Pan-Seared Salmon with Thai Basil Sauce

I wasn’t originally going to post on the wonderfully yummy pan-seared salmon the Professor made the other day. Not because it didn’t turn out good (because it most certainly did) but for a rather silly reason, actually. I didn’t like the photos I took of the meal. I felt they didn’t come anywhere near doing justice to the fruits of the Professor’s labors. The lighting was bad and it was before I learned the trick of using found objects (water glasses, markers, bottles, bowls, etc) as a tripod to steady the camera. But then the Professor put together a really nice write up on the dish that includes the recipe and, well, how could I not post it? I still don’t like the photo, so I made it small and put it in the corner…

So here it is, the Professor’s musings on pan-seared salmon with Thai basil sauce:

Pan-Seared Salmon with Thai Basil Sauce

It used to drive me crazy that my mom, like most Korean moms ---or any moms, I suppose--- never kept any recipe of her wonderfully yummy dishes. How was I supposed to replicate them without recipes, I would complain. My mom would tell me I’d know by remembering what they tasted like and looked like. Besides, she would say, you are supposed to learn by watching and cooking beside your mother, not by just reading about it. I never really believed her. Until recently, that is.

After spending a year in New York, I started cooking more often. During my first year in the Big Apple, I was pretty enamored with take-outs. In Seattle where I come from, there are very few take-out options. I was thrilled to learn that in New York, I could get pretty much any sort of food delivered to my door at almost any time of day. I loved it. I still have a couple of my favorite take-out joints on my cell phone. I’d call as soon as I get out of the subway and call them for sautéed pea shoots and Malaysian chow mein, aloo gobi and garlic nan, or spicy Penang noodles and tom yum goong. By the time I get home and change my clothes, the delivery guy would be ringing my buzzer, and I’d be happily slurping down the food prepared by a stranger in no time, even during a snow storm.

But after a while, I started missing home-cooked meals. It probably has to do with the fact that there are just no good Korean take-out options in my neighborhood. So, when I missed the kind of food that not only filled my stomach but also fed my soul, I started cooking those Korean dishes my mom used to make me. Yes, by memory. I would get a hankering for a specific taste; say the soothing and earthy flavor of denjang chigae (a Korean stew made of fermented soy bean paste similar to miso, vegetable, potatoes, and tofu). I would start imagining the pungent smell of the soy paste and the pleasingly harmonious colors of the vegetable in the soup, and amazingly enough, I would know which ingredients were needed. How much of them to put in the stew? My mom would say, “just enough,” which seemed the most unhelpful answer in the world. But soon I was able to figure out what “just enough” was after a few trials. Besides, a good cook is supposed to adjust the taste by sampling the food while it is being made. I also discovered cooking helped me relax and stay creative.

After some successes and some disappointments with my Korean food experiments, I started trying my other favorite dishes. Some of them were easy to figure out, like the linguini with vegetarian ragu I made the other day to go with the tempranillo. Others took a bit of research. The Pan-seared salmon with Thai basil sauce I made the other day for me and Dantae was such an experiment. I was in the mood for a pan-seared fish with a Thai-basil sauce I had in Thai restaurants, but I couldn’t find the right recipe. So I decided to get a little creative with a recipe I found in About.com. I’ve reproduced the recipe here with my adaptation.

The Professor’s Pan-Seared Salmon with Thai Basil Sauce (Adapted from About.com)

INGREDIENTS:

• 2-4 salmon fillets (if making more, double the marinade/sauce recipe) - if frozen, thaw in a bowl of cool water
• 1 medium onion, chopped coarsely
• 1 green bell pepper, coarsely chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, coarsely chopped
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 2-4 Tbsp. canola oil (or other vegetable oil) for frying
• MARINADE/SAUCE:
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 fresh red chili (de-seeded for less heat), minced or finely sliced
• 1 Tbsp. fish sauce
• 1 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. dark soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp. (or more, if you like the taste) finely chopped lemongrass
• 3-4 sprigs fresh Thai basil, stems removed and coarsely chopped
• GARNISH:
• handful of fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley

PREPARATION:

1. To make the marinade/sauce, place all marinade ingredients except for the basil together in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir as you bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, add basil, and allow to simmer for 10 minutes, uncovered. The sauce will gradually thicken. When marinade/sauce has thickened, place in the refrigerator or freezer to cool for 5 minutes.

