After a long week of fiendish busy-tude and no time to do my normal pretty elaborate grocery shopping (3 markets, at current), I was left drained, jaundiced, spiritually bankrupt, devoid of the thai and west-coast-hippie-gourmet-fusion food that keeps me going through the week. In the past few days, I had made dishes from all manner of lackluster pairings..

When I got home from work, I became determined to do something special, damnit- for myself and for my lovely girlfriend, who was off in her own tizzy of extreme overextension and wouldn’t be home ’til later. Not having time to hit an actual thai market, I bemoaned the fact that I would be without all of the stuff I rely on to make great curry- king oyster mushrooms, great beansprouts, thai limes, fresh kaffir lime leaves, thai basil, long beans.. I worried I wouldn’t be able to make things happen, blow minds, tantalize palates, you know, the usual. (j/k)

I stopped in at the corner store and surveyed the prospects: Decent-looking basil (though not thai.. *sob*), sad but servicable cilantro, white mushrooms (not my first choice by a long walk, but usable), green beans, baby brocolli, shallots, and garlic. I knew I had some of those quick-frozen Trader Joes shrimp at home, which are pretty darn decent, so I had my protein covered. I stroked my chin, thought deeply of Bangkok, and proceeded back upstairs.

I prepped all of my veggies, started soaking some jasmine rice, and plopped the shrimp into a lime juice-tumeric-fish sauce marinade to soak. The rice was put on to cook in a non-stick saucepan (one of the only good uses for it, to my mind- jasmine rice sticks like crazy). Once it seemed halfway done, the show began.
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Filed under: Recipes, Meal Reports
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You. You. Over there. Yes, you. You need one of these:

Thai Granite Mortar And Pestle

Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have an innate need to pound stuff. To grind stuff. To forcefully reduce things to a pulp. Deep within your psyche, a little itch exists, maybe so small you can’t feel it. Still, it exists.

You need to beat the s*** out of some spices. You wanna cream some garlic. You need to make some ding-danged chili paste. You do! How do I know this? Well.. I’m gastronomically psychic, and I feel your vibes, (wo)man. Fa-rizzle.

Given such tasks, what would you rather do? Would you prefer to lug out some bulky, dusty hunk of plastic, plug it in, clean the bowl, load your precious goodies in, try like hell to get the right consistancy (but probably either chop too coarsely, or turn things into pudding), then have to clean the whole kit-and-kaboodle and stow it away again?

Or would you rather plop your lemongrass into a pretty stone thing that looks fabbo in your hipster kitchen, and get some aggressions out with a tool that looks like it’d find a good home lashed to a stick in prehistoric warfare? Does getting just the right grind on, then returning to your cooking triumphant and maybe a little flushed from the work after cursorially splashing a little water into the mortar for cleanup sound good to yas?

IMHO, food processors are about as sexy as their name. I wouldn’t mind having one if I was big into baking or cooking for a big family, as they rock for doughmaking and for grinding meat (which I don’t eat), shredding pounds of cheese and so on.

For smaller tasks like grinding spices, bruising herbs, and finessing the living hell out of whatever tasty stuff you can dump into it, I think the mortar and pestle is nature’s perfect food, er, tool. Uh… Well, it’s a really great tool, anyway.

For the tasks I love them for, you’ve gotta make sure to get the right type of mortar and pestle. You DO NOT WANT:

A Suribachi - Great for creaming miso and other gentle tasks. Doesn’t take overhead-swinging two-handed tiger power strikes too well. Tends to break when you release too much qi.

A little teeny wussy pharmacy-style M&P(mortar and pestle) - Probably just fine for normal dry spice-grinding tasks. Might hold about two chilis and one clove of garlic, and would probably be very polite to them. FORGET IT.

We are not here to be nice to our ingredients We’re here to crush, pulverize, mash, and bang the ever-lovin’ f*** out of them. Move along.

A Molcajete - Pig head or no pig head, this, too is the wrong tool. Generally made of porous volcanic rock, molcajetes absorb tons of flavors and are highly abrasive- very useful for making wonderful puree’d salsas and things like mole sauce.

Certainly cool to have if you’ve got space, but not, an everyday tool for my purposes. Gotta love the pig head handle, though!

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Filed under: Recipes, Tools, Meal Reports
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Ah, tartness.. Is there anything more refreshing? (Certainly not under this administration.) Sour flavors energize food and shock tastebuds to life like tiny defibrillators. They cool and cleanse, finesse and brighten. Like the savory additions I covered recently (and, as you’ll learn, all the other major flavor groups), sour foods are invaluable as both intentional influences and last-ditch fixes.

