huiray

Quite attractive, mm84321. Ditto all of your other meals you have posted about. I'm also glad you are one of the very few here who does not NEED to have meat (red meat especially but all other sorts are included) for a meal or a series of meals. :-)

Thank you, caroled. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Romaine lettuce blanched in oiled hot water. Drained, dressed w/ oyster sauce & ground black pepper. Fried rice. Peanut oil, sliced garlic, chopped scallions, chopped (soaked beforehand) har mai (dried de-shelled shrimp), couple of farm-fresh eggs (scrambled in situ), 2-day-old white rice, chopped young Chinese celery,¶ the water used for soaking the har mai. High heat. Stir around. Covered/uncovered as appropriate. ¶ See here; scroll down a bit.

Atsuage. Grated Korean radish. Sliced fresh spring onions. Kokita Sambal Bangkok. A modified "Patan".

Yes, Claus' is a nice place and I am glad to have it here. They are also one of the places which will process your wild game for you. They're just south of downtown Indy, just over 9 miles from me by the usual way I would drive to them. :-) There are other such places around here, including a more upscale one – Goose the Market, (as well as their sister shop Smoking Goose) which I have also posted about in this thread as well as the stuff I've got from that place. GtM is less than 5 miles from me. :-) GtM has other stuff as well including wonderful cheeses and vittles and jarred/canned gourmet stuff and other groceries, both fresh and dried and frozen. They also get in very fresh fish and shellfish too - once a week, from Chicago, and you can place orders with them for whatever fish you want and they will try to get it for you. (Yes, there are various other fishmongers and fresh fish counters here too, ranging from very good (and expensive) to passable (and much cheaper)) GtM is also one of the places to get local shrimp (from the salt-water shrimp farms in the central Indiana area) either from their occasional brought-in supply or by request.

Hmm. I myself tend to do my braises (stovetop; I can't remember the last time - or if ever - I did one in the oven) with water as the starting liquid, then add ingredients and flavorings in, layering the tastes as needed or as I go along (additions of stuff at progressive stages, for example). I rarely start with stock right off the bat (and have never used beer or wine as the starting liquid) and in effect wouldn't the additions of stuff into water and the slow cooking by definition yield stock anyway? There is a similar situation with using water - not stock - as the starting liquid when making soups. I frequently do that also. There is a greater "clarity" in taste (more "ching", in Cantonese) when using water to start with, something I appreciate depending on my mood or what I want as the final result in a particular dish.

Well, it's a shop selling quasi-European food, as interpreted by folks in a certain part of Asia. Those windmills are also European, it seems to me - so why not? It's "European" food with European symbols in a restaurant run by non-Europeans (presumably). I dare say halfway around the globe we have quasi-Asian food with Asian symbols used by many shops and restaurants run by non-Asians and even by Asians (wherever from Asia they may be from) catering to Caucasian folks who think of Asia without differentiation – and many of whom (not all, of course) would not be able to tell genuine Cantonese or Hunanese or Shanghainese food from facsimiles thereof or even be aware of the differences. :-) ;-)

Salad. Red & green lettuces, tomatoes, sautéed sugar snap peas, oil, balsamic vinegar, black pepper. Oil, knackwurst, sauerkraut, water, salt, rice vinegar, bay leaves.

Today's purchases from BRFM and CFM.

Debunking beer-can chicken. http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/debunking_beer_can_chicken.html

Pressed tongue, coarse Braunschweiger, Westphalian ham, Dijon mustard, onion epi loaf pieces, some lettuce & an Icicle radish.

Thanks. I got more today. See here.

Broad Ripple Farmers' Market: Morel mushrooms, baby spinach, heirloom tomatoes & cherry tomatoes, broccoli rabe, young carrots, nasturtium plants. Carmel Farmers' Market: Spring onions (at 8 for $1), ENORMOUS lettuces (red-leaf, green wavy leaf, romaine) at $2.50 each, young kale, Icicle radishes, young sugar snap peas, lox-cream cheese-avocado-veal puff pastry, onion epi loaf. Claus' German Sausage & Meats: Coarse Braunschweiger, pressed tongue, Westphalian ham, potato Wurst, short-tied Knackwurst, calf's liver, bulk Hengstenberg Sauerkraut, pork Schnecken.

Beef & Kai-choy stir-fry. White rice. Beef slices (boneless chuckeye) marinated w/ Shaohsing wine (salted), rice bran oil, ground white pepper, double fermented soy sauce, fish sauce, corn starch. Briefly stir-fried in very hot pan (marinade added in) w/ peanut oil plus a bit of chopped garlic then reserved while just barely not-pink, with all juices and pan residues. Trimmed, still-damp/lightly wet kai-choy (large-leafed mustard greens, mainly hearts; fresh season's early crop) stir-fried in a cleaned pan w/ peanut oil & generous chopped smashed garlic, salted lightly; reserved beef added back in, everything tossed around till just done.

Green/baby garlic, Arbosana EV olive oil [California Olive Ranch], baby zucchini, pencil asparagus, morel mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, angel hair pasta [De Cecco], parsley. Salted/seasoned to taste.