2. Place salmon fillets in a flat-bottomed pan or casserole dish in a single layer. When the sauce/marinade has cooled slightly, spoon 2 Tbsp. over each fillet, 1 per side. Allow to marinate in the refrigerator 30 minutes to several hours.

3. In a hot wok, heat 1-2 Tbsp. oil on med- high heat. When the oil is hot, quickly stir-fry the chopped onions and bell peppers, seasoning with salt and pepper. Do not leave the vegetables in the wok too long; they should still be crunchy.

4. Arrange the stir-fried vegetables on the plates.

5. Place a clean frying pan or wok on medium-high heat, allowing it to warm up for at least 1 minute before adding the oil (this will help prevent the fish from sticking).

6. When pan is hot, add 1-2 Tbsp. oil, lifting and turning the pan to distribute evenly. Now place fillets in the pan.

7. Allow fillets to fry at least 1 minute before turning them. Tip: if you turn the fish too soon, it will stick - allow it to "sear", and it will come freely away from the bottom of the pan.

8. Fry the fish for 3-5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. Salmon is done when inner flesh is no longer transparent.

9. While the fillets are being cooked, re-heat the remaining sauce.

10. When fish is done, arrange it on top of the vegetable. Spoon a little sauce over each fillet. Garnish each dish with coriander or parsley.

11. Place the rest of the marinade in a side dish and serve as a dipping sauce.

12. Serve with Thai jasmine rice. (I served it with brown basmati rice when I made this dish the other day, but it is best when paired with jasmine rice.)

*Serve with a Gewurztraminer, Riesling, a lighter beer (e.g., Singha), cold sake, or a Thai ice tea.

Notes on the Construction of Peanut Brittle

Peanut brittle is an absolutely addictive candy. The kind of candy where once I start it eating requires a tremendous act of willpower to stop ingesting before being forced to by an aching stomach, and sometimes not even then. It's not often that I eat the stuff, mostly because I hardly ever see it for sale anywhere. Or maybe I just don't notice it for sale anywhere. It could very well be that it is available in every grocery store across the nation right next to the cookies. But since I rarely look at, yet alone buy, cookies there's not much of a chance I'd notice their sugary relatives that happen to be right next to them in the aisle.

When I do eat peanut brittle it's usually when I've headed down to Tennessee for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Inevitable we end up at the local Cracker Barrel for breakfast where, after much deliberation and introspection, after weighing the pros and cons and the cost versus the benefits of ingesting large quantities of sugar in a single sitting, I buy a package of their peanut brittle and eat until my body tells me "No more!"

Since I wasn't in Tennessee this past Thanksgiving I have not eaten or even thought about peanut brittle in quite some time. When I saw a recipe for it in this past week's New York Times dining section I got excited. I knew right away I would be giving this recipe a shot.

Now I knew that peanut brittle had a lot of sugar in it. What I didn't know was just how much. It's basically all sugar with some peanuts and a little salt thrown in. What did I expect though? It's candy after all. This recipe calls for two cups of sugar plus two cups of peanuts. The salt is optional. Since I used unsalted peanuts when making this batch I went for the pinch of salt.

The article suggested that if you are a sugar caramelization newbie (which I most certainly am) you should use 1 tablespoon of water for each cup of sugar used. This will slow the cooking process down and give you a chance to stir (or in my case stir and smash) the lumps before the sugar goes from wonderfully caramelized to horribly burned. I needed all the extra time I could get. In both batches that I made the sugar quickly became extremely, and what I thought at the time, irreparably lumpy. I got a little frustrated at the sight of all those lumps in the pan but with a little patience, some regular stirring and some smashing here and there I managed to get most of the lumps out. When I thought that the melted sugar couldn't possibly get any darker without burning I threw in the peanuts and the salt. Having a few lumps in the sugar at that point turned out not to be a very big deal at all.

