Beef Panaeng (Curry)

Recipe taken (and only adapted slightly) from "Fundamentals of Thai Cooking". The panaeng is "perhaps one of the most popular in the Thai repertoire. Salty, sweet and redolent of Thai basil, with the background taste of peanuts, the Curry is enriched with coconut cream..." says the author.

Ingredients:

• 300 g beef skirt steak, cut into short strips (the author recommends beef brisket or cheek, or shank or rib)
• 0.5-0.75 cups coconut cream (see notes on cream below)
• 1.5 cups coconut milk (taken from whole young coconut by piercing a hole and straining)
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• vegetables: one Chinese eggplant and ~10 baby carrots chopped into medium pieces
• 3 Kaffir lime leaves, torn
• 3 chilies, cut into strips
• large handful of Thai basil leaves (~30 medium leaves)
• 3 tablespoons good qualities store-bought red curry paste
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts

Method:
use a mortar and pestle to pound the peanuts into the Curry paste until smooth. "Fry" the Curry paste in the coconut cream for 5-10 minutes. Season with the fish sauce. Stir in the beef and hard vegetables and cook for a couple minutes. Add the coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Add the soft vegetables and simmer until cooked through. Finish with the Kaffir lime leaves, basil leaves, and chilies.

Analysis:

• Forgot to include palm sugar from original recipe; seemed okay without
• cooked the beef in a relatively short amount of time compared to the several hour braising process described in the original recipe. Perhaps this would make the meat less tough than it was in my case.
• I used "young" coconut milk, which is clear instead of milky and has less of a distinctive coconut flavor. The result seemed satisfactory, though.
• There was a slight grainy texture of peanuts in the final product. I should either work the mortar and pestle longer or use creamy peanut butter instead.

Coconut cream:
I tested out the 2 different brands shown below. "Chaokoh" seems to be the biggest seller at the Asian market up in San Mateo. It however, has 4 added chemicals compared to the 1 in the Savoy brand. They both have similar fat content, between 17 and 20%. The Savoy had the problem, paradoxically (since the other one had the emulsifiers), of being totally emulsified/homogenized which makes it impossible to skim the cream off the top for use in the first step of a standard curry-making process.

Chocolate and peanut butter holiday treats

Somehow I got the idea to make these for Ken & Tina for Christmas this year. I hope all the sugar didn't put them into diabetic shock.

Salty Chocolate Peanut Butter Brittle:
Recipe is complements of Rachel Ray. See the first photo in this post. Application of the peanut butter layer on top proved to be problematic. I tried to "melt" the peanut butter in the microwave instead of on the stove as instructed. The peanut butter ended up drying out slightly and being very stiff. When I tried to spread it over the melted chocolate, it just ruined the even spreading of the chocolate. I wonder if other peanut butter brittle recipes mix the peanut butter into the caramel mixture instead of adding it on top?
Making the caramel was a novel experience for me.

Chocolate-Covered Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats:
Adapted and halved a recipe found at ABC news and another persons blog. Ingredients:

• 1.5 tablespoons butter
• 5 ounces jumbo marshmallows
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3 cups rice crispies
• ~3 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips

Melt the butter and stir in the marshmallows until melted. Stir in peanut butter. Stir in the rice crispies. Pour into a lightly greased 8 x 8 baking dish and moderately press down with moistened hands. After cooling, cut the treats into squares and cover with a layer of chocolate.

Potato and leek soup

Based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver's site (the user editable portion of the site).

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces of pancetta, roughly chopped
• one small onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 3 weeks, chopped (use white and light green parts only)
• 2 bay leaves
• ~2 cups low sodium chicken stock
• 1 pound (2 large) russet potatoes, diced
• ~1/4 cup heavy cream
  

Method:

• In a Dutch oven, or heavy pot, cook the pancetta over medium heat until slightly rendered
• add the onion, and stir to coat with fat, adding a bit of oil if needed; cook until onions are softened and translucent
• add the garlic
• add the leeks and sauté for a couple of minutes
• add the diced potatoes, season lightly with salt and pepper
• Add the bay leaves
  
• add enough chicken stock to just cover the solid ingredients
• Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes
• adjust seasoning with salt and pepper
• remove bay leaves and blend (optionally withholding one third of the solids to be added back in)
• Add in the cream and blend to mix to bring richness up to desired level
  

Analysis:

• I left out the blue cheese called for in the original recipe; was very respectable, but not spectacular without; possibly reduce the amount of cream if blue cheese is added
  
• I also didn't have the chopped chives for garnish, which would have been nice (used parsley instead)
  
• be careful not to add too much pepper! I think I hid some of the more subtle flavors with the large amounts I added.
  

