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eG Foodblog: torakris/snowangel - When Pocky meets pad thai....


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I was thinking next time I would add the cilantro at the end, I didn't care for the dark color it turned and actually got very little cilantro taste.

If I were doing this soup again, I would mash up some cilantro roots and add it to the soup, but not add the cilantro, as you suggested, until the end. I would take my new handy-dandy braun immersion blender and blend the soup slightly, reheat (if necessary) and then add the cilantro. It didn't say anything about chopping the cilantro, and once I added it, I fished out what I could and chopped it slightly. Some of my leaves were huge. (I ended up adding 3 generous tablespoons of nam pla, but then again, I really like it.)

It's hard to read recipes when one is doing laundry, helping with homework, etc.

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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Kristin, naive question here, but what is the difference between onigiri and mochi? I looked further in Wikipedia and saw that whereas onigiri is a rice ball, mochi is a rice cake, but of course there are different meanings of "rice cake" in different places. Are both made from glutinous rice?

onigiri are gently shaped balls of rice either salted or with some type of savory addition.They ar e not made with glutinous rice.

mochi are pounded rice cakes (almost smooth) can be be eaten either as a sweet dish or as a savory one. These are often made with glutinous rice.

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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Kris, I'm handing it over to you for the night. In six short hours, I must be up (but I'll admit that Heidi and I do take a 1 hour nap every afternoon when she gets home from school).

See you tomorrow!

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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Fresh turmeric is good to use to make Malaysian dishes. Use that mortar and pestle to make a Malaysian rempah (spicy paste) of turmeric, shallots, belacan (shrimp paste), garlic, fresh ginger, and hot peppers. I think our Malaysian members will have some recipes for you. There are also threads in the India forum about uses for fresh turmeric.

Elaborate, please on uses for this paste (or direct me to a topic...). Would the Malaysian shrimp paste be similar to Thai shrimp paste which lists "shimp, fish and salt" as ingredients? It comes in a small hard plastic jar with a screw on lid. The paste-on nutrition label says that 1 tsp provides 72% of the DRA of sodium!

I don't believe belacan contains any fish, but it is black, very salty, and very smelly. But it's a good ingredient, in moderation. One really common Malaysian dish is [put in name of food here] Belacan -- Kangkung Belacan, for example, is water spinach fried up with belacan and bird's eye chilis.

In terms of the uses of the paste I describe above, it is an all-purpose Malaysian curry paste. Add coconut milk, water, and the item(s) you want to curry, and boil until you achieve a stew-like consistency. At least, that's how I believe I remember women making curries in Terengganu homes. Oftentimes, fresh tamarind (called asam gelugor) was added for its acidity and unique taste. I don't think I've ever tried to make a Malaysian curry myself, though, so I've started a thread about Malaysian curries. I will say this, though: If you've made Massaman Curry, you already know a lot about the process of making Malaysian curries. To my tastes, Massaman Curry is a good Thai version of a Malay curry (or of a Malay version of an Indian curry).

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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The first floor of the Carrefour supermarket has a food court, the kids begged to stop there for lunch. They choose KFC.

Hide had a nugget set, Julia had a drunstick set, Mia had a fish burger set and I picked the BBQ twister. The place was packed so the kids suggested eating in the car.

My lunch (with fries and an iced tea)

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You can't see it in the picture, but inside was he sandwich was a slice of bacon and a couple green beans, I am not sure why the green beans were there, it was an odd addition but the bacon was great!

The kids

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Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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and back at the store...

I picked up some stuff for dinner

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3 kinds of mushrooms (I am making a mushroom ragu from Mario's newest book), a loaf of olive bread and a wedge of brie and of course eggs for the pasta.

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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and some miscellaneous items....

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two snack foods: Mcvities mango pudding flavored cookies and some chesnut flavored cookies

couscous, half a Chinese cabbage, chocolate mints (for a chocolate mint mouse), instant miso soup (for my husband's lunches), fresh panko bread brumbs and Chinese fermented black beans (so I can make hzrt8w's black bean and lemon grass chicken :biggrin: )

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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I ran across some new products I had never seen before but since they were sort of keeping in touch with our South East Asian theme I decided to get them.