What did turn out to be a big deal was getting the mixture out of the skillet and onto the cookie pan as quickly as possible. What ended up happening was that the addition of the peanuts rapidly cooled the melted sugar, making it difficult to spread the mixture flat onto the sheet. The other problem I had was that the mixture couldn't resist sticking to the spoon I was using to spread it. For my next batch, and there will be more batches, I'll use a greased spoon for that task. I might even heat the peanuts slightly to prevent the mixture from cooling too much before I can get it flat on the sheet.

In the end my first two batches of peanut brittle didn't turn out too bad. Instead of eating myself into a sugar induced stupor though, I think I'll give most of them away.

Peanut Brittle Recipe from the New York Times

Butter for greasing pan
2 cups sugar
2 cups roasted peanuts, salted or unsalted, or other nuts
Salt, if using unsalted peanuts (optional).


1. Use a bit of butter to grease a baking sheet, preferably one with a low rim. Combine sugar and 2 tablespoons water in a heavy skillet and turn heat to medium. Stir until smooth, then cook, adjusting heat so that mixture bubbles steadily. Stir occasionally until mixture turns golden brown (which it may do rather suddenly).

2. Stir in the peanuts and a large pinch of salt, if desired. Pour mixture onto greased baking sheet and spread out. Cool for about a half-hour, then break into pieces. (You can score brittle with a knife when it has solidified slightly but not yet turned hard; that way, it will break into even squares.) Store in a covered container for up to two weeks.

Yield: About 1 pound.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #28

This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday #28 - Sparklers! roundup is now up, courtesy of the Culinary Fool. She’s divided the roundup into two parts. Part One covers the multiple bottle entries with Part Two rounding up the single bottle tastings. My entry, on a prosecco I enjoyed last Sunday, was the first time I contributed to the tasting event. As luck would have it, Bill Wilson over at Wine for Newbies included the Santa Margherita Prosecco di Valdobbiadene in his tasting. This was the prosecco I enjoyed a great deal while in Tortola (and misspelled in my post) for my grandfather’s birthday bash but have not been able to locate since returning to New York.

I can’t decide on what aspect of the tasting event I enjoyed more, drinking the prosecco or taking the photos. While shooting pics of the champagne flutes I kept having to wipe the insides of the glasses after taking repeated sips. The smell, color and just plain presence of the wine in front of me were just too tempting to resist long enough to get in some decent shots.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the theme for Wine Blogging Wednesday #29 will be. Of course, there’s also Mixology Monday, Sugar High Friday and the End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza to get involved in. This is going to be fun!

A Late Night

This is chicken noodle soup. This chicken noodle soup is most definitely not for my soul. It is, however, dinner. Tonight is going to be a late one in the office.

Prosecco!

Early last month we flew home to the British Virgin Islands to celebrate my grandfather’s 90th birthday and my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. It was a huge bash and de facto family reunion with all but one of their 10 grown children and countless numbers of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins, friends and neighbors joining in the festivities. It was a truly wonderful weekend.


One afternoon while lounging around the pool at the hotel where the Professor and I were staying we decided to have a drink. After swimming up to the bar we noticed that they were pouring a prosecco. Having recently discovered and enjoyed various proseccos back home in New York we of course got excited. What sparkling wine could be better than a prosecco on a warm tropical afternoon? We immediately ordered three glasses (my sister and her husband, being the teetotalers that they are decided to share one). The prosecco that the bartender poured us was Santa Margarita. It was light, crisp and possessed a very slight sweetness. In the glass it had a wonderfully golden straw color (excuse me, colour. We were in the British Virgin Islands after all) and very nice citrusy bouquet. After having enjoyed several rum punches and a pina colada over the previous few days it was the Italian sparkling wine that ended up in my mind being the perfect tropical beverage.