They are the sublime transcendance in your favorite Thai dish, the saving grace in your fish and chips, that which is locked in mortal combat with the oily onslaught in your salad. With any of the ingredients below, you can rescue a dish that’s suddenly wayyyyyy too heavy or rich, you can cause a stir-fry to pop to life, you can finish off a dish with a fresh flair just before serving.. The possibilities abound, and I’ve just had my coffee.

1. Lime - Before I started cooking and really paying attention to flavors, I thought of limes as pretty inconsequential things. Sort of like lemons, but sweeter, sort of. Good to sliver up and shove into the neck of your Pacifico Clara. My first real lime moment came a couple of years before I started cooking in earnest, when I came across a method for making what is still the best guacamole I’ve ever tasted.

During my experiments, I found I needed some tartness and a lime was sitting there on the counter, so, whatever (at the time I probably would have defaulted to red wine vinegar or something.. *shudder*), I squeezed it into the mix. BOOM! Things snapped into focus and the recipe was complete. It was so good it made me squeal. It’s a secret, though- I’ll never divulge it. Nope.

…ok, I’ll spill it.
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Filed under: Recipes, Ingredients
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Here’s the latest installment of the ingredients series (I’ll get back to tools in a bit), this time covering savory sauces and condiments. Again, this is nothing like a definitive list- this is just what I love and use frequently. You know what soy sauce tastes like. You know what worchestershire sauce tastes like. I’ll be covering things you may never have eaten (or, at least, known you were eating).

First, I’ll cover what I currently consider to be the holy trinity of savory sauces. With these in your arsenal, well, it’s simply going to get difficult to cook things that don’t taste wonderful. For real.

1. Bragg’s Liquid Aminos - Don’t let the vitamin-store name or the hippy-dippy label scare you- this stuff should be called “Bragg’s Liquid Gold“. It has a flavor that inhabits the same neighborhood as garden-variety soy sauce, but remains distinctly different. The advantages are that it doesn’t scream ASIAN FOOD like soy sauce does, and if you overdo it a bit, you won’t get the bitter tang that too much soy curses a dish with.

Bragg’s is the very essence of savority, and also a good, controllable source of salt. More times than I can count, a dish that’s nearly there but is missing a certain something has been given a luscious, warm sheen with a couple of squirts of Bragg’s. It has an almost-perfect ratio of savory, salty, and sweet, so instead of yanking a dish’s flavor in a certain direction, it simply gives you more flavor. In fact, it was really my most treasured secret weapon before I got into Thai food and discovered:
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Filed under: Ingredients
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Here’s the first in yet another short series of articles, this time centered on what ingredients to have around the house. A lot of people have come to eat at my place and marvelled, “How did you find out about (insert semi-obscure condiment or ingredient here)? I’ve never heard anything about it or seen it in a store..”. 98% of the goodies I count among my secret weapons have been found by simply taking risks.

If I see an herb that I can’t identify at a store, I buy a sprig (or, pick a leaf if I’m feeling naughty) and try it out. If there’s a vegetable I’m intrigued by, I grab one. Don’t bet the farm, just get one. It might be the nastiest tasting thing since pickled pig’s lips, or it might change your life- just make a note of what it is in case you love it and can’t recall its name.

In this installment I’ll be beginning my commentary about my favorite flavor group, savory, known to some asians and too-cool sophisticates as “Umami”. Nothing saves an anemic-tasting dish, nothing satisfies the soul, nothing gives substance to the weak like something savory. Here I’ll be outlining some herbs and spices that can give you savory in a hurry, in a variety of different shades. This is nothing like a definitive list! Anything that I’m sure you already know all about, I’ve omitted (garlic, for example). You probably know of most of these, but maybe you haven’t cooked with them yet, or cooked with them fresh. *smirk*

I generally buy fresh cilantro, basil, tumeric and galanga every week (I can’t stop cooking Thai food), and keep a good stock of dried oregano, and cumin seeds around. When I run out of any of these things, I go into a form of shock, at least until I can drag myself 2 doors down to the convenient but hilariously overpriced grocery shop down the street.

Most of the fresh herbs can (and really, really should) be bought organic. The taste difference between conventional and organic for things like herbs ranges from “pretty noticable” to “night and day”.

1. Cilantro - A life saver in so many ways. A small handful, washed and roughly chopped, brings a heady, aromatic complexity to just about any dish. Cilantro is savory in a round, sweet way, but can also be piquant, almost sharp. Throwing it into a dish early on will emphasize its warm, dark aspects, while adding it just after the heat is turned off allows its brighter notes to shine through. I often add some early on in the cooking and some at the end to strike a balance.
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This is the first installment in my short series on inexpensively outfitting your kitchen for total culinary dominance. Where would Batman be without his utility belt? Where would Elvis be without his guitar and hip pads? Where would Paris Hilton be without her purse full of nasal drugs?

Nowhere, I tells ya.