Zucchini bread

Made this for the Christmas sing-along at Ken and Tina's house. started with this recipe and modified to make more healthy. My final ingredient list is (updated on 6/18/2010):

• 3.25 cups flour (one cup of this was whole wheat)
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/4 cups applesauce
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes for the small loaf pan and 50-55 for the larger loaf pan.

Review for 2nd attempt:

• perfect consistency: not dry like previous time
• still plenty sweet.  Try reducing sugar to 1/2 cup next time
• both loaves stuck to their pans again (rubbed with plenty of vegetable oil).  Try using butter next time?

Review for 1st attempt:

• Was a tiny bit dry: be very careful to not over cook; maybe use more applesauce?
• Stuck to bottom of pan: be liberal with the application of grease to the pan
• Perhaps replace the water with more Apple sauce?
  

Green curry paste & chicken curry

I was determined to make my own Curry paste from scratch. When I was at the (one day) cooking school in Thailand, we started making the Curry paste with the traditional mortar and pestle, but the instructor quickly had us switch over to using a blender for convenience. I figured if a blender is good enough for them, a Cuisinart is good enough for me. My recipe ended up being based partly on a "Cook's illustrated" westernized recipe and another more authentic one from "fundamentals of Thai cooking". Roughly, I used:

Green curry paste (see the ingredients in the first picture):
-24 green chilies (used Seranos instead of birds eye)
-large pinch of salt
-16 cloves garlic
-2 tablespoons galangal, chopped
-4 stalks lemongrass, chopped
-2 tablespoons lime zest
-1/4 cup coriander stems, chopped
-6 shallots, chopped
-2 teaspoons shrimp paste
-20 white peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon coriander seed
-1/2 teaspoon cumin seed

The first step is to toast the seeds in a microwave, or elsewhere, and grind them (I used my mortar and pestle for this). Then, throw everything in the food processor and blend to a paste. My paste ended up being very watery and fairly light green in color. My theory is that my choice of green chilies ended up providing too much water/volume in the final paste.

Making the Curry:
-sauté 1/2 of the Curry paste in some coconut cream mixed with a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pot until nice and aromatic and with most of the harsher flavors gone
-Throw in your chicken pieces (dark meat cut into strips) and cook until nicely coated and browned
-Add about 2 tablespoons of fish sauce and a can of coconut milk (14 ounces) and bring to a simmer
-At this point I added some strips of green pepper as the main vegetable in the dish
-once the vegetables and chicken is cooked, throw in 3 kaffir lime leaves (torn up) and a pile of basil leaves (torn one or 2 times)

Review:
-Curry paste had the texture more of a salsa than a paste (too much water got in, probably through the larger chilies)
-The final Curry was somewhat oily appearance; not sure why exactly
- Like the other recent curries I've made, this one was quite runny; perhaps reduce the amount of coconut milk next time?

Sichuan Green Beans

Mike and I basically followed the Cooks Illustrated recipe for this that came from "The best international recipe" tome. Mike is Chinese and he seemed to heartily approve of the result, which is enough validation for me. Our one modification was to add water chestnuts -- not the typical canned variety, but fresh ones that Mike found at the Asian market in San Mateo. They are certainly far superior, having a lighter texture and richer, sweeter flavor than the canned ones.

Ingredients for sauce:
-- water
-- soy sauce
-- Chinese rice cooking wine
-- sugar
-- cornstarch
-- ground white pepper
-- red pepper flakes

Ingredients for the main pipeline:
-- 1 pound Chinese long beans
-- 1/4 pound ground pork
-- 3 garlic cloves
-- grated fresh ginger
-- green onions, sliced thin on the diagonal
-- toasted sesame oil

Spiced pumpkin bread

Sometimes you just get the craving for pumpkin, right?