Naturally, when we returned to New York I looked for it whenever I ventured into a wine store, so far with no luck. It was during just such a search that I ended up buying a bottle of the San Fermo Bellenda Prosecco from Pasanella & Son wine shop. What made the decision to buy it easy was just how gorgeous the bottle was. On a purely aesthetic level I was completely happy with the purchase.

I put the bottle in the wine fridge in anticipation of an occasion to pop the cork and enjoy it with friends, or, failing that, by myself. Since this isn't an expensive sparkler ($16.75), a lazy Sunday afternoon can provide the perfect opportunity to enjoy it. Or in this case Wine Blogging Wednesday! So right after enjoying the Professor's Hawaiian french toast for breakfast (brunch?) we popped the cork on the Bellenda and... started taking lots of pictures.

Then we drank and we enjoyed. Here are the Professor's tasting notes:

The Professor’s San Fermo Bellenda Tasting Notes


Wine Name: San Fermo Bellenda
Wine Region: Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, Italy
WBW # 27 Category: Party Sparkler
Cost: $16.75

A light sparkling wine from San Fermo. It is pretty to look at, with a pale straw color and just a hint of a golden hue, and rapidly rising, small bubbles. (It comes in a beautiful bottle, by the way --- see photos). It has a subtle fruit bouquet, which is a characteristic of prosecco grapes. The same subtle fruit is noticed on the palate, as well as a pleasantly crisp finish. This is a dry, light sparkling wine ---- not an assertive one but definitely not bland or boring. Best to be enjoyed with fresh, light fare such as a simple spring salad.

So there you have it. Pop open a prosecco today and enjoy!

What a Loaf

I know, I know, I know. I'm the 12,687th person to post about this bread. Surely the blogosphere has become oversaturated with postings and comments about the no knead bread recipe featured in the New York Times a few weeks back. I can't help myself though. It's a perfectly natural reaction. It's what happens when an incredibly easy, tasty and successful bread recipe comes along. I have to admit though that I like the photo over at Becks and Posh much better than mine.

When I read the article in the dining section of that morning's NYT (Wednesday is now my favorite day of the week) I knew this was the perfect opportunity to try making bread for the first time. I had just picked up a Staub dutch oven so I had everything I needed: a recipe, all the ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, water), a strong desire for fresh baked bread and, most importantly, someone to make the dough while I cooked dinner. What could be simpler? The only trouble I ran into was not quite being able to effectively handle the extreme stickiness of the dough when I tried to shape it into a ball. Putting A LOT more flour on my hands solved that problem.

My favorite things about the no knead bread:

1. Easy, easy, easy!
2. The amazing amount of things you can get done during the 20 hours the bread needs to rise.
3. The wonderful smell that fills the house while the bread bakes.
4. Eating it.

Guava Jelly-Stuffed Hawaiian French Toast with Coconut Syrup

Yesterday morning the Professor cooked up a wonderful batch of guava jelly-stuffed french toast that she served with a batch of freshly made coconut syrup. It was an excellent start to a Sunday morning.

After enjoying the french toast and cleaning up a bit we immediately opened a bottle of prosecco we are hoping to write about for Wine Blogging Wednesday # 27 - Festive Sparkling Wines. More on that later.

In the meantime I’ll let the Professor tell the story of how she made the toast…

The Professor’s Guava Jelly-Stuffed Hawaiian French Toast


This is an approximation of the recipe I used for the French toast yesterday. Of course, I've made it from memory, not from a recipe. Oh, but what a sweet memory it is... Every time I visited Hawa'ii, I was served this sweet breakfast. It always reminds me of the heavenly fragrances of pikake jasmine and plumeria flowers, the salty, cool Pacific breeze and the hues of blue that blur the line between the sky and the ocean...

