Regime change

For the past 10 years Lemon Grass has dominated my Thai repertoire with the lunch price fixe menu.  Despite the relatively poor service, I repeatedly returned for tulip dumplings, coconut milk soup, and a rotation of drunken noodles, fried rice, and penang curry - all with extra eggplant.

My friend is strung out on evil jungle princess but after an extensive internet search it seems that this dish might be a bastardization of gang pa gai (jungle chicken soup) for american taste buds - the coconut milk tempers the spice and makes it a bit more attractive.  Today, my suspicions were confirmed.

We went to Lemon Grass and ordered our regular.  When our entrees arrived, something was off - the lime and tomatoes were missing and the food was a bit oily. They had, however, still taken care to cut the carrots in a flower shape.  Perhaps they made some cost adjustments, or maybe there was a new chef, a Mexican perhaps.  I saw that my daughter was right - my noodles weren't big enough - these were rice flakes. 

We finished off our meal with our traditional Thai tea to go and it was lacking...way too sweet and it was clear that they were using half and half rather than condensed milk.  I wonder if they were using the powder that the Thai grocer tried to sell me as opposed to brewing tea. 

Our meal was doomed from the start.  I confirmed that the noodles were indeed pad kee mao, but when we asked about the evil jungle princess, the server stumbled and finally said that it wasn't a thai dish, it was made up, but was kind of like a curry.  From that moment on, we approached the meal as something other than authentic. 

Needless to say, that was probably the last hurrah for Lemon Grass.

I had taken ground beef out of the freezer and wanted to do something other than spaghetti or burgers.  I searched online and found a host of recipes for laab that reminded me of the Cambodian dish Ms. Nong made, so I went for it.  It was easy.  I also took it upon myself to make something up as a side dish.  I sauteed garlic and ginger in chili oil, added frozen haricots verts and simmered in a bit of coconut milk and lime.  For the laab I toasted jasmine rice, and used cilantro, scallions, lime, and fish sauce for flavoring.  Once again, the key to the flavor is finding the right balance between the tangy lime and the salty fish sauce.  We ate it as wraps using ICEBERG. 

I made yet another pitcher of tea.  The ambrosia I made Saturday would've been nice as a dessert, but the Melona popsicles hit the spot.

Trying Thai

It never occurred to me to attempt to cook Thai food...perhaps I was intimidated by the exotic complexity of the flavors.  While the ingredients are a bit exotic, the technique is not.  I surprised the merchant at P&P when I went today to get kaffir leaves and lemon grass.  He always asks what I'm cooking and speaks little English, so I quickly look it up on my phone and he nods approvingly - he said "you good cook" and then showed me some additional ingredients that I may consider once I perfect a basic menu. The aroma of the leaves was magnificent and I think this was the first time I've seen a complete stalk of lemon grass. 

My plan was to make thom kha seafood.  I suppose I should call it thom ginger seafood since I substituted for the galangal.  The key was finding a balance of flavors so I added a bit of this and a bit of that until I got the taste I was looking for.  I simmered the ginger, lemon grass, and kaffir leaves with a bit of sugar in broth then added the coconut milk, fish sauce, and lime - I almost started to panic because the taste was not quite right so I started making adjustments.  I dropped in the seafood mix (calamari, shrimp, scallops) and some sliced baby bellas and then decide to make fried rice using the sauce I had left over from the pad kee mao, broccoli slaw, and egg - of course I fried this in the chili oil. 

The soup was excellent and the rice is getting there.

Basic Bangkok

Everybody loves pad thai...it's tasty but it has a little too much going on for me.  I prefer pad kee mao (aka drunken noodles).  I've been wanting it for awhile but couldn't bring my self to spend $13 for a takeout order and I haven't been able to make it to Lemon Grass for the lunch price fixe menu. 

When I picked up the pancit noodles I also bought some extra large Thai rice sticks, thinking that I would eventually make something with them.  I did, tonight.  I found quite a few recipes on line, so I took elements that I liked and made my own sauce concoction AND I wrote it down.  I was just about to get started when I realized I was missing a key ingredient- Thai basil.  I certainly wasn't going to go back to Hmart, so I looked on Yelp for a nearby Asian grocer and found a Thai hole in the wall grocer (P&P) just a few blocks away.  He also had kaffir lime leaves so it looks like coconut milk soup (tom kha gai) might be on the horizon. 