Hope you got some enjoyment from that. :-) "Patan" is an onomatopoeic name given to the dish at this shop specializing in pork innards in Yokohama, as portrayed in the Japanese TV series Kodoku no Gurume Season 3 episode 2 as I described in my old post and which I referred to above. The sound made by the cleaver smashing cloves of garlic (using the flat of the cleaver) then the pushing-aside with the edge of the cleaver (as seen late in Part 2 of the episode) was described as sounding like "pa" - "tan". The dish was/is a staff dish, not on the menu, but the regulars demanded to have it too and started asking for it by that name. It became a favorite off-menu dish for those in the know about it. The shop is an actual shop, not a creation, and the dish exists in reality. :-) One can watch the relevant episode of the TV series at the link I gave in my old post. A modification I also do is to briefly zap a slurry of the chopped garlic in sesame oil (in the microwave) then pour the mix onto the yakisoba and mix that up with the chopped scallions & soy sauce, as i described in the other old post of mine.

You might be passingly interested in dish #5 in this video.

Try "patan", then. I've described this here and here. Spaghetti aglio e olio is indeed a well-regarded and time-honored dish. I do variations and riffs of it too.

Pad Kee Mao with rice noodles & chicken (kuai-tiao phat khi mao kai; ก๋วยเตี๋ยวผัดขี้เมาไก่) in the style of Leela Punyaratabandhu's mom's dish, as described in her recipe (pg 133) of her book, with tomatoes and no egg. The recipe is also accessible here. I used holy Thai basil chili paste (this one [JHL], on the left of the pic) as well as fresh sweet Thai basil (horapha; โหระพา). I also used lots more Thai chillies and more shallots than in the recipe and just free-poured the sauces together without measuring. :-) The palm sugar was dissolved into the sauce mixture.

Yes, true enough, if the final product is good. FWIW, the best siu-yoke and char-siu in Kuala Lumpur which is better than in S'pore or Penang (which the posters on CH agree on) are all made on-site, in the back of the shop. No they are not at hawker carts on the street – but are in kopitiams/shops/covered premises – which fall under the rubric of "hawker stall". I had an exchange with a poster on CH some time ago regarding which place to visit first (in KL), for example, if one wanted to sample excellent siu-yoke and char-siu in the same meal (meaning which one to "ta-pow" (carry-out)), with the two corresponding places at opposite ends of town – and it was commented on that getting the char-siu first would be the way to go, because the shatteringly crispy skin on the siu-yoke would degrade much faster (after coming from the roasting bin to the shop front) than the desirable characteristics of the char-siu. ETA1: As for things like beef balls and fish balls, the last I knew of it the best places in KL would be doing them in the back of the house. ETA2: At a place like Hutong Lot 10 in KL, yes the fish/meat balls may well come from the "mother stall" premises; although the folks manning the stall (often Burmese transients) in THAT space may not be entirely engaged in putting out what the owner/proprietor of the "named stall" may have desired – with one or two exceptions. There were also various discussions about how the absence of the owner-proprietor at Hutong Lot 10 resulted in a product far, far below what was obtained at the original stall where said owner-proprietor did the cooking himself. All of which factors into what one experiences at a "hawker stall", whether in Singapore or KL or Penang, depending on what sort of quality control is exercised and/or what is being eaten or discussed. (There was a particularly glaring example, in KL, of the difference between the stall-owner at an Imbi Road kopitiiam (which I also used to patronize) and its off-shoot elsewhere, for pork ball and pork innards/spare parts noodle soup. And so on and so forth.)

Soup w/ leftover broth from here (with residual chiffonaded kale) with baby zucchini and Napa cabbage. Fedelini [De Cecco] tossed in the pan with a sautée (EV olive oil) of green/baby garlic, Chinese chive flower buds&stalks, scallions, tomatoes and skinny/pencil asparagus. Salted/seasoned to taste. Fried eggs.

Chiffonade of trimmed young kale wilted into and briefly simmered in chicken broth with a little smashed garlic. It was almost fall-apart tender. Stir-fry (peanut oil) of bone-on, skin-on, chopped up chicken breast with lots of chopped smashed garlic, black bean garlic sauce [Lee Kum Kee], sliced Thai chillies, a good pour of Shaohsing wine (unsalted), lots of trimmed Thai basil (horapha) followed quickly by chunks of yellow onion almost at the end (so it stays crunchy). Seasoning adjusted. White rice.

Couple of miscellaneous meals. Chicken broth, pork meat balls [Venus], bit of extra oil, creminis (sliced up), tree-trunk asparagus (sliced up), angel hair pasta [De Cecco] cooked in the pot with everything else, trimmed spinach wilted in. Takeout from Patties of Jamaica in Indy. Beef patties, seasoned rice & peas, curried goat.

A late night snack...a few ladles of the just-done pot of chicken stock/broth, w/ purple & green pencil asparagus plus baby zucchini scattered into it and zapped briefly.

• Marinated beef slices stir-fried w/ lots of garlic & bittergourd slices. White rice. • Soup – Water, garlic, oil, fresh shiitake mushrooms, fresh wood-ear fungus, dried scallops, chicken stock, sliced de-ridged angled loofah, cellophane noodles.

Today at the Broad Ripple Farmers' Market and the Carmel Farmers' Market - see here for descriptions and pictures. Dang, it turns out that the lady from whom I've got young fresh ginger (with pink bracts and all) in the past didn't plant any successfully for this year. Two strikes against my anticipated vendor-supplier list for this year.