Ingredients

• 4 thick-cut slices of King's Hawaiian bread (can be substituted with challa bread when made in NY)
• 3-4 Tbsp Guava jelly
• 3 Eggs
• 1/8 C to 1/4 C Milk (I used soy milk)
• ¼ tsp Salt
• ¼ tsp Sugar
• ¼ tsp Cinnamon
• ¼ tsp Vanilla extract
• 2-3 Tbsp Butter

1) Cut the bread ahead of time so the sliced sides are somewhat dry
2) Insert a small, sharp knife in the middle of the bread (on the cut side) and scoop out some bread to make room for the jelly
3) Stuff a little less than 1 Tbsp of guava jelly into the cavity in the bread
4) Press the scooped out pieces back into the bread from the outside to seal the bread
5) In a large mixing bowl, lightly whisk together eggs, milk, salt, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla
6) Melt butter in a griddle (or a frying pan) on med-high
7) Dip the bread into the egg mixture, coating it evenly and letting the egg soak through the bread a little (but not to get soggy)
8) Place the bread on the hot griddle and brown all sides
9) Serve with coconut syrup (recipe, below) and slices of fresh fruit (papaya, pineapple, berries), if available


Home-made coconut syrup

1) In a sauce pan, heat 1 C coconut milk and 1/3 C (or more, if you like your syrup very sweet) to boil.
2) Turn the heat to low and reduce the coconut milk to ½.
Makes about ½ C syrup.

Smoked Salmon and Dill

Unfortunately for me I ended up working most of this past weekend. That was my initial thought as least, how “unfortunate” I was to have to go into the office on Saturday and Sunday in order to hit a deadline later this week. But then I remembered that work = money and I suddenly didn’t feel so bad at all.

What working did mean though was that I didn’t get to spend anytime in the kitchen this weekend. I was planning on making the kind of soul warming stew that sticks to the bones. Sure, I’ve never actually cooked anything like that but from what I hear it’s actually quite simple. A friend of mine made just such a dish recently.

I also wanted to make another batch of butternut squash and the Professor had a wonderful idea to make churros with Mexican hot chocolate for dessert. Yum!

Alas, it was not to be. It’s the same old story told for generations, too much work and too little time. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Under these circumstances I just might have to sneak out of work early one day this week, head straight to the farmer’s market in Union Square and then straight home and into the kitchen make up for a lost weekend.

The weekend wasn’t entirely lost though. In addition to making a few extra dollars (which will probably be spent on wine as I probably should heed my spirit animal’s advice and buy some 2005 Bordeaux futures) I did manage to throw together a bagel with smoked salmon, cream cheese, capers and dill. It certainly was a nice treat before heading into the office today.

Cold, Cold, Cold!

Ok, so it hasn't snowed yet here in New York but I'm sure it won't be too long now before it does. I always get excited about the first big snow storm of the season, how it completely transforms the landscape in such a short period of time. What I really enjoy the pleasant surprise of waking up and discovering everything covered in fresh snow, especially if I wasn't expecting a snowfall, and, of course, if it's the weekend. At the moment, now that the leaves have all fallen, there is an over abundance of grey and brown. Ah, but after that first snowfall of the season things will be looking mighty nice indeed. At least up in my neck of the woods. Back in the city it will be quite gorgeous at first but then quickly turn into a brown sludge fest. Although I suppose it is possible to see beauty in dirty brown sludge if perceived correctly.

It may not be snowing here yet but it is cold, cold, cold outside! Any time I spend in the kitchen this weekend is going to have to be focused on food the warms the body and spirit. Perhaps some slow cooked oatmeal in the morning, a squash soup in the afternoon and a stew in the evening. This is of course assuming I don't have to work all weekend. We shall see...

Jalapenos Can Be Dangerous

As I mentioned in a previous post, I made tom yum goong this past Saturday evening. The recipe I used called for 12 thai chili peppers. Of course, I couldn’t find 12 chili peppers at the Whole Foods where I did my shopping for the evening. So instead I substituted 2 jalapeno peppers.

Before Saturday I had never prepped jalapenos for cooking so I asked the Professor what to do with them. The first time I made the soup she had been kind enough to do most of the prep work so all I had to do was throw the sliced peppers into the pot. I figured it would be a relatively easy task to cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the insides and then slice them into long thin pieces per her instructions. And it was an easy task.