I didn't have black soy sauce so I added molasses to regular soy sauce; mushroom soy sauce; oyster sauce; brown sugar; and rice vinegar.  I had planned to use anchovies in place of fish sauce but was nervous because the sauce seemed very pungent when I mixed it.  I stir fried my veggies (garlic, onions, sugar snap peas, cabbage) and seitan in chili oil...it was so hot that I was choking from the smoke, so I toned it down with a bit of rice bran oil.  Then I sauteed eggplant and Thai basil in grapeseed oil (I ran out of rice bran) while I stir fried the rice noodles in a separate pan (very sticky).  I mixed it all together with the sauce and was quite happy with the results - a very pleasant surprise. 

Of course, no Thai meal is complete without cha yen and yes I made THAI ICED TEA!

Excessive compulsive

I think I've spent over $100 in cherries in the past month, and who knows how much gas I've burned.  That's because i don't do anything in moderation. 

Sunday I went back to Whole Foods to get some decent cherries and all they had was Virginian cherries that looked pretty sorry for $5.99/lb.  I then drove to Acme and got a couple pounds of half way decent cherries for $4.99/lb.  Monday my husband picked up a few pounds of cherries from Giant for $4.99/lb, they were ok but there were way too many soft ones.

When I left the gym this evening I decided to go to Genaurdis to redeem my raincheck.  I bought 6 pounds of Prima Frutta dark sweet cherries (with green stems).  I think this is the same brand that I purchased from Whole Foods...I have yet to see anything from the Ranier Fruit Company - they are hands down the best.

I mentioned to my friend that sometimes cherries make my stomach hurt - her response was that 6 pounds of anything consumed in a couple of days would make anybody's stomach hurt.  Clearly I need an intervention.

Family style

My friend always says "teamwork makes the dream work" and that's absolutely true.  Last night dinner came together relatively quickly because we functioned as a team.  I went to HMart to get some pancit ingredients but wasn't up to the prep once I got home (my sous chef is away at camp).  Fortunately my husband and son were willing to help.

My husband chopped the carrots and garlic; I chopped the cabbage, onions, and scallions; my son peeled the shrimp and I deveined.  I quickly made the pancit and we ate before they left for a bike ride.  They even washed the dishes when they returned....I could get used to this. 

Eastern Shore

We drove down Maryland's Eastern Shore to drop my daughter off at camp and of course I started thinking about Coastal South Carolina. 

We weren't able to procure any local produce but we did stop for seafood.  I planned to go to Joe's Crab Shack - I've heard alot about it but there wasn't a location nearby and the Wilmington store had a 3 hour wait.  That was just as well because it seemed kind of ludicrous to get seafood from a chain given our proximity to the Chesapeake. 

We stopped a Blue Crab, a small place in Galena.  It was very clean and the owners were quite friendly.  They were just about sold out of everything and was more of a seafood grocer than a restaurant, but they offered to steam what we purchased and said we could sit in their soon to be dining area. 

We ordered the remaining shrimp (3/4 lb), sea scallops (1 lb), a dozen clams, vegetable crab soup, potato salad, and macaroni salad.  The seafood was very fresh, almost sweet.  We topped it off with homemade vanilla icecream churned in a 100 year old machine.  Our grand total was $40.

The food chain

Once again I'm a glutton for cherries.  Strawberries are still abundant so cherries are not available everywhere.

Two weeks ago I bought a bag of cherries from Whole Food for $6.99/lb and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I was pleasantly surprised when I returned and the cherries were on sale.  I bought 2 more pounds.  The problem is that once I start eating cherries, I'm hooked for the season.  When the sale was over I couldn't bring myself to purchase at the higher price point so I looked at the next best source for produce.  Unfortunately Wegman's was overflowing with strawberries but there wasn't a cherry to be found. 

I went online to search for sales and Genaurdi's had cherries for $2.99/lb.  I dashed to the store and they had only grapes and strawberries.  We went to Johnson's Corner Farm Wednesday and I desperately wanted to purchase the local grown, fresh picked cherries for $4.99/lb but they were not plump and many appeared bruised.  At that moment I was a hypocrite, a supporter of industrialized agriculture, preferring west coast cherries to those grown less than 20 miles away.  I did however purchase the Jersey field tomatoes ($2.99/lb) and we gobbled up tomato sandwiches when I got home. 

