Seafood Pho

I went to Le Cheval the other day and didn't get pho. It was the first occurrence of this phenomenon ever, and while I thoroughly enjoyed everything else that I ate there, I was left with a pretty big pho jones.

Browsing through the freezer contents the other day, I realized that I had a veggie bag ready to turn into stock (I save onion peels and random veggie trimmings in a freezer bag). I also had a bag of shrimp and prawn shells, and a few frozen squid.

I always wanted to make seafood pho...

...so I did, and it was awesome.

Basically, the process is the same as it always is when I make pho, regardless of the type of stock I start from.

First, thaw out the  frozen veggie cuttings.

Meanwhile, halve some onions, ginger, and garlic. Brush them with olive oil and roast them for 30-40 minutes at 450. Set them aside when finished.

Add the shrimp and prawn shells and the squid to the veggie cuttings and simmer for about an hour and a half over medium-low heat.

Strain all of this stuff out and return the stock to the pot.

Add the roasted onions, garlic, and ginger, some shiitake mushrooms, as well as the spice blend, 1/3 cup of fish sauce, a bit of oyster sauce, and a pinch of palm sugar.

The spices I use (clockwise from top):  black cardamom pods, green cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, star anise, coriander seeds, sea salt, fennel seeds, cloves.

Simmer for another hour and a half or so and strain again. Finally, add whatever fresh seafood you want and simmer until it's cooked.

Serve over rice noodles with fresh basil, cilantro, mint, and lime.  (A squirt of Sriracha optional but recommended).


This time around I used a pound of cod, and a half pound each of sea scallops and octopus. It was awesome and I had leftovers enough for like 6 more servings later on. 

So now I've done vegetable, beef, lamb, and seafood pho. What's next?

Guacamole my way.

I get asked to make guacamole a lot.

Not exactly sure why it always falls on me to make the guacamole, but I'm always happy to oblige. To be honest, I don't like other people's guacamole nearly as much as my own anyway, so it's pretty win-win... especially when i can get someone else to pay for the ingredients.

Having recently made and photographed a few batches, and having no glamorous entree or ridiculous salad to write about, I have decided to finally share my recipe.  You'll notice I like to have about a one-to-one ratio of avocado and other ingredients. If you live in the Midwest or a similar area where avocados are prohibitively priced, you can substitute cooked, mashed, whipped, and cooled peas for a few of the avocados... but I would recommend that instead of doing that, you just stop being a cheapskate and buy the extra avocados.  My own solution to this issue was simply to move to California. Over time, my increase in cost-of-living will balance out with my not having to spend 3 dollars for every avocado I buy.

Anyway, on with it!

ingredients
6 medium-to-large avocados
1 medium red or yellow onion
3 limes
1 jalapeño pepper*
1 medium-large tomato
3 cloves of garlic*
large handful of cilantro
salt & pepper
cumin


*Nelson family unit conversions:
1 jalapeño = 2-3 jalapeños
3 cloves garlic = 5 cloves garlic


instructions
There is one critically important part of the guacamole-making process (in my opinion): Combine the lime juice and avocado FIRST!  This will prevent the avocados from turning brown, which will also prevent the guacamole from turning brown. Brown guacamole, while still just as tasty as its green counterpart, is a failure in my book. Fortunately it is incredibly easy to prevent by simply starting with these three steps:

1) Squeeze your limes into a medium-large mixing bowl. Don't leave the peel in the bowl, I just left it in for the picture so it didn't look like some random pale yellowish liquid.

2) Cut up the avocado. I like to take a butter knife and pre-dice each half of the avocados and then just scoop them out into a bowl.

3) Mash the avocado and lime together until you get a good blend between smooth and chunky. I like to just wail on it with a fork for a while...  Follow these three steps first and your guacamole will stay green until the last bite.

4) Dice up the onion and tomato and mix into the bowl.

5) Mince the garlic, jalapeño, and cilantro and mix in.

6) Add cumin, salt, and pepper to taste, mix and serve.







Repeat this process at least once every few weeks for maximum satisfaction.

Avocado

Gazpacho !!!

Ok, so I've been meaning to do some spanish cooking for a while.  I also am becoming totally obsessed with soup. It follows that I should learn to make gazpacho. As it turns out... well, it's the easiest soup ever (At least compared to Tom Yum, Lamb Pho, and other soups that I've been making).

As with any new dish I am planning and have never made before, I like to consult several different sources and figure out what the common ingredients and procedures are. Especially when a dish is a big cultural item like this, the recipes tend to vary wildly. Asking for someone's gazpacho recipe is like asking for someone's pasta sauce recipe, or chili, or something...