I found this recipe from the online site of the cooking magazine that is titled after the classic French phrase. See the full recipe here http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spiced-Pumpkin-Bread-840. I made some substitutions though, to make it healthier: Instead of the specified sugar and vegetable oil, I used just one cup of sugar, 1.2 cups of apple sauce, and 1/3 cup of oil. Also, I replaced one half of the flour with whole wheat flour.

It turned out very well, and the coworkers liked it a lot.

Sour orange Curry of Trout and vegetables

Unlike many of the Thai curries you find in the US, this one doesn't have any coconut milk and is quite a bit thinner as a result. The recipe comes from "Thai food" by David Thomson, which I found in the San Carlos library.

Review: acceptable; the curry is so thin that once you pour it over the rice, all of the liquid goes immediately to the bottom of the bowl and it becomes something like rice soup. The recipe is quite easy, though (except for endlessly pounding the curry paste with a mortar and pestle). Also, I used chicken broth, which I think was a little too heavy for the dish; Fish broth would be much better I think.

The orange color basically comes from the curry paste, which is as follows:
-- 5 dried long red chilies, deseeded soaked and drained (I used Arbol chilies, which are around 15,000 to 30,000 on the Scoville scale, which is somewhat tamer compared to the Thai chilies)
-- large pinch of salt
-- 1 tablespoon chopped galangal (Thai Ginger)
-- 3 tablespoons chopped red shallot
-- 2 teaspoons shrimp paste (this stuff is super potent and very salty)

The overall procedure is:
-- bring about 3 cups of stock to a boil
-- add about 50 g of fish fillet (any fresh water will do) to the broth and simmer briefly until cooked; remove the fish and work into the curry paste
-- return the stock to a boil, season with tamarind water, sugar and fish sauce
-- add the curry paste and return to a boil
-- add the vegetables according to the cooking time (options include bamboo shoots, snake beans, Chinese cabbage, a staircase, tomatoes, spinach)
-- add the remainder of the fish (100 g-200 g) and finish cooking

Roasted poblano with polenta

I needed to figure out a way to use up my poblano pepper that had been sitting around. I followed the process described in my Mexican food cookbook for char-roasting these peppers:
1) Put it over the gas flame on your stove until blackened and blistered.
2) Throw the pepper in a plastic bag and seal it up and wait 10 minutes for it to steam through
3) use your fingers to peel away the blackened outer layer.

After making the polenta and sautéing the red bell peppers, I assembled the whole thing and threw it under the broiler to melt the cheese.

French onion soup

Recipe source: http://www.cookography.com/2008/the-best-french-onion-soup-ever

Disclaimer: the picture below is from halfway to the process. Sadly, there is no picture of the final product (see the link above, though).

Here's a copy of the recipe:


The Best French Onion Soup
From: Cook’s Illustrated

Serves 6
Notes:
For the best flavor, make the soup a day or 2 in advance. Alternatively, the onions can be prepared through step 1, cooled in the pot, and refrigerated for up to 3 days before proceeding with the recipe.Ingredients:
Soup
3 tablespoons unsalted butter , cut into 3 pieces
6 large yellow onions (about 4 pounds), halved and cut pole to pole into 1/4-inch-thick slices (Make sure you get Yellow)
Table salt
2 cups water, plus extra for deglazing
1/2 cup dry sherry
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth (They recommend Swanson Certified Organic Free Range Chicken Broth )
2 cups beef broth (They recommend Pacific Beef Broth)
6 sprigs fresh thyme , tied with kitchen twine
1 bay leaf
Ground black pepper
Cheese Croutons
1 small baguette , cut into 1/2-inch slices
8 ounces shredded Gruyère cheese (about 2 1/2 cups)
Directions:
For the soup:
Adjust the oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Generously spray the inside of a heavy-bottomed large (at least 7-quart) Dutch oven with a nonstick cooking spray. Place the butter in the pot and add the onions and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, covered, for 1 hour (the onions will be moist and slightly reduced in volume). Remove the pot from the oven and stir the onions, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot. Return the pot to the oven with the lid slightly ajar and continue to cook until the onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours longer, stirring the onions and scraping bottom and sides of pot after 1 hour.
Carefully remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat. Using oven mitts to handle pot, cook onions, stirring frequently and scraping bottom and sides of pot, until the liquid evaporates and the onions brown, 15 to 20 minutes, reducing the heat to medium if the onions are browning too quickly. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the pot bottom is coated with a dark crust, roughly 6 to 8 minutes, adjusting the heat as necessary. (Scrape any fond that collects on spoon back into onions.)
Stir in 1/4 cup water, scraping the pot bottom to loosen crust, and cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6 to 8 minutes. Repeat process of deglazing 2 or 3 more times, until onions are very dark brown. Stir in the sherry and cook, stirring frequently, until the sherry evaporates, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the broths, 2 cups of water, thyme, bay leaf, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, scraping up any final bits of browned crust on bottom and sides of pot.
Increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove and discard herbs, then season with salt and pepper.
For the croutons:
While the soup simmers, arrange the baguette slices in single layer on baking sheet and bake in a 400-degree oven until the bread is dry, crisp, and golden at edges, about 10 minutes. Set aside.
To serve:
Adjust oven rack 6 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Set individual broiler-safe crocks on baking sheet and fill each with about 1 3/4 cups soup. Top each bowl with 1 or 2 baguette slices (do not overlap slices) and sprinkle evenly with Gruyère. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly around edges, 3 to 5 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

