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Category: friendly

thai spring squash

thai-ish eggplants and summer squashes

So this is a hella modified recipe based on one in Nancie McDermott’s Real Thai: The Best of Thailand’s Regional Cooking

Original recipe:

Moo Paht Peht
Pork Sauteed in Red Curry Paste

3 Tbsp vegetable oil
3 Tbsp Red Curry Paste (recipe also in book)
1/2 lb pork, thinnly sliced into strips about 1 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inch wide
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 Tbsp water
2 teaspoons sugar
12 green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths
1/2 cup diced eggplant (1-inch dice)
a handful of graprao leaves of other fresh basil leaves or mint leaves
12 fresh wild lime leaves
9 long, thin sweet red pepper strips

In a wok or medium skillet, heat the oil over low heat until very warm but not hot. Add the curry paste, which should sizzle gently as soon as it meets the oil, and press and stir it into the oil. Cook the curry paste, mashing it into the oil, until it is well blended, fragrant, and shiny, about 3 minutes. Add the meat and stir-fry to brown it and coat it evenly with the curry paste, about 2 minutes.

Add the fish sauce, water sugar, green beans, and eggplant; mix well. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in most of the basil leaves, lime leaves, and red pepper strips, reserving a little for garnish. Transfer to a plate, garnish, and serve warm.

note: omit the wild lime leaves and fresh basil if they are difficult to find

My recipe:

So I started with 1 tsp of olive oil. Into which, I added 2 teaspoons of red curry paste (because this was the third dish I had made from one little can) and an onion, quartered and sliced.

After the onions had started to melt, I added 7 cloves of garlic, coarsely minced, and around 3/4-inch of garlic, finely minced.

Then I added 1/2 cup of concentrated stock (because I thought stock was in the recipe, but I must have been thinking of a different one), 1/2 cup of water, and 2 chinese eggplant (sliced with rolling cut).

When the eggplant started softening, I added 1 yellow squash and 1 zucchini, halved lengthwise, and then sliced into half rounds. I also added 2 teaspoons of white sugar I had with lime and grapefuit zest.

Since I was right out of fish sauce, I poured in some worcestershire sauce and some salt. And since I was out of hot basil, I used regular basil, some fennel, and a dash of five spice powder. At the very end, I squeezed half a lime over it all.

Served over rice, it still needed a bit more salt. Other than that, very tasty.

Poached Egg over Tomato and Spinach, Salad with Za’tar salad dressing

I made an amazing breakfast.

The initial plan was to cook down some spinach and tomato and then scramble an egg in it – pretty standard.

And it started out simple enough with about as much fresh spinach by volume as the tomato (so there ended up being a lot more tomato once everything cooked down).

But this was a big, luscious tomato from my mother’s garden, so it released a lot of liquid. So I poured off some of the liquid (into a jar to keep since I could put it in rice or soup or something – and it’d be wasteful otherwise – and don’t judge me because just wait until the depression or the apocalypse hits because then you’ll all want me to be managing your foodstuffs so you won’t get scurvy), and then I poured off some more. And then I realized that it was just willing to cook down into sauce.

I added a bit of 5 spice powder for fun.

So instead of scrambling the egg, I just cracked it in and gave it a lot of channels into the goody and poached it right there, covering the pan occasionally so that the top would steam cook, too.

And I ground some pepper and sprinkled kosher salt on top.

And oh my, it was like pudding – tasty savoury egg, tomato, and spinach pudding. Only sexier.

I have enough spinach to try it again and see if the results are repeatable.

~*~

And there was a salad with za’tar

I went home last weekend, and I ended up cleaning out and organizing my mother’s space cabinet. A while back, she had purchased a tiny container of zatar from Penzey’s because it sounded unlike any of the other stuff in her cabinet (we’ve never cooked with sumac much). A few years later, it still hadn’t been used, and it wasn’t sounding like anything my father would enjoy, so it came home with me.

My initial plan was to soak it in lime juice and then taste it and build a salad dressing from there. Luckily, however, I looked it up online before I started, since apparently it has a sour taste that can replace lime/lemon/tamarind in recipes. So once I knew that was how it slotted in, it became easy and I’ll be able to use it regularly.

Cold bits
spring mix
spinach
sliced tomato
serrano pepper

Hot bits
roasted zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and bell pepper (rewarmed in the microwave)

Dressing
3/4 tsp za’tar
1/2 tsp crushed mustard
2 Tbsp white balsamic
2 tsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp red wine
3 small scallions, sliced

I like salads

Okay, so I haven’t been giving you all recipes for salads, but let me tell you that I am loving them. I am a salad god. Or something like that. But I’ve been making a lot of salads lately, and they’ve all been pretty awesome… so now I’ll try to reconstruct them from (dubious) memory and my sketchy notes:

8/8/08
Cold Bit
spring mix
small bits of broccoli tops
1 Tbsp pickled ginger, patted dry
(would have also been good with some napa cabbage shreds here)

Hot Bit
thinly sliced baby carrots
thinly sliced purple onion
thinly slices garlic
thinly sliced broccoli stem
stir fried in 1/2 tsp olive oil, 1/4 tsp sesame oil, and San-J Szechuan sauce

Dressing
1/2 tsp chinese mustard (mixed up according to the directions on the bottle)
1 tsp black pepper sauce
juice of half a lime
1 tsp buckwheat honey
1/2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp black vinegar

~*~

8/1/08
Hot Bit (part 1)
cooked up one slice of bacon on the stove, set it in a paper towel, and drained the fat from the pan

Cold Bit
spring mix
1 diced jalepeno pepper
2 Tbsp blue cheese crumbles (oddly, this was a bit too much cheese – just 1 Tbsp for a more balanced flavor)
sun dried tomatoes
broccoli
grind of pepper

