East Meets West

Today's 80 Plates edition combines two rather different countries: Thailand and Canada. As my dad once said, "Nothing quite goes with Thailand like Canada." (OK, this is not strictly speaking true. What he DID say, and I swear to God this IS true was, "And if Columbus had sailed East, he'd have discovered Israel.")

This weekend was supposed to be Leah-free and it was until last night. I was feeling very cook-ish/cook-y? and wanted to do something so I decided to return to 80 Plates and knock out a couple of more countries. We flipped through the Around the World in 450 Recipes and hit on Thailand's barbeque chicken. Whether or not it's true, the book claims:

Barbecued chicken is served almost everywhere in Thailand, from portable roadside stalls to sports stadiums and beaches.

Now recently, we've had a TON of barbecue chicken. Michael's mom and dad made some while we were in Rhode Island and the other night while we were visiting baby Kai, Elizabeth and Jesse grilled chicken as well. It has long been a source of unhappiness within me that I am not a great griller. Oh, I can make a burger or a hot dog or a brat, but beyond that, I tend to BURN. My mother-in-law said, "Cook it over low heat for a long time" but my grill is evil and difficult to regulate heat-wise. But I was damned determined that I was going to grill some chicken and it was going to come out well.

I did modify the recipe just slightly: it called for a whole chicken cut apart ( a) I have no interest in doing this and b) we have all agreed that none of us likes bones in our chicken so I went with boneless skinless breasts) and it called for ginger (my sister is allergic). Oh, and I have no idea what palm sugar is, so I used some Sugar in the Raw that my uncle left here after his visit in November. Otherwise, I stuck to what the recipe said to do.

So this was basically a pretty easy recipe to follow! However, I did find one ingredient that my nifty knife does not like to chop: lemon grass! I really had to do battle with it. I slit it lengthwise first and then made chops into little half circles, but I was not going to chop it up beyond that. Still, I think it looked pretty respectable considering.



I smashed up garlic and chopped shallots, although the recipe does not give any instructions on what to actually do with either ingredient, it just says to add them. After combining all of that in a large bowl, I added the sugar and then turned my attention to putting together the liquid part of the marinade.



One of the things I LOVE about doing this is I am getting to use up the bottles of sauce that I might have had use for a tablespoon of here and there. In this case, I got to use up 2 tablespoons of fish sauce! I have no idea what to do with fish sauce, but I do know that when we continue cooking around Asia, I've got it on hand to use, and I'm down to about 1/2 a bottle! Hooray! I added that to coconut milk and soy sauce and it made this rather luxurious looking coffee colored sauce. And I have to say, it smelled pretty good. Then I dumped it over the fresh savories and stirred it altogether.



All that was left was to pour it over the chicken and refrigerate overnight. I was really, really excited about this dish because it smelled AMAZING! It was going to be torture to wait for lunch, but fortunately Leah was back to keep us busy! I will say, also that when I look at the picture in the cookbook, the marinade looks almost smooth, so I wonder if they put everything in a food processor to put it together. But I kind of liked getting in there with my knife and just slicing and dicing, and I don't think it affected the recipe in the least.

Ok, so this morning dawned bright and clear and I decided I was also going to take the opportunity to make nanaimo bars. This was mainly because having read up on the matter, I knew how rich the bars were going to be, and I could send them home with Judy and Lucas and not worry about totally trashing my diet.

While Lesley was here, she mentioned that as far as she knew there wasn't really a typical Canadian dish (I feel the same about American cuisine, so I feel her pain). We never got around to cooking anything--mostly because we were too busy--so I went on Wikipedia to the national dish list and looked up Canada and there were nanaimo bars as one of several of Canada's national foods.

This excited me because in A Mighty Wind, Mickey says she won't perform alone without Mitch and that she's going to go back to her hotel with a pan of nanaimo bars. I always wondered what they were, and now I know! So this ties in nicely with Lesley's visit, but also with the recent Christopher Guest concert. As Hannibal Smith used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together!"

