Green curry chicken and baby corn

I was very excited to make this recipe, because Thai curries have always been a mystery to me.  I made the green curry paste myself in a mortar and pestle using about 10 ingredients.  It was interesting to do this, because I finally got to see all the ingredients that contribute to the flavor.

In that regard, curry pastes are the Thai equivalent of garam masalas.  They're composed of a large number of ingredients, none of which by itself has a prominent presence in the final dish.  It would make more sense to buy pre-made garam masalas than pre-made curry pastes, because curry pastes are made primarily from fresh herbs and vegetables, while garam masalas are made primarily from less perishable dried spices.

I followed the recipe in David Thompson's book Thai Food.  It went very smoothly.  Making the curry paste was somewhat laborious, due more to the prepping of the ingredients (peeling, chopping, grating, etc.) than to actually grinding them.

Scallops in Maharashtrian spinach and peanut sauce

Following a recipe in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries.  I served it with roasted curry leaf rice and lime pickle.

Orecchiette with broccoli and anchovy sauce

This is a recipe in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  The anchovies are ground to a paste in the olive oil.  Parboiled broccoli is then sauteed in the anchovy oil before being tossed with the pasta.  Hazan has a similar recipe for cauliflower and anchovy sauce, which I think is better.

I think this recipe tastes better when the broccoli is boiled until very soft, such that it disintegrates into a green, smothering sauce.  However, the texture is worse and it's visually unappealing.  Next time I make this recipe I'll try cooking some of the broccoli for longer than the rest, so I get the best of both worlds.

I bought the multi-colored orecchiette from Bay Cities on Lincoln Blvd in Santa Monica.

Penne with tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and rosemary

I bought a new Marcella Hazan cookbook: Marcella's Italian Kitchen.  This book has a more personal, home-cooking vibe than Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, which is focused on traditional preparations and fundamental techniques.

The first recipe I tried was this dish of penne with tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and rosemary.  I used a very good, drinkable balsamic vinegar.  Still, I thought the sauce was too tart for my tastes.  I really love olive oil.  I feel that vinegar tends to mask its wonderful aromas and mouthfeel.  I get particularly annoyed when restaurants combine the olive oil with balsamic vinegar for bread dipping.  Just the olive oil please! Here, I couldn't really taste the olive oil the way I like.

As for rosemary, I love its aroma, but I think its presence in dishes can be overpowering.  Combining the balsamic vinegar with the strong rosemary, this sauce was aggressive.  Not a total failure--I even enjoyed it--but I wouldn't make it again.

Thai food

This is the most exotic stuff I've ever cooked, and the most difficult when factoring in sourcing of ingredients.  I hope cooking Thai food will get easier as I get more familiar with the ingredients.  All the dishes follow recipes in David Thompson's book Thai Food.

Fermented bamboo shoot salad.  This is a classic Lao/Issan (NE Thai) dish.  I fermented sliced bamboo shoots for two weeks on my window sill along with lemongrass, kaffir leaves, galangal, and bird chillis.  Then I combined the bamboo shoots with fermented fish paste, lime juice, ground roasted red chilis, ground toasted rice, Thai cilantro, mint, scallions, and shallots.

Fermented fish is known as "pla ra" in Thailand, "padek" in Laos, "prahok" in Cambodia, and "mắm cá" in Vietnam.  It's thicker and more pungent than the more well-known "fish sauce" (which is the pressed liquid from less-fermented fish).  If pla ra tastes like anything, it's some stinky French cheese.  Here's a picture of one commercial variety, made from a Southeast Asian freshwater fish called gourami and mashed to a creamy consistency.  Several other varieties with different consistencies and made from different fishes can be found in Southeast Asian grocery stores.

Trout and apple eggplant salad.  The most common variety of Thai eggplant looks like a little green apple (or closer still, a tomatillo).  David Thompson refers to these eggplants as "apple eggplants."  Oddly enough, they taste like a cross between eggplants and apples.  They can be eaten raw or cooked.

Oyster and banana blossom salad.  Banana blossoms have the texture of cabbage and taste vaguely likely bananas.  The oysters and banana blossoms are bathed in a warm sauce based on coconut cream, which I bought from the wonderful store Rawesome on Rose Blvd in Venice.

Black sticky rice dessert.  I steamed half black sticky rice and half white sticky rice for three hours, then added sugar and aromatic pandanus (screw pine) leaves and steamed for a bit, then removed the pandanus leaves and stirred in coconut cream.  Black sticky rice leaks its color everywhere when it cooks, so the white sticky rice is no longer conspicuous.  I figure the white sticky rice is in the recipe to make the dessert softer--black sticky rice is chewy (even after 3 hours of steaming).