Anyway, I took a look at a whole slew of options, and tried to figure out what seemed like common ground, and which of the unique items in each recipe sounded good. Here's what I came up with.  I made a huge batch, too... so i'm going to say this will easily serve 8.

ingredients

4 large tomatoes
2 medium cucumbers
1 medium zuccini
bread (see below)
1 large bell pepper
1 jalapeño
juice of 2 limes
5 cloves of garlic
1 medium red onion
fresh parsley
fresh basil
3 cups tomato juice
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. cumin
S & P

instructions
This is a SUPER easy recipe. Waiting hours and hours for it to chill properly is really the only hard part. Or maybe peeling the tomatoes, but I'm about to make that easy for you.

Easiest way I've found to peel tomatoes:

1) Boil enough water in a pot to cover the tomato you're going to peel.
2) Cut an X in the skin of the tomato on the opposite side of the stem
3) Briefly submerse the tomato in the boiling water
4) Immediately remove tomato and run under very cold water. the skin should pretty much just slough off.

Now that the tomatoes are peeled, the only other item you need to prep is the bread. I used about 6 inches of french bread... you could use a few slices of whatever bread is laying around, or like a kaiser roll or something. I don't see it mattering all that much.

Basically you want about a baseball sized lump of bread when it's done soaking. Take the bread, rip it up in chunks, and let it soak up some water for a few minutes, then squeeze gently to get the bulk of the water out.
(Soaking just makes it work better in the blender.)

Other than that, you pretty much just dice everything and either put half of that item in the blender and the other half aside for later. Start with the bread, the garlic, the cumin, and one of the tomatoes, then just start blending everything else in.

Two of the tomatoes, one cucumber, half the zuccini, half of the bell pepper, and half of the onion should be diced (small dicing... 1/4 to 1/2 inch), put in a bowl, covered and stored in the fridge for later.

Everything else gets chopped coarsely and thrown in a blender or food processor. You may have to do the blending in two parts if you don't have access to a crazy commercial blender like I do. (Thanks AJ!) Take the blended part, add salt and pepper to taste, and refrigerate this as well...  If you have the patience, give it a good dozen or so hours to chill and for the flavors to blend.

Try to wait at least 4 hours though.

When ready to serve, chop up some more fresh basil and parsley, add the diced veggies to the blended veggies, mix well, ladle into bowls, top with the fresh herbs, and serve.  (If it's a real hot summer day, serving in chilled bowls can be a nice touch)

Tomato

BBQ season in full swing

My lack of posting lately means I need to reconsider the way I handle this blog... I feel like I need to come up with something incredible to justify a full post and recipe listing, but I suppose that really isn't the case. I still am cooking several times a week, and now that summer is here, the barbecue/potluck season is really starting with a bang.

I attended/cooked at least a little for 3 different barbecues this weekend alone.

Sadly, I didn't really make anything new... I think that's one of my main holdups with this blog at the moment, is that I've been making a lot of repeat recipes lately, or being part of a lot of barbecues where I'm just bringing along a salad or making some guacamole or something little. I don't see this trend turning around all that quickly with it being so beautiful here in the summer, so I'll just have to start taking a lot more pictures of everyone else's food as well, and the BBQ goodness in general. I'll try to throw in a new recipe once in a while as well.

Deal?

Anyway, don't have a ton of time, so i'll just make another quick photo update with captions for today.

Made another round of one of my favorite salads ever; I could eat greek salad every day I think.

This was part of the third of three barbecues this weekend.  What's funny is that I go to/host barbecues all the time, and I still really don't get all that much practice doing any actual grilling because I'm always inside making a salad or something... not that I wouldn't happily take the grill spot.

Here's the nice little spread we had for this quiet little pre-show BBQ

Endives have been showing up everywhere lately...  I only just discovered them this year, and now I see them everywhere, other food blogger talking about them, restaurant menu items touting them, myself obsessively buying them... cut them in half, throw on a little salt, pepper, and olive oil and toss them on the grill! I love how endives absorb surrounding flavors so easily.

Somehow that was the only picture I took of food at that barbecue...  what a shame, because there were some good eats, including a nice tri-tip, chicken, awesome bread, some of the best black beans I've ever had in my life, veggie kabobs, grilled mango... how did i not take pictures of all of that?

Like I said, I'm rarely the one that does the actual grilling.  Here are a few of pictures of some of my friends making delicious happen on some pretty impressive grills.

Ok that's it for now.  I can't promise any really elaborate recipes or anything too soon, but I will definitely be better about taking pictures when there's good food in my life.  I think for the summer, that's just how this is going to have to be for the most part.

ugh

Still super busy with other things currently. I think I'm gonna have to stop worrying about making every post be super fancy and well photographed if i wanna keep this thing going.