The mistake I made was to use my bare thumbs to do the scooping. Apparently this should be avoided. There is a reason why jalapenos are hot, and that reason can very easily get into your eyes and other places where it shouldn’t be. I didn’t really take that into consideration while prepping the peppers. After the jalapenos were sliced and ready I started working on peeling the shrimp, a task which can be rather meditative if approached in a, well, meditative way. As I was doing that over the sink I noticed that my forehead started to feel hot and a slight burning sensation started to develop. I didn’t pay any attention to it until the pain started getting worse. For a brief moment I actually thought it may have been the fumes from the shrimp. That didn’t make any sense of course. It was only after my thumbs started burning as well that I made the connection that perhaps this pain I was experiencing might have something to do with the jalapenos. What else could it have been? Try as I might by washing both my forehead and thumb tips with cold water, then warm water and then more cold water, I couldn’t quite get the burning sensation to go away.

As the evening progressed the burning did subside to a very manageable level. I didn’t even notice it much until I put either my head or my thumbs over anything hot (like the boiling soup or the pasta I was making) at which point the burning sensation would immediately increase. I almost couldn’t transfer the linguini from the pot into the skillet because it hurt so much. Even two days later at work I had the same problem whenever my thumbs went near anything hot.

It is now Wednesday and my thumbs are fully recovered. Fortunately for me I didn’t get anything into my eyes. I’m still thanking God for that. When I told some of my coworkers about my jalapeno incident their response was “Duh! Of course you don’t use your bare hands when preparing jalapenos!” I’ll take that as a lesson learned.

Tempranillo Tastes Good

There is something to be said about a nice wine that doesn't break the bank. Actually, there are a lot of things to be said. I'm just not sure if I'm the person to say them. I will, however, say that I always get excited when I run into a wine in the $10 range that I not only like but really enjoy and want to share with others. It's a guilt-free pleasure. I never have to think to myself while walking to the register at the wine store "Should I be buying this bottle? Sure it's good and all, or at least I HOPE it's good, but aren't there better things I should be doing with my money, like paying rent?". The highly enjoyable $10 bottle, however, never poses such a moral dilemma. I can open a bottle on a Monday evening to enjoy with dinner and if I can manage to finish it, either the same night with the help of an eager dining companion or the next night if alone, the cost per glass comes out to a whopping $2.50. What's not to like about that? Even if I only mange to finish half the bottle before it is transformed into something horrid through the tireless efforts of our good friend Mr. Oxidation, the per glass cost is still a manageable five bucks. Which is nothing to complain about. We've all had our share of crappy $10 and up glasses of wine while dining out.

Good, inexpensive wine makes me happy. With that in mind last week I opened a bottle of the 2004 Sumarroca Tempranillo. I first tried this wine after picking up a bottle at Crush Wine & Spirits during my first visit there a few months back. If you live in New York City and haven’t yet swung by you certainly should. Not only do they have a huge, gorgeous, waving wall of wine that greets you as you enter the store, but they have a wonderfully friendly and knowledgable staff. Which of course is the best part about visiting. They are bonafied wine geeks who are more than happy to discuss any wine in the store you may be looking at and wondering about.

The Sumarroca was one of the wines they had featured on the floor. The description sounded like I would enjoy it so I picked it up, took it home, popped it open and went "yum!" when I tasted it. I had it with Indian food that evening which turned out to be a not very good combination. The character of the wine changed considerably. It grew harsher on the palette, losing the silkiness that I enjoyed in the half glass I drank before transforming my taste buds with palak paneer and samosas. So maybe there really is something to all this talk about food and wine pairings after all. I suspected that there might be, and now I had witnessed it first hand in my mouth. Luckily once my taste buds had some time to rest the wine returned to the charming personality I had been introduced to earlier in the evening with the added benefit that it had some time to open up.