So luckily for me, Wikipedia had a link to the city of Nanaimo's website which has the award winning recipe for nanaimo bars. Apparently in 1986, there was a "prepare the best nanaimo bars ever!" contest and Mrs. Joyce Hardcastle emerged the clear winner with her recipe, which is now the official nanaimo bar recipe. You can find it here. The basic idea is a ton of butter, cream, chocolate, and sugar. What could be better than that?!

I was 'helped' in today's adventure by my niece, Dot. Here she is wielding her spatula.



Shortly after this picture was taken, she put her foot into her mother's coffee mug and spilled coffee all over the place and then attempted to dive head first into the ingredients.

So, since the bars are made in layers, you obviously start with the bottom layer first. This calls for melting butter, sugar, and cocoa together in double boiler. I don't own a double boiler, I just make my own with a bowl placed over a pan of boiling water. This is effective, doesn't require any additional equipment, and I've found you can use either ceramic or metal bowls with the same result. When all was said and done, it looked like this:



While that was melting, I got out my food processor. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of finely chopped almonds. Kind of akin to my processing the heck out of the cottage cheese for the blintzes, I knew I'd have to be one step shy of almond butter to suit my sister, who does not like nuts. The food processor does a great job of pulverizing the little suckers. I put in 3/4 of a cup of slivered almonds and got back just over a half cup of chopped almonds.

At this point, the chocolate mixture had cooled just slightly and I was able to add the egg. I didn't want to put the egg directly into the hot chocolate mixture because I didn't want to have hot scrambled eggs in our bars. I did it just a little bit at a time and stirred the heck out of it between additions and it came out just fine.



Then I added in graham cracker crumbs, the almonds, and coconut. It made me think of an Almond Joy bar on steroids. I pressed the entire thing into an 8 inch round cake pan, since I couldn't find my 8 inch square pan anywhere.



That done, we turned our attention to layer two. This very easily called for beating together butter, heavy cream, vanilla custard powder (I used pudding mix, I couldn't find custard powder in my local store--but when Wegman's opens next week, I bet I'll be able to locate it!), and confectioner's sugar. I couldn't help it, I had to try just a bit of it, one little lick. I told my sister, "Those crazy Canadian bastards know their fillings!" and she took a taste and agreed. We decided to let Dot help us spread the filling over the crust.



She did a pretty good job, too!



That done, we turned our attention to layer three, using a double boiler again to melt together semi-sweet chocolate and butter. Dot got mad that we wouldn't let her near the hot stove, so we gave her a pan of her own and some water and a spoon to have fun with. I think she's a natural chef. (Please ignore my dirty floor--I'm thinking I'll be shamed into washing it in preparation for Evanovich Fest 2009, taking place this weekend.)



Once the chocolate melted together, we let it cool just a bit, enough not to liquify the butter and sugar layer and then I spread it over the top of the bars. It looked amazing. I could only imagine what it was going to taste like! But it'd have to wait for after the BBQ, so I put the bars in the fridge reluctantly and turned my attention back to Thailand.



Woman versus Grill in the epic battle for supremacy. Who will reign supreme!? I felt like I had it regulated pretty nicely, honestly, but then the burners on the sides went out when I turned them too low, so I had to restart the entire operation midway through the cooking process.

But look at my glorious chicken!! I DID IT! I FREAKIN' GRILLED CHICKEN AND DIDN'T DO ANYTHING HORRIBLE TO IT!



The recipe did give me the option for the coward's way out using the oven to bake it, but I GRILLED it. I am a GRILLER. I GRILL. You have no idea how proud of myself I was.



Thumbs up, hell yeah! The sky could possibly be the limit with my grilling capabilities, seriously.

So then we set the table and got down to business. I made a side of jasmine rice, about which the book says "A naturally aromatic, long grain white rice, jasmine rice is the staple of most Thai meals." Of course I made it in my rice cooker, which is pretty well hassle free and which I love. As long as I'm not making brown rice. Anyway, we set the table with rice, chicken, and I made some peas as well, and of course, the General's mashed potatoes. Then it was time to get down to business, so of course Leah and Dot both demanded food.

