or taste right. There is no layer of liquid fat on top, and the taste isn't right, probably because the paste is boiled and not fried. Homemade coconut milk cracks wonderfully though, and curries made from it taste fantastic.

I got my copy of "Burma - Rivers of flavor" from Naomi Dugui and I'm ready to start cooking from it. Has anybody cooked any recipe from this book? Would love to hear about your experiments. Which recipes are winners? Which techniques worked and which ones didn't? Has anybody been able to find banana stems in the US? This is called for in the Mohinga recipes (pages 256, 260). And what about "roasted or fried split soybeans"? She says this can be store-bought or homemade. I looked for it in my local Asian store but couldn't find it. How would I go about making it at home? Are soybeans sold already split?