Hot Bit (part 2)
in same pan, cook:
sliced red onion
3 ounces of sliced leftover chicken breast

Dressing
juice of half a lime
2/3 tsp black pepper sauce
1/4 tsp buckwheat honey
5 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
1 tsp Manischewitz concord grape

~*~

7/26/08
Cold Bit
spring mix
baby carrots, sliced thinly on an angle
1 tomato, quartered and then sliced thinly
3 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese, sliced

Dressing
salvaged bits from very, very ripe apricots
1 diced jalepeno pepper
2 finely sliced shallots
3 Tbsp white balsamic vinegar
lime zest
(let the above sit a while, thinking they might become salsa… then realise the apricots have completely liquefied and should be salad dressing)
2 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
juice of 1 lime (already missing some zest)

~*~

7/7/08
Cold Bits
spring mix
salmon jerky (from Alaska)
thinly sliced red onion
1/2 avocado, sliced (and the rest eaten with a spoon and some more of the dressing – it was perfect)

Hot Bits
slight handful of slivered almonds, toasted

Dressing
juice of 1/2 lime
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp lime brown sugar (brown sugar with lime zest in it – lime bit optional)
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
1 Tbsp soy sauce
grate of nutmeg
pinch of chipotle

~*~

7/4/08
Cold Bits
spring mix!
a few baby carrots, sliced in half and then thinly lengthwise
2 scallions, sliced thinly into rounds
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, sliced roughly against the grain
1/4 cup sliced dried tomatoes

Hot Bits
2 Tbsp fried leeks
3 oz thinly sliced beef

Dressing
1 tsp tamarind-lime-honey sauce
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
dash of 5 spice powder

~*~

6/26/08
Cold Bits
spring mix
several baby carrots, sliced thinly on an angle
1 very ripe banana, cut in half lengthwise, and then sliced
sections cut out from 1 orange

Hot Bits
4 oz leftover pork (having been cubed braised in taco seasoning and orange juice)

Dressing
5 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp tamarind-lime-honey sauce
2 tsp wildflower honey
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard

Topping
1/4 cup roasted salted cashews
2 scallions, cut in rounds, but on a slight angle

salad -> pasta

Bought 6 pounds of ground turkey today and turned 2/3 of it into meatballs and 1/3 into 3 ounce patties.

I have two kinds of kale. One looked tasty and mild (and was being sold by the only booth at the farmers’ market run by city kids), and the other one is the kind of kale called for in this NYT recipe. I am tempted, though, to make that hot (instead of a raw salad) and serve it with my meatballs and some pasta. And by serve, I mean eat up all by myself! (Actually, since I think that will let me cut the oil way lower, it might turn out healthier.)

So far today, I have eaten nothing other than 3 peaches and the meatballs I plucked while hot from the oven (to test for doneness, of course… well, that and because I was hungry and they were tasty)… but I might be too hungry right now for more elaborate cooking. Good thing the recipe looks like it will be fairly quick to throw together on a weeknight.

Eggplant for dinner

I had some amazing eggplant in garlic sauce from a local chinese restaurant, and I have been hankering to have it again ever since.

So I bought an eggplant.

I did not, however, get around to buying garlic sauce.

So when faced with the dilemma of making something else for dinner or pulling some crazy recipe out of my ass, what do you think I did?

Well, okay, I first checked for recipes in my chinese cookbook, but it only had two eggplant recipes: one required a larger steaming apparatus than I have and the other included pork and sake, neither of which I had on hand (all the pork is frozen).

So… Here’s what I did:

  • Line a jelly roll sheet (baking sheet with 4 raised sides) with aluminum foil. Stab your eggplant a few times so it doesn’t explode.
    • Put the eggplant on the sheet, and pop it into the oven – on broil. Turn the eggplant occasionally so that the skin chars evenly (just like roasting a bell pepper).
    • When it is almost finished, turn off the oven and walk away. I suggest watching an episode of Stargate: Atlantis.
    • When cool, lift the eggplant away from all of the liquid that has oozed out. You aren’t saving this liquid – it’s all bitter and nasty. Hold by the stem, and just peel off strips of skin until it all starts to fall apart on you. Then transfer to a surface and peel the rest. At this point, I tip the worst of the liquid down the sink and then just bundle up all of the peel and sticky foil and toss it. (and if you are lucky, the pan is still clean.) And then cut half inch strips of eggplant across the grain and one or two lengthwise.
  • Random stuff I threw together to make the liquid bit:
    • 1/4 cup chicken stock
    • 1 teaspoon sambal olek (okay, so I totally sniffed at the sauce later and added another heaping teaspoon, but I hadn’t realized I was going to end up with a slow simmer cooking thing, and peppers build heat the longer you cook them – so it was a little too spicy for me. Therefore, just one teaspoon.)
    • 1 teaspoon black vinegar
    • 2 teaspoons soy sauce
    • 1 teaspoon manischewitz wine (to sweeten, and because sherry seems popular in asian cooking and I don’t own any)
    • 1 inch ginger, minced finely
    • 2 large cloves of garlic, minced finely
    • 3/4 teaspoon steak sauce (cause it seemed a bit thin)
    • 1 teaspoon oyster sauce (because that was the real answer to the thin problem)
  • And now to the main event:
    • Get 1/2 c asian short grain rice to boiling
    • Immediately after you turn down the heat and set the rice to steaming, heat up some oil in a pan (I used about 4 teaspoons of olive oil, a sprinkle of chili oil, and a little bit of sesame oil).
    • Throw in the eggplant and toss it around a bit so that it makes good friends with the oil (MMmmm – eggplants love oil).
    • And then I added the liquid and turned the heat down low and left it (stirring occasionally) until the rice was finished.
  • And then it was pretty tasty.