Consequently Lucas took the first bite. The General asked, "Honey, does the chicken have any sauce on it?" and before I could answer, we heard an indecent moan issue from the other end of the chicken before Lucas gulped out, "This chicken doesn't need sauce" and began gobbling it up! So I cut up the General's and he decided to take a crack at it, with my assurances that if he wanted sauce, we had some in the fridge. "Forget the sauce, honey," he said in total agreement with Lucas. I quickly cut up my chicken and stabbed a piece, sinking into culinary happiness with my first bite before regaining control of myself and taking my child back so my sister could enjoy what the rest of us were experiencing.

It was a QUIET meal for a bit as we all sunk our teeth into the chicken. How I grilled it so well, I do not know, but it was juicy and the marinade had really sunk in overnight. It was AMAZING chicken. God it was good. I'm only distressed that there is but one piece left, but guess what I'll be having for lunch tomorrow?!

Afterwards, we rested a bit while the kids finished their bottles and fell asleepish. Then I began to clear the table and we got talking about the joys of growing up near the Canadian border, which somehow led to Judy and I breaking into the Canadian national anthem, and then I was impressed to learn that my husband knew the words to it too! We finished off quite strong with, "O Canada we stand on guard for thee!" and then cheered while I dished out the bars.



This time, Judy took the ceremonial first bite and the first words out of her mouth were, "Holy shit!" She quickly took a swig of soda and then said, "This makes my soda taste bitter!" I didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, wondering if maybe something went terribly wrong, so I took a bite, but the fact of it was just the absolute richness of all the ingredients combining into this amazing bite. It's one of those desserts that kind of makes you lose your will to live, in a good way if that makes any sense at all. The General tried it and gobbled it right up!



Lucas couldn't even finish his, and he has a real sweet tooth! The rest of us gamely soldiered on. I must say, I think I know why Mrs. Joyce Hardcastle won the nanaimo bars contest. These suckers were awesome!

Thus endeth two more recipes and two more countries, but this one was momentous, for it was our first country from North America! It was such a fun time, I enjoyed having Dot around for cooking even if she did make a mess. :-) Next up, we're going to try Vietnam on June 18th because Michael's sister is heading there that day! And our Axis of Evil dinner cometh! Details to follow!

80 Plates Returns! India: "What Smells Like Feet?!"

So a few months ago when planning Mike and Lesley's visit, Mike said he wanted to do the Indian entry into 80 Plates while they were up! It so happens that my new blog friend Sylvie swapped me some of her Indian recipes for my fondue recipe, and so I had a plan in place for if I ever got back to doing 80 Plates again! This was the perfect opportunity to do so. India is the perfect country, too, since Michael isn't that nuts about Indian cuisine, so I'd have people to share it with!

I decided to try Sylvie's Coconut Curry Chicken recipe, which you can find on her cooking blog. Lesley volunteered to help, so we set out on our culinary adventure together! We made a quick stop at Giant yesterday to get supplies on our way home from Culpeper, where we had enjoyed a wonderful lunch at It's About Thyme and arrived home, deciding we weren't quite ready for dinner yet. We gave it about an hour and then settled in to cook!

While we were at Giant, I spotted a box of Palak Paneer, a spinach dish that Mike (Lesley's Mike, not mine!) has grown to like. So I decided I'd pick that up as well to have as a side dish, and I got some basmati rice to enjoy with the whole thing. We really didn't want a TON of food, and it looked from Sylvie's blog that this would just fit the bill for four people. Leah was naturally disappointed, but I told her that when she has teeth, she can try some!

So we got to work. Based on our last trip to Atlanta to stay with Mike and Lesley, I knew Lesley was a whiz with chopping up chicken, which is a task that, while I don't overtly hate it, I am happy to pass off. Lesley is an extremely conscientious chicken cooker, rinsing it off first and the chopping. I don't know, but I suspect this makes it taste better, as I feel that her chicken fingers are way better than mine.