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the top three snacks are all from Frito Lay and it is a series called Gourmet Tour Vietnam, from the left:

a corn snack that is flavored like fresh spring rolls, a tortilla snack flavored like a beef and red chile stirfry, and popcorn that is flavored like pho

These were all sale priced at 88 yen (about $.75)

we are eating the beef and chile stirfry flavored tortilla chips and they aren't half bad.

On the bottom wrapped in 3 protective layers is a chunk of durian, had durian at a Thai festival here in Tokyo 2 years ago and really enjoyed it. Carrefour has often sold a whole durian but this was the first time I saw a cut one so I decided to get it. :biggrin:

Has anyone else ever eaten a durian in one of the food blogs before? :raz:

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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For Susan and anyone else interested in what to do with fresh turmeric, I've done some more searching.

Here's a thread you may find useful:

Fresh Turmeric, help!!! :biggrin:

Some more threads:

Turmeric Talk

Fresh Turmeric/Mango Turmeric, Recipes and sources

Also, I should correct something: I do not believe Malaysian curries always or even usually include belacan, though many other types of dishes do. You might get some little dried shrimps in a curry, though.

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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For anyone who missed my first attempt at fresh pasta, he is what I wrote about it:

Things honestly clould not have been worse in my kitchen yesterday.

It started off with two, not one, but two trips to the grocery store to buy eggs and flour. I actually wrote a note with just eggs and flour on it and took it with me. Then I came home with eggs and a of other things. So back to the store for flour.

I then started off by sauteeing the zucchini mixture, which went well. Then on to the cheese. I was making a very simple ricotta (from scratch) but I could not get the curds and whey to separate, I tried adding double the amount of citric acid, then I said what the heck and decided to squeeze lemon juice into it. The lemon half popped out of my hand and landed in the pot of very hot milk splashing all over me, and it still didn't curdle! Then I pulled out my rice vinegar and added a splash of that and I still never got what I was hoping for but I did get a cheese like product that was not bad but quite acidic.

Time to turn to the pasta, I have never made pasta by hand before.

I created a large pile of flour made a well and added the eggs, it was beautiful at this point. I took a fork and gently stirred the eggs and started to slowly incorporate the flour. All good so far, then the dam broke! the eggs escaped out a hole they dug in the back of the pile and took off. If it wasn't for the warped cutting board I was using I would have lost them all over the counter. (I warped my nice wooden cutting board a couple months ago when I decided to use it as a lid on a pan I was simmering. )

I finally got the dough together and kneaded it for the full 10 minutes, I then set it aside (wrapped) to rest. In the meantime I pulled out the pasta machine to read the directions since I have never used it before. It is a handcranked Imperia brand that I bought through Amazon last year. To start with there were no directions on how to set it up, go ahead and laugh but it actually took 30 minutes to figure out how to do it... It can't clamp on to either my kitchen counter nor my dining room table because of their sizes. So I tried clamping it on to my sons chair but that was an awkward position to work in and the pasta had no where to go but the floor. I did finally manage to get it clamped onto my table but not really securely...

When I unwrapped the dough, it was quite sticky. Mario says to go very easy on the flour so that is what I did, but it stuck to everything, the cutting board, the table, the machine, my hands, itself, etc. I tried using more flour but it still stuck and then the book said that when the dough comes out (on the largest settings) to fold it in half and feed it through again but for some reason the piece would end up being wider than the machine.

Suddenly I noticed little silver specks inside my dough, upon closing inspection it turns out my machine is peeling! and it was flaking into my dough!! I trudge on and it seems to be be coming together for two feeds or so then it gets messed up. Now I am noticing little red smears on my dough, it took a couple minutes of inspecting the table and everything in the vicinity before I realize at some point I sliced my thumb and was actually bleeding quite a bit.... oh, well it will just be colorful pasta.