I went back to Wegman's, but still no cherries...it seemed that my only option was Whole Foods. 

Understanding my desperation, my husband picked up some cherries.  They were terrible and are still in the refrigerator.  I assumed they came from Shop Rite, a inner-city purveyor of inferior produce, but they came from Pathmark, even worse.  It's tragic when you're in the middle of a food desert.  There have been attempts at bringing fresh food to the hood but there's fresh and then there's fresh.  Although the price per pound is comparable to suburban markets (if not more), the produce always seems ready to ferment at any moment. 

I returned to Genaurdi's Thursday night and there was no evidence that a cherry had ever been there.  The clerk said that elderly people were buying them all by 8am.  I took a raincheck and made a last ditch effort to go to Super Fresh.   While I know that A&P purchased Pathmark, I assumed that the Main Line would certainly have better cherries than Philadelphia.  At Whole Foods, I can just pick up a bag of cherries and be on my way, knowing that 90% will meet my standard of dark, firm, and plump.  It took some effort to find 2 lbs of California cherries that came close to my criteria, but I guess that's what $2.49/lb will get you.

Few and far between

Because I was preparing for the most important moment to date in my academic career, this has been a hectic month.  Although the dust has settled somewhat, I haven't quite gotten my groove back in the kitchen.

I missed the one-day sale on wild caught sea scallops but Sunday the turkey burgers were on sale at Whole Foods for $3.99/lb.  They were nothing to write home about and neither was our frozen broccoli side dish. 

Tuesday I decided to put forth a bit more effort, marinating chicken wing parts in my typical seasonings with a french vinaigrette.  They were rather delicious with a side of sauteed spinach. 

Thursday I put the beef back ribs ($2.99/lb) in the slow cooker and we ate them with a side of kale.  When I bought the meat I had no plan - I debated about grilling.  I did a honey mustard marinade on Wednesday intending to pressure cook them the next day, but I remembered that I had a meeting so the crock pot was the only option.  Since I had to resort to the crock pot I needed something other than the marinade and as time was of the essence, I went to the pantry, dumped in a can of petite diced tomatoes with garlic and olive oil (something I clearly picked up by mistake), and a packet of onion soup mix.  The meat was tender, tasty, and fatty. 

Last night we had some wonderful Trinidadian takeout, however I'm trying to climb off of the takeout wagon but I'm lacking umph and ingredients. 

Fire and meat

My friend call me first thing Monday morning to goad me into grilling.  She began the conversation with, "so, is your meat marinating, or are you going to your Aunt Mary's?"  I said, neither.  My Aunt Mary cooks an excessive amount of food for every holiday, but I am conscientiously trying to avoid beef from unknown sources. 

I ended up going to Whole Foods and getting suckered into the Fill the Grill deal ($10 off a $40 meat purchase).  I bought lamb shoulder chops, chicken thighs, ground beef, and burger patties. I decided to keep it simple so I just made the burgers and corn on the cob. 

As the days progressed, I was unable to muster up the enthusiasm to make the Low Country sauce so I decided instead to marinate the meat yesterday morning.  Although many think of backyard grilling as an American tradition (with regional variation).  I think it diffused to America via immigrants.  It's reasonable to assume that any nomad/herder/rancher with fire would cook their meat over an open flame, hence the churrascos in South America and the kebabs across the "Middle East."  I must say that I have enjoyed my share of "mixed grills."

Bear with me - I might even guess that via the Islamic and Ottoman Empires, grilling diffused into many lands, including parts of Africa; this diffused with the transatlantic slave trade into the American south; and the rest is history.  The bbq I went to in UAE would put backyard bashes to shame.  You go to the souk to select a live lamb, have it slaughtered and butchered into a variety of parts.  At the location (in this case, Jebel Hafit) the women form the kebabs and we feast. 

That convoluted explanation was an attempt to explain my choice of marinade - I did my usual + garlic + bizaara - last night my husband fired up the grill (with hardwood charcoal) and we enjoyed our primitive meal, complimented by roasted yams and sauteed spinach.