Meanwhile, I got to work getting the spices and ancilliary ingredients ready. I measured out cumin seeds, ground coriander, and curry powder (which you see in the bowl), crushed garlic, grated ginger, and sliced up an onion. (I second Sylvie's suggestion for crushing garlic under a knife with the flat of your palm--it definitely is a great technique if you want the garlic somewhat in tact and don't want to lose the juice through a press.) I also toasted up some whole cashews. Now, Sylvie, I demand to know your secret supplier for whole, unsalted cashews! I couldn't find them anywhere! I finally got whole, salted ones as the only possible cashew option that was even close. Those I toasted in the oven for 5 minutes. I thought that with a mere 1/4 cup, there wouldn't be many in the dish, but actually there wound up being plenty to go around!



Once Lesley was done with the chicken prep, we heated up some vegetable oil and got put the chicken in the pan. It was supposed to get golden on both sides and I was glad that we had printed out the pictures from the blog, because I am sometimes an impatient cook and it seemed like it was taking a little while. But Sylvie's blog shows some beautifully golden chicken pieces, so we took our time and let it cook until ours looked similar.



Once we pulled the chicken out of the pan, we added the rest of the vegetable oil and the directions said to add the spices until the oil smelled of them. Now, under the best of circumstances, my nose works about as well as that of a congested St. Bernard, and Lesley has a cold. We put the spices in, and I kept trying to sniff it out, but really neither of us had any idea. Mike W. saved the day by yelling suddenly, "Hey! It smells like India in here!" Good enough, we thought, and put in the onions!

Once that was done, we let the onions cook down till they were good and soft. We couldn't really tell if they were translucent or not due to the spices, but we felt like they were in good shape, so we added the coconut milk and let it boil, then added the chicken, and finally added some peas and let it all cook for about five more minutes.





So while that was going, it was time to cook the palak paneer. I sliced open the bag and I was hit by a smell that was rather unpleasant. Having never eaten before, I didn't know if it was normal or not, so I tossed the bag in the microwave and turned it on the required 90 seconds. All of a sudden, Lesley said, "What smells like feet?" And I was like, "Yeah, it really doesn't smell very appetizing."

"It's not supposed to smell like that," said Lesley. "The package says it's authentic food direct from India by way of New Jersey," I avowed, "This is supposed to be the real thing."

As the seconds ticked by, the smell got stronger and stronger to the point that both of us and our diminished noses were feeling a bit ill. I pulled it out of the microwave after 90 seconds and the smell was awful. Lesley immediately declared, "I'm not eating that!" and I said, "Well, I'm sure as heck not eating it!" so we decided the charitable thing would be to wrap it and bag it.

The rice dinged in the rice cooker and we started to dish up, completing the final step of adding the cashews atop the chicken dish.



One of the things I love most about Indian food is that it always smells so warm and inviting. This dish was no exception. I don't know how to describe it, but when I smell curry and other spices, I get a warm feeling inside that makes me feel so good. This was a dish I absolutely loved for that very reason.

It was time to sit and dish up. We called the boys upstairs and the first thing out of Mike's mouth was, "What smells like feet!?" Lesley and I busted up laughing and explained the horror of the palak paneer. He concured that it was just as well that we weren't eating it.

Everyone tried some, even the General, who declared it "not terrible". He said he would have eaten it and enjoyed it a lot if I had made him potatoes to eat it with. ROOKIE MISTAKE! How many of these 80 plates dinners have I made and you've seen him with a healthy helping of mashed potatoes!? How could I be so clueless?





We all very much enjoyed it. The sauce was a perfect blend of flavors. If any of us had any quibble with the recipe, it was that we wondered if something could be added to make it just a touch spicy? Sylvie? But we all agreed we would make it and eat it again--Mike declared it "Excellent!" and I have to agree. I loved, loved, loved it.

Thank you so much, Sylvie, for sharing your recipe. I am anxious to meet you and hope we will see you next weekend! :-) Hope you enjoyed my write up of your dish!

Books and Armenia!