As I'm still working on my tasting abilities, at least in terms of being able to identify and describe the various flavors and aromas emanating from the glass so I can describe a wine to someone in a meaningful sense, I'll rely on the Professor to convey her sense of the wine:

"A superbly enjoyable red, with soft, jammy fruits and a smooth finish. Very soft tannins. Goes well with earthy vegetarian ragu, mild cheeses, roasted fall squashes, and roasted meats. Exceptionally pleasant for a wine under $10 (in fact, better than many bottles twice or three times that price). Drink now."

It's Time for Tom Yum Goong!

Yesterday afternoon I accompanied the Professor to campus. The plan was for her to teach her Saturday afternoon class while I hung out in her office and did some winemaking research, hit up the gym for a bit (I haven’t been working out much since my job moved downtown and I’m starting to feel funny) and then meet her after class. Before she ran off to class she complained that her stomach was feeling funky. This announcement of course meant that one thing was for certain. I was making tom yum goong for dinner. Or, to be more accurate, she would have tom yum goong for dinner while I had a few bites and prepared another, less intense dish for myself.

I’m a huge fan of tom yum goong, the spicy thai soup made from lemongrass, galanga root, tamarind and chili pastes, thai chili peppers, shrimp, straw mushrooms, onion, tomato, fish sauce, lime juice and cilantro. When done well it’s a wonderful dish that bursts with flavor and possesses a nice kick from the chili and galanga root. The recipe I’ve been using really kicks, which is the problem. Not for the Professor, of course. She LOVES spicy food. I like spicy food as well, just as long as it’s not too spicy. Unfortunately for me the morning after enjoying a wonderfully spicy Indian or Korean meal I usually suffer the consequences to one degree or another. The key concept for me when consuming spicy food, like with drinking, spending and spreading democracy, is moderation. Too much of a good thing is, well, too much.

This time around I wasn’t going to worry about the ramifications of making a soup too spicy for me to eat. This was all about the Professor after all. She wasn’t feeling well and I wanted to make her something that would make her feel better. Being a native of Korea she grew up eating the often fiery foods of that nation’s cuisine. Her taste for hot foods only escalated when she started working with other spicy food eating comrades from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and India. For me an intensely spicy soup is tasty but painful. For her it’s comfort food. When she’s feeling sick or finds herself in a generally not so good state of being she loves tom yum goong. She always feels better after having some.

So now I’m the designated spicy soup maker. The recipe I’ve been using can be found here. I do most of my shopping at the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle when it’s tom yum goong time. They tend to have lemongrass stalks available when I stop by. They don’t, however (at least when I’m there), carry the galanga root, kaffir lime leaves or the Thai chilis that the recipe calls for. I instead substitute fresh ginger, some extra lime juice and jalapeno peppers (I use 2 in place of the 12 Thai chilis) for the missing ingredients. Sometime soon I’m going to have to make a trip down to Chinatown to pick up the real ingredients and see how much of a difference it makes in the end result. This last time around I couldn’t find straw mushrooms so I used white mushrooms in their place. The white mushrooms didn’t at all mind filling in for the delinquent straws. I can tell you though that even with the substituted ingredients the soup comes out really, really good. The Professor was certainly happy with it.

Thanksgiving Morning Waffles

This past Thanksgiving morning I woke up with a craving for freshly baked belgian waffles. I hadn’t made any in a while and thought it would make for a nice breakfast. The Professor wholeheartedly agreed. To make the waffles a little interesting I decided to use some apples that had been hanging out in the kitchen since the previous Sunday evening. They were heirloom apples. I had never, at least as far as I could remember, seen heirloom apples before running into them at Balducci's in Chelsea. We decided to shop for dinner there after seeing an afternoon showing of The Last King of Scotland at the Quad Cinema. It was right across the street from where the car was parked so it was the logical choice for picking up ingredients for dinner, a veggie ragu inspired by Heat that the Professor planned on making. While looking for tomatoes, olives, capers and other various things I ran into these little baskets filled with little specimens of fruit. What were they? Tiny pears? Color wise they certainly looked like pears, but the shape was all wrong. They looked more like, like what? The little sign beneath the little baskets filled with the little fruit clued me in. Heirloom apples it said. Intrigued, I bought a basket.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I‘d do with them. I thought I might bake them, perhaps core them and fill them with brown sugar and butter and sprinkle cinnamon over them. Of course I had no idea how that would turn out. But I was curious. I had never baked apples before. As it turned out I was being a little overly ambitious that day. By the time we drove all the way back up to my place, prepared dinner and made our first attempt at baking bread (from a no knead recipe in the dining section of the Times that turned out not half bad) baking little apples was the last thing I wanted to do. The night before we had discovered the joys of port over vanilla ice cream and decided to have it again. Laziness won over that night.