"Green" papaya salad (Thai style)

As you can see, I had some trouble finding a green papaya (supposedly just a standard papaya in the unripe state). The papaya I bought was mostly green on the outside, but ended up being basically right on the inside with light orange flesh. One thing I discovered is that the flesh that is close to the skin is very bitter tasting; thus, you need to slice off a lot as you are removing the outer layer.

One resulting difficulty, was that it was very difficult to "shred" the papaya because it was so soft. I tried to use the Cuisinart, but ended up with very thick strips.

Although untraditional, I served it over a bed of lettuce (dressed lightly with fish sauce!), Which turned out to be a nice touch.

My ingredients:
-- 1.5 cups shredded papaya
-- 1/2 cup green beans
-- 1 medium tomato, chopped coarsely
-- 2 birds eye chilies
-- 3 garlic cloves
-- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
-- 1 or 2 teaspoons of lime juice
-- 1 tablespoon of peanuts
-- 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar

Tom Kha Kai

Recipe source:
a combination of the following:
-- my little green cookbook from the cookery school in Thailand
-- http://thaifood.about.com/od/thairecipes/r/tomyumkung.htm

Ingredients:
--1 chicken breast, boneless, sliced thin
--Galangal, 5 thin slices
-- coconut milk, 1/4 cup
-- lemongrass, one stem, sliced into rings
-- 4 birds eye chilies
-- lime juice, 1 tablespoon
-- Kaffir lime leaves, 3
-- shiitake mushrooms, 5 thickly sliced
-- fish sauce, 2 tablespoons
-- coriander leaves, approximately 20 chopped coarsely
-- low-salt chicken stock, about 3 cups
-- 1 tablespoon lime juice
-- other vegetables, chopped into medium pieces (eggplant, tomato, etc.)

Procedure:
-- Roughly pound the aromatics (chilies, lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal) with mortar and pestle and add to the stock and simmer for a couple of minutes.
-- Season with the fish sauce and coconut milk
-- add the firm vegetables and simmer until softened
-- add the chicken and the soft vegetables and simmer for just a minute or 2 until cooked
-- remove from heat and add the lime juice and coriander leaves

Outcome:
-- delicious, but not enough lemongrass flavor.
-- very spicy! Perhaps we shouldn't pound chilies so much beforehand
-- perhaps try straining after simmering the aromatics next time to remove all the little chunky bits

Eggs Florentine?

This morning, I decided to try sharpening up my egg poaching skills. Following Alton Brown's instructions, I brought a pot of 1 inch deep water barely to a simmer and then added a teaspoon each of vinegar and salt. Make sure your pot is nonstick.
After cracking an egg into a mini Tupperware container, I very gently slid it into the water (actually submerging the container in the water to make it extra gentle). I waited for the egg white to turn opaque like Alton said, and then turned off the heat put on the lid and waited for at least 3 minutes.
And what better way to be a poached egg in the morning? Eggs Florentine. I was too lazy to make a hollandaise sauce, so it was just a piece of buttered toast with sautéed spinach and a poached egg with generous salt-and-pepper. On trial number 2, I realized that the key to eating it is to break the bank you with your fork and spread the yolk around, preemptively, so that it doesn't just run onto the plate as you start cutting the toast with your fork.