This time around, I’ll be covering the bare essentials. The BASICS. I will be naming brands, and maybe even stealing a couple of images from manufacturer’s sites- but if you find something in your local store that seems to fit the bill and doesn’t align with exactly what I’ve outlined here, go for it. This stuff is cheap enough that you can afford to make mistakes.

1.2.
3.4.

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As the next few educational posts will focus on outfitting your kitchen and getting some good ingredients into the house, I figure I’ll give you something really simple to start with. Maybe that’ll get you going, and win me a little of your trust! For this one, all you need is half an onion, a tomato, some fresh basil, a lime, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. This stuff can be used as a bruschetta mix over grilled bread, a pasta salad dressing, or simply an elegant little side dish. It’s uncommonly yummy. The title of the dish, however, will not net me any awards.

Fresh Basil Salad with Lime

1. Cut a white onion in half on its vertical axis. Slice the top 1/2″ off of the stalk end of one of the halves. Peel the skin off in one piece (taking the first, thin layer of meat with it makes this easier). You’ll end up with a skinned half onion, still joined at the root. Cut 5-7 slices through the onion vertically, ending just before the root. The root will keep the onion together, making the next step easier. Dice the onion horizonally, stopping just before the root. Whee! You’ve diced an onion. Put the result into a bowl or lipped square dish.

2. Dice a tomato. Heck, you can even re-use the technique above if your knife’s sharp enough! Add to the bowl, and try your best to take most of the juice with it.

3. Choose 10-15 bright green leaves from your bunch of basil. Stack them vertically, roll them into a squat cylinder, and then make fine slices through the cylinder, creating pretty little shreds. (watch your fingers toward the end). Corral them into a little pile and beat on them a little bit with the handle of your knife (if it’s burly enough) or roll them with the side of a pint glass. Manhandling them a little bit will help to release their flavor. Add to the bowl.

4. Add a minor squirt of vinegar (I like rice vinegar for this task), the juice of one small lime or half a large one, a splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a couple of grinds of black pepper (if you don’t have a pepper grinder at this point, I’ll forgive ya- but it’s something you’ve just gotta have for total flavor alignment, and mine cost $4 at Ikea). Stir. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.

You’re done. The process probably took you roughly 3 minutes of prep, cost 40 cents in veggies and condiments, and tastes pretty darn out of this world (especially when made with organic veggies). It can be massaged and morphed to fit your tastes. You can chop finer and have a savory, meditteranean salsa. You can add a little minced garlic, up the oil to a tablespoon, cook in a saucepan for 10 minutes, and have a decent red sauce. You can throw in some spinach (wash it!) and have a larger-scale salad. Just repeat after me: You are the kitchen king*, you can do anything.

Next up, get ready to blow a little money and suddenly have a set of cooking tools that will let you work with little hindrance.

Till next time,
-george C

* (or queen)

Filed under: Technique, Recipes
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Excuse the rough layout and nasty graphics (for now). This is, you guessed it, the first post in my new blog, “feeding // fashionistas” (dig the slashes- so hot.) - a running commentary about my 2nd favorite subject*, cooking like a motherf—er.

I’ll admit it, I’m a west-coast urban hipster type, straight out of central casting. I’m a dj, a musician, a geek, a beer connoisseur and a fledgling wine lover. My politics lean heavily left, I love foreign/indie films, I go to Burning Man and underground raves. I’ve got a tastefully messy haircut and I wear subtly chic clothes. I cook almost exclusively vegetarian (sometimes vegan) food, but don’t let that scare you. If you want to take my recipe for dill-miso tofu tacos (forthcoming) and sub in some ground lamb, then far be it from me to stifle your creativity. Baah. I just like a good challenge, and making transcendental grub with little to no animal products is a worthy one.

What I want to relate in this blog is just how goddamn easy it is to cook amazing food for yourself and your fabulous friends. Food that reflects exactly what you want to taste, what you want to say on that plate, so to speak. Food that will have your social circle bowing and scraping at your feet for recipes. The funny part is, once you get it, chances are you’ll be cooking purely in a state of flow and you’ll be able to to smile knowingly and say, “Oh, sorry, this was just kind of improv!”.

At the end of the day, I say all it takes to be a good cook is a little information, some canny shopping, and a sense of adventure. If you “can’t make toast” and want to start on your way to culinary nirvana, I think you’ll find some good info here. If you’re already a good cook but just want some inspiration, I hope I won’t bore the hell out of you. Either way, please leave comments, tell me what’s good, what sucks, what’s missing, what’s overstated. I welcome your jeers as well as your cheers.

One warning- once you start to form your style and get it down, eating out just won’t be the same again.

Cheers and fresh lime leaves to you,
-george C

Filed under: Philosophy, Firstposts
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