Stay tuned.

For now, here's some slow-cooker Ratatouille I made the other day (picture taken before cooking.)

Yum

Mini-update!

Sorry i haven't been all that active on here the last week.

A few things are to blame:

1) I'm trying to be frugal this month, and my "publishable" cooking adventures tend towards the expensive.
2) My creativity has been spread thin because I've been painting and playing bass and hiking a lot this week (guess i can put a few pictures of that stuff on here even though it isn't food-related).
3) The few things that I did cook nicely, I failed to take enough pictures of, or they were someone else's recipe and i didn't alter anything, or something like that.

So because of all this, I'll just throw some photos up here and call it a day.

I promise to make something delicious and take proper pictures soon. (Thinking gazpacho is in order pretty soon.)

anyway here we go:

the kimchi i made is ready!

Not the best ever, but now I know what to try the second time around (more napa, more garlic, less diakon, more finely ground chilis... i really need a mortar and pestle). Another round and I might be ready to go into full production mode.

Adventures in Acrylic Abstract

A hike by the bay! (Albany Bulb)

A dragon made out of trash! (I heart repurposed junk.)

Heart of palm and chipotle soup!

(Thanks to ingrid hoffman, as usual.)

Heart of palm and chipotle soup in soup form.

Cupcakes courtesy of my roommate Mike. Spice cake with orange, cream-cheese-based mint and jalapeño frosting. The final version was topped with candied jalapeño, but he didn't garnish them at home so I couldn't take that picture, alas.

Punjab Saag with chicken and saffron rice.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Massaman Curry

One of these days I'll get some category listings on here... the way things have been going, it seems like maybe I'll only need two categories: Thai and not Thai.

This weekend, I took a great suggestion from my dad and tried my hand at Massaman Curry. As I usually do when attempting a new dish, I consulted a variety of recipes and figured out the common ingredients, and then made my own variation.

I am DEFINITELY making this again. However, next time I'm going to make my own curry paste. I would have done so this time, but i still haven't gotten around to getting a mortar and pestle, so I just bought some pre-made stuff.

As suggested by many of the recipes, I also made some fragrant rice and Ajaat. Ajaat is a really nice salad on its own, but as complement to the massaman curry, it is simply perfect. (This is a ridiculously rich curry, so the light salad works really well to balance it out.)

I'm not going to bother retyping the the recipe for Ajaat because I just used a recipe that i found over at realthairecipes.com, which I would highly recommend to anyone with a desire to learn some good Thai recipes. The only thing i will say about the Ajaat is to prepare it at least 2-3 hours before you plan to serve it. Here are some pictures of my Ajaat; I wish I would have had some red chilis to round out the color, but it was delicious nonetheless. There's always next time, right?

No idea why i didn't use my new mandoline for this. Habit i guess.

shallots, water, sugar, salt, vinegar

Ok, now that that's out of the way, let's get to the Massaman!

ingredients
4-5 Tbsp. Massaman curry paste
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil  (peanut oil might be a good choice too)
1 lb. beef
2 medium white potatoes
1 medium yellow onion
handful of roasted peanuts
1 cup coconut cream
2 cans coconut milk
3-4 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
4 cardamom pods
palm sugar (to taste)
fish sauce (to taste)
tamarind paste (to taste)

instructions
Start by heating up one of the cans of coconut milk in a medium pan over low heat.

Dice the beef into bite-sized chunks and simmer in the coconut milk over low heat for half an hour. While this is going on, cut the potatoes and onions into bite sized pieces as well.

Over medium-high heat, fry the curry paste until it is fragrant (3-5 minutes). Stir very frequently so it doesn't burn.

Now add the thick white part of the coconut cream and mix it into the curry paste thoroughly.  

Discard the clear watery portion of the coconut cream (or save for some other use). Now strain the beef and discard the coconut milk that it was simmered in. Add the beef, stir well, and simmer for another 3 minutes or so.

Add the potatoes, onion, and peanuts.

Add the other can of coconut milk, stir well, and simmer for a few more minutes.

Add the cinnamon, cardamom, and bay leaves (actually supposed to use cassia leaves, but i haven't been able to track any down yet).

Simmer for another 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add fish sauce, palm sugar, and tamarind paste to taste.  I used about two tablespoons each of fish sauce and tamarind paste, and a tablespoon or so of palm sugar.  Mix well and serve.

At some point in this process (depending on how you like to cook rice), prepare some fragrant rice.  Jasmine rice with saffron pictured.






Serve over rice with a nice portion of Ajaat alongside.

Coconut Milk