I get two semi decent sheets out of the fist batch and the door bell rings. It is some woman selling wind chimes!! She goes on into a 10 minute speech about the significance of each of the animals on them and the special materials they are made of, then the next 5 minutes in commenting on how cute the kids are and asking various questions about life in Japan. I finally said no thank you and she left..

back to the pasta my two strips are slightly dried out now but I decided to run them through one last time.Tthen I cried for the first time:

I went back to the books and started reading to see what was going on. It was then that I noticed in the recipe he has for the pansotti is a little different then the general fresh pasta rolling and cutting explanation he has. It says to just put it through the second to last setting once and then cut it into 3 inch circles. Well this sounds much easier! It is much harder to crank now and the hand crank piece is now falling out of the machine every three cranks instead of every five... but I get a nice long piece that I probably floured more than I should have and set about cutting circles. I think the pasta was too thin though because as I would pick up the shape it would stretch into a long oval and if any part touched another part they would be instantly stuck together. After 5 tries I said screw it and decided to just turn it into tagliatelle with the attachment. It would take another 10 paragraphs to describe that disaster so I am going to stop now.

Thank god for instant pasta!!

I took the zucchini filling and the oil and walnut sauce and combined it all togther.

the whole process took over three hours and it left a good sized chip in my dining room table....

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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Wishing you much luck, Kristin. Hopefully things will go much better this time, with no blodletting required. :wacko:

Kathy

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. - Harriet Van Horne

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I do have a crazy question for you. Larb sounds so good to me, and per Kristin's link, I did a bit of browsing through the famous 20 page thread. However, horror of horrors, I am allergic to fish sauce! Actually I'm allergic to all fish, except shellfish. I love the flavor combinations of both Thai and Vietnamese food, but there's almost nothing I can eat in its pure form. In fact, I worry that I'll never be able to travel to Thailand or Vietnam for fear of going into anaphylactic shock. Any suggestions on a substitution? Everything I've read says that there is no way to substitute for fish sauce, but since you are an expert, I thought I'd ask!

(If this is too off topic, feel free to respond via PM, but only when you have time!)

Not sure if this got answered by PM, or if it got lost along the way. Just in case, here goes:

A while back there was a discussion about kosher substitutes for fish sauce which gave a few suggestions without fish.

In addition, a very dear friend of mine is Chinese-Vietnamese and is a devout Buddhist who will not eat anything which necessitated the taking of life. She regularly goes back to Vietnam to visit relatives.

According to her, there is a strong vegetarian Buddhist tradition in Vietnam where fish sauce is NOT used. Some people eat vegetarian food on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month, others eat vegetarian food at all times. She says that a type of fish sauce substitute is used in Vietnam that, she thinks, is based on fermented pineapple. Even though I quizzed her about the details, she didn't know more than that (she's not a foodie like me). Even the use of pineapple might be inaccurate here. It could well be something else.

At home, she simply uses soy sauce where fish sauce would otherwise be used.

So if you are making Vietnamese food at home without fish sauce, it is not necessarily as inauthentic as you might think.

Theoretically, also, this means that if you were armed with the right vocabulary, eating in Vietnam would not be totally out of the question. However, it's still not something I would stake my life on.

Changing the subject entirely to what Snowangel can do with the pumpkin:

cut into very thin slices and pan fried in butter with sage leaves and a little salt and pepper is absolutely delicious.

I learnt this one years back from Italian neighbours.

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so far so good with the pasta :biggrin:

I went with Edsel's advise in the pasta thread and made it in a bowl

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Hide helped

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the girls were busy painting their toe nails... :hmmm:

it is now resting (wrapped in saran wrap)

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Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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The mushroom ragu calls for a basic tomato sauce (with onions, garlic, carrots and thyme), I have simmered this and it tastes great, all I have to do is sautee eh mushrooms and another onion while the water comes to a boil. After I make the pasta...

When I went out to get some thyme I thought I would take a picture of my garden. I didn't do anything this summer since I spent 6 weeks in the US but winters here are quite mild so I am trying vegetables that are pretty hardy.