So last night was my book club's regular meeting. We read the book The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. The dinner theme was to take a chapter title, all of which were ingredients, select one, and use it to make a dish. Most of the ladies signed up to bring desserts, so I decided that I would make a main dish. While I didn't finish the book, I read in the jacket notes that it had something to do with the Armenian genocide, so I decided to make some Armenian dishes. There was an Armenian lady who volunteered at my old job in Boston, and I used to love the food that she'd make, so I was excited to select some dishes and make them.

I found The Gutsy Gourmet online and decided to use their "Gourmet Armenian Recipes" from the cookbook "Dining at Noah's Table". I selected three recipes to make: sou-berag, imom bayeldi, and stuffed zucchini.

I was cooking at my sister's house, and she has still not fully unpacked, so it was going to be a challenge to find everything I needed equipment-wise, but that is kind of the adventure of cooking in someone else's house. I also had no choice but to use ingredients of which I was not fond--most notably eggplant and cottage cheese.

I cooked everything all at once, but I'll try to divide up each recipe and report on it on its own to make it easier to read. I'll start with imom bayeldi, also known as Sultan's Delight. This is a wonderful vegetable dish, and a great way to use up extra veggies if you have them! I did cut down on the amount of eggplant that I used because I am not that crazy about eggplant, and also the local grocery store's selection of eggplant SUCKED. There was only one worth buying, really.

So the first task is to slice up the eggplant into rounds, leaving the skins on. Then you dump some salt on them and let them sit for about 30 minutes and let them release water.



I don't know if I did something wrong, but apart from a little bit of sweating, not a damn thing happened with the eggplant. The directions said to squeeze out the excess moisture and then put them in the oven to roast until they are lightly golden. I did that too, but frankly, they were in there for a while and nothing seemed to happen. Since I didn't eat them, I can't say if I know they were undercooked or anything, but no one was complaining, so I figure they were probably fine!

Next job was to slice up a boatload of vegetables and herbs. The recipe called for slices/rounds of peppers, onions, and tomatoes, crushed garlic, and basil, parsley, and mint. I was at a slight disadvantage in that my sister has lost her cutting board, so I chopped on a cookie sheet to save her counters.


Aren't they beauties?

I used red onions and green peppers to give some nice color to the dish. The Pampered Chef's garlic press can't be beat for crushing garlic, it does a thorough job indeed!

Here's a little tip of you need to chop fresh herbs. I hate doing it because, really, if you do it on a cutting board, it can be a challenge to get them really finely chopped and you run the risk of mashing them into the board, which is then where all those great flavors stay without going into your food! Try this instead. Put a handful of the herbs into a cup or glass, and chop the heck out of them with a pair of scissors. The herbs stay nicely contained and if you have any extra, you can store them in there for your next recipe (since two of these recipes required fresh herbs, I did the old "chop it once, use it twice" routine using this method. And because mint, basil, and parsley smell radically different from one another, it was easy to tell which was which despite their chopped states).

Then it was time to sautee everything up. You start with the peppers and onions and garlic, and sautee them 'gently'. Once they're soft, you add the herbs and the tomatoes and let them all cook in together. I did find that I had cut the peppers quite a bit too big, so I cut them a bit smaller, but man were they HOT! (heat hot, not spicy hot) So I may have burned a finger or two in their preparation. It took a while, honestly. I didn't turn up the heat very high because I didn't want to overtly fry anything, but there were a LOT of veggies in that pan, so it took the better part of 30 minutes to get everything even remotely soft. The pan was cast iron and HEAVY and with everything in there, I could lift it up to dump everything into the pan with the eggplant, so I wound up trying to scoop everything on top of the eggplant. It worked out OK, but I did wind up making a bit of a mess for myself to clean up afterwards.