So the apples never got baked and were just sitting there in the kitchen waiting to be used somehow. Why not integrate them into that morning’s waffle experience? I figured it would be relatively easy. Simply cut them into slices and sauté them in butter with a little brown sugar and cinnamon thrown in at some point. It did indeed turn out to be simple. The only problem I ran into was that after slicing the apples and started the heating of the pan I looked into the fridge only to discover that I was completely out of butter. “Oh no!” I thought. How can I possibly sauté these apples and make a proper Belgian waffle topping without butter? Is such a thing even possible? Vegetable oil was quickly substituted for butter. I honestly didn’t think my waffle topping would come out very well without butter but is it turns out heirloom apples thinly sliced and sautéed in a bit of vegetable oil with some cinnamon sprinkled in makes quite a nice topping. The slight tartness of the apples combined very nicely with the sweetness of the maple syrup which I warmed before pouring over the apple topped waffle. I loved the simplicity and downright yumminess of the dish that morning.

The waffles themselves I decided to make from scratch rather than one of the mixes I had hanging out in the pantry. If making the batter from scratch is just as easy as using a mix why not? I used to use this recipe all the time a few years ago. Then, after not baking any waffles for quite sometime the neurons that contained the memory of the recipe atrophied, shriveled and died. It’s the only reason that I can think of as to why I forgot what’s probably one of the easiest recipes around. That’s why I had some of the mixes hanging out in my pantry, because I simply couldn’t remember how to make waffles and pancakes from scratch. I looked up recipes online but there were just too many to choose from. I was ashamed. But this Thanksgiving morning inspiration struck. Perhaps it was that morning’s meditation session, which was particularly deep (ok, deep for me. I’m sure even a novice Zen Buddhist monk achieves much deeper levels of meditative bliss regularly, while shopping no less, than I did that morning, but still).

I suddenly remembered that all I really needed was flour, milk, an egg, some baking powder, a little sugar, some cinnamon and perhaps a drop or two of vanilla extract. If waffles are being made a little oil is mixed in. Easy. Just as important as the ingredients I also remembered the ratios and measurements I used to use. One cup of flour, one cup of milk, perhaps a little more if the batter was a little too thick, somewhere in the vicinity of 3/4ths a tablespoon of baking powder, a few dashes of cinnamon and a little vanilla. A while back a coworker and I were talking about mixing batters for pancakes and waffles and he told me the proper way to do it was to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately first and then mix them together. I forgot what the reason was and will have to look that up. Even without knowing why I mixed the batter that way, putting the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together in one bowl and the vanilla soy milk (yes soy milk!) and egg in another. Oh, and speaking of milk, I’ve made this recipe using whole milk, skim milk, buttermilk (yum!!!), plain soy milk and vanilla soy milk and the end results have always ended up good. There were slight differences in flavor and feel but no matter which variation I’ve used I’ve always been quite pleased with the results. This past batch of waffles, using vanilla soy milk and topped with sautéed cinnamon heirloom apples and warm maple syrup was good, good, good. The professor was quite pleased with them as well which made the whole effort (which was admittedly not a whole lot) more than worth it. When my girlfriend gave me that big beautiful smile of hers after taking her first bite life was indeed good. I knew the rest of the day would be perfect, and it indeed was.