(blurry) picture of broccoli rabe (left) and turnip greens (right) seedlings,these need to be thinned once it stops raining

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(another blurry) picture in the brown container on the left is Italian parsley, the big bushlike thing in the middle is raspberries and the brown container on the right is a fig tree--this was ignored all summer I am surprised it is still alive, I should bring it inside soon

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my table where I like to enjoy food when it isn't raining...

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a sudachi (Japanese citrus) tree with 4 heads of purple cabbage and two plants of stick broccoli

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I discovered a friend living in my sudachi tree :hmmm:

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Int he back is my bay leaf tree, in the (hard to see) brown container in the front is rosemary and thyme, the tree in the right of the picture is a kumquat tree

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Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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kristin,

wow! oh how i envy and love your yard! you have grass and trees - wonderful! i was wondering what month you planted the italian parsley...have you done broccoli rabe before and when will it be ready to eat? your kids keep getting cuter too.

"Thy food shall be thy medicine" -Hippocrates

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well dinner is over...

It didn't get off to a very good start, the dough was stuck to the wrap and took a bit of struggling to free

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Hide was helping me and I was keeping it well floured but it really wasn't going very well, it didn't help that Hide kept cranking it backwards. My husband came home just as I startingt he second batch and it starting to go a little smoother.

on the left is the batch with Hide, on the right is the one with my husband

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Then I made my second mistake, I was worried about the pasta drying out so I covered it with a slightly damp towel. :hmmm: It wasn't until my 4th batch that I realized that this was why it was sticking together and that I actually wanted it to dry a bit....oops :sad:

By the time we finished (I was using the kid's craft table) there was flour everywhere

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including myself

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The mushroom ragu from Mario's latest book was wonderful! The finished dish

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It was good but the pasta was too thin for my liking, I guess I like my pasta with more of a bite. Is it supposed to be this thin?

It was served with the olive bread and brie

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Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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Hide was helping me and I was keeping it well floured but it really wasn't going very well, it didn't help that Hide kept cranking it backwards.

:biggrin::biggrin: now that would be a problem for even the most experienced pasta-maker I'm sure!

By the time we finished (I was using the kid's craft table) there was flour everywhere

including myself

Yes, that's what pasta making does to you. I usually have the vacuumcleaner stand-by

It was good but the pasta was too thin for my liking, I guess I like my pasta with more of a bite. Is it supposed to be this thin?

it looks very good! as for the thin-ness.. did you roll it out to the thinnest setting.. you could always leave it thicker..

I'm so glad this turned out to be a more succesful project than last time (without blood and tears)

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I always use part coarse ground semolina flour when making pasta.

It continues to absorb moisture while the dough rests, so it's a better texture for running through the machine. It also gives the finished product a nice "bite".

Semolina is the milled endosperm of Duram wheat. It's very high in protein (gluten) and makes a great thickener. It can even be prepared as a hot cereal or cooked like polenta.

SB :wink:

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Good morning to some of you, good evening to others of you.

The sun is just now coming up here in Minnesota, and I'm already on my second cup of coffee. Diana is at school, Heidi leaves in a few minutes and Peter in about 45 minutes.

Kris, impressive job with the pasta! Looks wonderful. How long did this take you? How long should I allow from start to finish.

And, I will wear shorts so I can just dust off my legs! Good plan to go barefoot, too.

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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You're both doing such a great job!

I was thinking next time I would add the cilantro at the end, I didn't care for the dark color it turned and actually got very little cilantro taste.

If I were doing this soup again, I would mash up some cilantro roots and add it to the soup, but not add the cilantro, as you suggested, until the end.

Yep -- this is a dish where those cilantro roots come in very handy.

The kids

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This picture reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story about Toyota receiving lots of complaints from US owners in the late 1970s concerning their seat position controls. Apparently the engineers in Japan spent months trying to figure out what the problem was, and finally sent a team to the US to do field research. Turns out that the slobby Americans were dropping french fries into the gears, which then ground them into paste, gumming up the works. The engineers put a guard over the gears: problem solved!

Chris Amirault

eG Ethics Signatory

Sir Luscious got gator belts and patty melts

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