Once the pepper mixture was spread out on top of the eggplant, the whole thing was lightly covered in "a can of tomato sauce". I really didn't know what size can to buy, so I went with a 14 ouncer since it was only supposed to be a smattering of tomato sauce. Then it was back in the oven for another 30 minutes before letting it cool--this dish can be served warm or at room temperature, so I decided to let it cool off. (I'll post a picture of the three finished dishes at the end--be patient :-D)

So that done, I turned my attention to the stuffed zucchini. I love zucchini and if I start some container gardens this summer, I might plant a couple of zucchini plants. Especially now that I know this dish! The zucchini dish was my entry into food for omnivores and had sausage in it. I LOVE sausage!! I was nervous that it used hot sausage, and I briefly considered substituting sweet sausage, but I wanted to be authentic and true to the recipe, so I decided to use the hot.

The first task was to halve and hollow the zucchini into little boats. This doesn't seem like it'd be that hard, but the zucchini offered at the Giant was actually pretty puny, so I had a bit of a challenge with it. In fact, one of the halves broke. But I soldiered on and eventually had some lovely little vessels waiting to be filled with sausagey goodness.

Then it was time to get cookin'! The recipe only called for 4 ounces of sausage, so really this is a fairly healthy dish when you consider that those 4 ounces get spread over 8 zucchini halves. I fried that up in a mercifully smaller frying pan that didn't break my wrists when I tried to pick it up!



Meanwhile, I combined the rest of the stuffing ingredients. These included 4 ounces of feta cheese (I used that instead of goat cheese, because I couldn't find goat cheese at the store), 4 ounces of mozarella cheese, 2 cups of diced Italian tomatoes (I used canned), fresh basil, and salt and pepper. When the sausage was done, I added it to the cheese mixture and stirred it all together.



All that was left was to STUFF! So I carefully stuffed each zucchini to its fill. I had a little bit of stuffing left over, so I put it in a pan and threw it in the oven separately, and later sampled it as a pre-book-club treat. YUM. Once the zucchini were stuffed, I sprinkled a little parmesan cheese over them and put them in the oven to cook away!



Time to turn my attention to the sou-berag, which is an Armenian lasagna. In order to save time, I decided to buy the oven-ready noodles, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. I should have just boiled the noodles. But oh well. This dish is also vegetarian friendly, but since it uses animal by-products, namely dairy, is not vegan friendly. It's also a recipe I was slightly anxious about due to the fact it uses cottage cheese. But since it used small curd cottage cheese, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. And the fact that it is a pretty simple recipe to make endeared it to my heart.

By now, you all know of my love for pasta, and I love lasagna a lot! I had high hopes for this dish. And for a lasagna, I found it pretty easy to boot! WOO HOO! Basically, you mix together a lot of cheese and spread it over the noodles.

The main problem I had was that I don't think Judy has a cheese grater. And I had a full pound of jack cheese to grate. So I wound up crumbling it. It actually worked out just fine. After that, it was easy--measuring out ricotta and cottage cheeses, chopping up parsley, beating up and adding a couple of eggs, and melting some cheese. The recipe had the baffling instructions of "half a cube of melted butter" and I couldn't tell if that meant half a stick or half a pound. I erred on the side of more is more and melted a quarter pound, which was right in the middle. Since most of it was supposed to be poured over the top of the finished, assembled lasagna, I only poured a splash into the mixture itself.

And then it was assembly time! I put down a layer of noodles and then a layer of cheese, another layer of noodles, another layer of cheese, and finished it off with a layer of noodles, which I then drenched in butter.




So that was it! I put it in the oven to cook up. I pulled it out after what I thought was a good amount of time, but those top noodles looked a little sketchy to me. My sister asked, "Aren't they supposed to be, you know...?" and she trailed off, so I supplied the word she was missing, "Edible?" "Yeah," she said, and I pondered the situation. We decided to put it back in the oven for a while to continue to soften, and I added some more butter just to be safe. In the end, the top noodles were kind of crispy, which is why I think I should just have boiled the noodles and been done with it.

My three finished dishes took up most of the table (sorry ladies!).



Man were they yummy!!! I was surprised about the vegetables with the mint--it was very subtle. I don't think I will make that dish again, just on account of we're not vegetable people. However, the other two dishes I LOVED!!! I will definitely make them again.

Try them and let me know what you think!