Indian food

Dal makhani (Punjabi black lentils in cream sauce).  This is a ubiquitous dish on menus of Indian restaurants in the U.S.  I avoid cooking things that I can just go to a restaurant and eat, but I had all the ingredients for this dish on hand and it was a good way to use them up.  I cooked the black lentils in a pressure cooker, which is by far the best way to cook them--they take forever to boil.

Stewed baby turnips.  I bought these tender little turnips from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market.  The most interesting of the flavoring ingredients are mint and "black cumin" (kala jeera).  Black cumin doesn't taste like or look much like cumin.  It has a grassy, bitter aroma very well suited to turnips.

Fenugreek chapati.  Fresh fenugreek leaves are very hard to find in Los Angeles, even at Indian food stores.  I bought this fenugreek at Pioneer Grocery in the Little India section of Artesia.

All following recipes in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries

Japanese food

Sauteed shishito peppers in miso/sake sauce with bonito flakes

Mushroom rice (shiitake gohan).  The rice is boiled in dashi, soy sauce, and sake along with diced fried tofu cakes (abura age) and later the broiled shiitakes.

Abalone and kiwi salad.  The dressing is lemon juice and light soy sauce.  I steamed the abalone for over two hours before cleaning it--a lot of work for this little dish.

The latter two dishes follow recipes in Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art.  

Broiled salmon in lemon-thyme-butter sauce w/ leeks and French potato salad

Fish is hard.

Maharashtrian lentils

This is one of more than 40 stewed lentil recipes in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries.  He calls it "kokum moong aur masoor dal."  There are two kinds of lentils--split, skinned whole green lentils (which are yellow) and split, skinned brown lentils (which are salmon colored, but disintegrate and turn yellow in the pot).

Flavoring comes from a bed of sauteed onion and garlic and numerous spices and other ingredients, most notably coconut and kokum.  Kokum is the dried fruit of a tree in West India.  It is slightly sour and has a unique earthy taste.

It's a shame that dal isn't more photogenic.

Macaroni and cheese

This is the unhealthiest thing I've ever made (and one of the tastiest).  It's the first time I've made macaroni and cheese.  I followed this James Beard recipe.  I used four cheeses: a small chunk of a 10 year old Vermont cheddar, a 3 year old Quebec cheddar, fontina, and parmesan.

Rustic bread two ways

My favorite bread in LA is this rustic Italian bread from Bay Cities, which is always warm and freshly baked.

grilled with Catalan tapenade (a.k.a. garum), creme fraiche, and a sundried tomato

• tapenade ingredients: nicoise olives, salted whole anchovies, capers, cognac, dijon mustard, raw garlic, olive oil

ungrilled with a puree of white beans (fabes) and roasted garlic, topped with pomegranate molasses

Gorgonzola-parmesan polenta with maple roasted pecans

Tahini baked fish with herbed farro

I loosely followed a recipe for tahini baked fish in Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food, which I've made a couple of times before.  

Indian food

Stuffed eggplant in Kolhapuri peanut sauce (bharli vangi)

Paneer and potato rice, pickled lime, daikon raita

Indian gin and tonic

(I followed recipes in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries pretty closely.)

Thai food

Tom yum soup with shredded chicken

Pad thai tofu and shrimp

I worked from recipes in David Thompson's Thai Food.

Mujaddara

Mujaddara is made with lentils and either bulgur or rice.  The latter version, which is more common in the U.S., is also known as megadarra.  Mujaddara can be flavored in many different ways, but there are two constants: lots of olive oil and lots of browned onions.

I made this mujaddara with bulgur.  I flavored it with chicken stock, tomato paste, and pinches of several spices (cinnamon, allspice, coriander, black pepper, cayenne, and turmeric).

Croxetti with walnut sauce

The sauce is poached walnuts, olive oil, creme fraiche, nutmeg, and parmesan.

Rice with Syrian almond sauce

The sauce is almonds, chicken stock, lemon, salt, crushed garlic, white pepper, parsley, and turmeric.  At first I was concerned that it was too liquidy for the rice, but this unusual dish (adapted from Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food) hit the spot.

Tunisian mashed potatoes

Seasoned with olive oil, parsley, scallions, white pepper, and sweet paprika.

Peas and homemade paneer

Seasoned with fresh mint and crushed cumin seeds

(following recipe in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries)