Hotter Than It Looks Thai Inspired Curry Base

Last night, we had shrimp, shrooms, and snow peas with which to make dinner, and The Man said he wanted something spicy, to which I mused aloud how I've noticed that people who tend to say, "Oh, that's spicy!" in response to eating something hot usually don't have a high tolerance for capsaicin heat.

To which The Man responded, "OK. Make something HOT."

So I did. :P

HOTTER THAN IT LOOKS THAI INSPIRED CURRY BASE

Serves 4 with about 1 pound of protein and 1 pound of veg added, served with steamed rice

*Caveat: For most people, this recipe will be unbearably HOT. You can easily turn down the heat by reducing the chilies. If you've a mild palate, start out with one fresh chili - maybe even a milder one like jalapeno - seeded and deveined and 1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes

I was originally going to write this up as a complete recipe including the proteins and veg (which I do outline for you further down this post), but I realized this morning that this makes a good and adaptable base to which you can add whatever proteins and veg you fancy.

Add 4 or 5 cups of unsalted chicken, seafood or veg stock, increase the salt and lime to taste, and you'll have a delicious soup!

- 1/4 yellow onion, finely minced
- 1/4 cup very finely chopped cilantro and/or basil (This is a great use for all those stems!)
- 2 Tablespoons finely minced ginger
- 2 Tablespoons finely minced garlic
- 3 serrano chilies, finely minced (seeds, veins and all) Thai bird chilies would be great, of course, but I had serranos. Chiles de arbol would also work well here.
- 1 Tablespoon crushed red chili flakes (Crushed red chili flakes are a way to add a fairly clean and unadulterated heat to your dishes without adding too much competing or distinct chili flavor.)
- the zest of 1 lime (or 3 kaffir lime leaves - I just used the lime zest because I didn't have the leaves handy. Lemon balm is also a great sub for kaffir lime leaves. Lemongrass would also add a similarly floral citrus element.)
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 1 to 2 teaspoons curry powder, depending on how strong a curry flavor you prefer
- 1 Tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 can of coconut milk (they're usually somewhere between 13 and 15 ounces)

1) In a preheated medium high pan, saute the aromatics - onion, garlic, ginger, chilies, chili flakes, and lime zest - in the 2 Tablespoons of oil until the onions are translucent. Add the curry powder, stir to incorporate, and let the curry bloom for a minute or so.

2) Add the remainder of the ingredients and stir to incorporate thoroughly, turn the heat up to high, and bring the curry to an active boil for a minute.

3) Add in your protein and veg and bring the curry back up to a boil for a minute or so, turn the heat down to medium high, and let it simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes, or until your protein is cooked through. Bite sized pieces of seafood will take no time at all (3 to 5 minutes), white meat chicken a little bit longer (5 to 7 minutes), and dark meat yet longer (7 to 10 minutes).

4) Give it a stir, adjust the seasoning if needed - a little more salt or fish sauce if you want it saltier, a little more lime juice if you like extra tang, maybe a pinch more of sugar to round out all the flavors - simmer another minute or two, and that's it! Serve with steamed rice.

For last night's curry, I added:

- 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (I used 31/40 size), lightly sauteed
- 1/2 pound button or crimini mushrooms, quartered and sauteed
- 1/2 pound snow peas, stems removed and lightly blanched and shocked if you have the time. If you don't, it's not a huge deal, but blanching and shocking does help them retain color and crunch
- 1/2 red bell pepper cut into 1/4-inch strips, sauteed
- a .8 oz can (the short one) of bamboo shoots, drained

But you can of course use whatever veg you like and have handy, following the general measurement guidelines of 1 pound of protein and 1 pound of veg for 4 servings.

You don't have to saute/blanch the protein and veg as outlined above, but I like how it helps them retain their color and texture when they simmer in the curry.

Enjoy! :)

shinae

Complete album HERE.

Thai-Korean Inspired Preserved Shrimp

I don't expect this will be the most popular concoction I've ever shared here. It is admittedly slightly hardcore and challenging stuff.

But it's the kind of stuff I grew up eating and loving as a little girl when they used to call me hahlmohni (Korean for grandmother) for my somewhat precocious inclination toward what were usually considered to be tastes acquired later in life.

And it was inspired by a dish we had at our dinner at Lers Ros with my friend Maria up in San Francisco, koong chae nam pla, which is a seasoned fish sauce brined raw shrimp with things like garlic, lemongrass, chilies, and fresh mint. 

When I took my first bite, it immediately reminded me of a Korean side dish called gaejahng (the preserved crab, not the dog soup), which is a similar soy sauce brined preparation, only made with raw blue crabs, eaten with steamed rice.

I left the heads on the shrimp because the stuff inside is similar to crab tomalley, and that stuff is the most prized element of Korean gaejahng.

Thai-Korean Inspired Preserved Raw Shrimp
(inspired by koong chae nam pla and gaejahng aka gejang)

- about 3/4 pounds raw head-on 31-40 count shrimp, body peeled and deveined, heads intact

Brine ingredients:

- 1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
- 1 habanero, thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 2 chiles de arbol, thinly sliced
- about 1.5" knob of ginger, peeled and finely julienned
- 1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes
- 2 dried Kaffir lime leaves, finely julienned (optional)
- the zest and juice of 1 Kaffir lime (about 2 tablespoons) If you don't have Kaffir lime, you can just the zest of 1 regular lime and about 1.5 Tablespoons regular lime juice
- 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 Tablespoons water
- 2 Tablespoons sugar

1) Combine all the brine ingredients and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

2) Lay the shrimp in a single layer in a bottle or plastic container and spoon enough brine over it to coat. Repeat the process until all the shrimp is layered and brined.

3) Store in the fridge for at least 4 hours before eating, redistributing the shrimp 2 or 3 times to ensure even seasoning.

I served it tonight over a bed of green cabbage and chopped fresh mint and cilantro with some extra brine spooned over the greens so we could squeeze some fresh lime juice on top and make a salad of it.

And that went perfectly with our dinner of Coconut Coconut Curry and steamed jasmine rice washed down with a fat mug of mint limeade. :)

shinae

Sweet & Spicy Thai Inspired Maple Glazed Salmon

While I've had the luxury to indulge in all kinds of leisurely cooking for the past couple of years, I realize that that will likely come to a temporary moratorium once the Pod hatches. And also that lots of peeps here already have very compelling reasons to find quicker and easier recipes than some of the recipes I post.

And when it comes to proteins, nothing says quick and easy like seafood or chicken breast. And while I'm not a huge fan of chicken breast, I could eat proteins from the water all day.

So when The Man asked me to make something Asian inspired, sweet, and spicy, and with a kick for dinner last night, I came up with this salmon recipe to serve with some jasmine rice and slaw with which I am REALLY pleased. 

And the entree itself only takes 20 minutes.

SWEET & SPICY THAI INSPIRED MAPLE GLAZED SALMON
Serves 3 to 4

- a roughly 1.5 pound salmon fillet
- salt & pepper to season
- 1 Tablespoon oil for searing salmon

- 1 large clove garlic, minced (just under a Tablespoon)
- 2 Tablespoons shallots, thinly sliced
- 5 to 7 stems cilantro, chopped (stems and leaves)
- 1/2 a jalapeno, thinly sliced (or if you like hotter chilies, you can certainly use another kind)
- 1 Tablespoon oil for the glaze
- 3 Tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 teaspoons chili garlic paste (I use Huy Fong.)
- the zest of half a lime
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 1.5 teaspoons fish sauce

1) Preheat the oven to 400F and prepare an oven safe dish or baking sheet in which to bake the salmon. I like to line the dish or sheet with foil for easy cleanup.

2) Season the salmon filllet lightly on both sides with salt and pepper.

3) In a bowl, combine the garlic, shallots, cilantro, jalapeño, and oil, and toss to thoroughly coat. The reason I do it in this order instead of just stirring all the glaze ingredients together is that coating the aromatics with the oil first gives them a toastier, more caramelized flavor when they're cooking in the oven on top of the fish.

4) Add the rest of the glaze ingredients together and stir to mix thoroughly.

5) In a non-stick pan, bring the cooking oil up to medium high temp, and sear the salmon fillet for 2 minutes per side.

6) Transfer the salmon to your oven-safe dish, pour the glaze evenly on top, as well as any remaining cooking oil from the pan.

7) Bake the salmon on the center rack for 6 minutes, then turn the oven onto broil and place the salmon so that the top of the salmon is about 5 inches away from the broiler heating element, and broil for another 4 to 5 minutes.

That's it!

Serve with steamed rice and slaw like we did, or atop a bed of salad greens dressed with some of the glaze and a squeeze of fresh lime, and it's a quick 30 Minutes (or fewer) meal!

Our slaw from last night: green cabbage,
white onion, cilantro, jalapeño, and red
bell pepper, tossed with some dressed up
nuoc cham, extra lime juice and zest, & oil.

P.S. I think this is probably a pretty good recipe to convert salmon haters. :)))


Here's another: "Miso" Salmon.

shinae

Lers Ros - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Dinner on our last day in San Francisco...

Sometimes people ask me why I open myself up so much on the interwebs when it often subjects you to trolls and stalkers and other kinds of bad juju. But when I had to walk away from just about everything from my old life except my parents and my children about 5 years ago, opening up on the interwebs in a number of ways often saved me from a sense of utter loneliness and disconnectedness.

pad kee mow with chicken

It was an opportunity to start fresh and often find comfort and healing in the kindness and camaraderie of strangers with whom I had no baggage and who had no expectations of me, or a need for me to be any number of things for them that took a toll on my psyche. People who accepted and understood me for the person I had partly chosen and was partly forced to become.

koong chae nam pla
(fresh raw prawns with chili, lemon grass,
a fish sauce/lime based dressing,
fresh mint and sliced raw garlic)

A small handful of those many kind strangers would become trusted friends - something I desperately needed after a long period of wondering if I could trust myself to choose friends anymore.

And one of those friends is my friend Maria, whom I met through chowhound and whom I got to know over a series of chowhound posts that diaried our daily meals and little tidbits of our daily lives. And then through a series of facebook posts that diaried even more of our meals and even bigger tidbits of our lives. And then eventually through almost daily communications of some kind or another where we shared even more of our lives, characters, and personalities, and where I often found myself feeling like a girl who had girlfriends again.

larb ped yang (duck larb)

So you can imagine how super fucking excited I was to finally get to sit down and actually share one of those daily meals with her on her turf. 

And since she knew I'd been craving some really good Thai food for the longest, Maria treated me and Dean to the best meal of our trip at Lers Ros. And we proceeded to have one of the best Thai meals I've ever had over almost five hours of great conversation and laughter and a little bit of Sauvignon Blanc for me, a little bit more of it for them. :)

koh moo yang
(grilled pork shoulder w. chili & rice powder sauce)

Each dish was beautifully seasoned and balanced and felt elevated in its preparation in a really clean, comfortable, casual, and unassuming environment that doesn't look or feel like it's aspiring to anything - which is really rare these days in a sea of restaurants that often look and act like they aspire to some kind of greatness and don't really deliver. And their menu is a wonderfully staggering selection of dishes you don't often get to see on a standard Thai resto menu.

pad kra prow moo krob -
stir fried pork belly with crispy rinds
and fried basil leaves

I can't recommend this place highly enough for really excellent Thai food, regardless of where you think you've had great Thai food before.

shinae

Lers Ros Thai
730 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.931.6917
www.lersros.com

STRANGE GRUB - Stir-Fried Sand Fleas...

I probably should have started with the uni post, but this is the first post in what I *PLAN* (and to know me is to know that *plan* means something closer to *hope against my undisciplined behavior patterns*) to be a regular feature in which I eat what I know other people consider to be weird crap, and then write about it.

Though I am utterly humbled by things like Zimmern eating woodworms in the Philippines and Bourdain choking down poopy wildebeest poopchute in Namibia (I think it was wildebeest, anyway), I have always considered myself a fairly adventurous eater. I attribute a good deal of it to having been born in Korea and being introduced at an early age to a lot of food ideas and flavor profiles that most folks here in the US might consider challenging.

Emerita talpoida
aka sand crab
aka mole crab
aka sand flea
aka sea cicada
aka What's For Dinner :)

When I do eat things that make other people go *ewww*, it's out of sincere enjoyment or hope that I will find enjoyment, and not for sport or novelty. I won't eat things on a dare that I don't think have the potential to be delicious to me by whatever complex calculus I derive that it could. So while I have eaten hot vin lon (the Vietnamese version of balut) and enjoyed it, you probably won't find me eating dog soup because I'm pretty sure my emotional attachment to dogs will keep me from tasting whatever kind of yumminess is to be found in a morsel of canine.

I imagine these posts might really gross some people out, but I'm not writing them so much for the ick factor. I'm writing them because this is the truth, if an occasional one, of the way I eat. And because I think it a worthwhile endeavor to explore the idea that the edibility and deliciousness of a thing is very much a mental, social, and cultural construct.

a big'un - about an inch long

Why will I eat an unhatched baby duck but not a baby dog? Why am I more willing to eat these sand crabs that I'm writing about today, which are essentially the beetles or roaches of the sea, than grasshoppers and earthworms of land? Why do people who eat lips and assholes of cows stuffed into a casing think it's gross to eat chicken feet at a dim sum parlor? It is a strange logic indeed by which we decide which grub is too strange to eat, and which not.

If anything, I hope that this post (and hopefully the ones to follow in this series) serves to open minds, my own included, about the things people do or don't eat, will or won't eat, and why.

SPICY THAI CHILI GARLIC SAND FLEAS

Almost certain to be enough to serve the very limited number of people in your life who won't run away and retch at the thought of eating it.

When I first moved to Oceanside and found these critters washed up alive in the sand at the beach, I was reminded of something I had several years ago in Phuket that looked a lot like them. A couple weeks later, I watched Andrew Zimmern eating something very similar on a re-run of Bizarre Foods - Thailand and determined that if I were to find out these suckers were safely edible, which I did, I'd grab a handful the next time I could, and cook them up. Which I also did.

- a handful of sand fleas, soaked and rinsed thoroughly, 4 or 5 times, to get rid of all that sand
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar

- 3 Tablespoons oil for frying

- 1 wedge of lime to squeeze over the sand crabs before eating

1) Rinse your handful of sand fleas well and thoroughly, several times, in order to get the sand off their little sand flea persons.

I think I changed the water about five times... 

...to get them this clean.

2) Put them in the fridge for about 20 minutes so they'll fall asleep. *Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...*

3) Make your chili garlic sauce by mixing the chili garlic paste, minced garlic, fish sauce and brown sugar in a small bowl.

4) Heat your oil in a wok over high heat until it's screamin/smokin hot and throw your fleas in.

5) Stir fry them critters 2 to 3 minutes, or until the shells turn completely orange and have been orange for 20 seconds or so.

6) Pour in your chili garlic sauce and toss them little roaches til they're evenly coated.

7) Serve with a healthy squeeze of lime juice and a lot of frosty cold Singha which most of your guests will likely need in order to be able to choke one of these suckers down.

In all seriousness, they taste a lot like little shrimp crossed with soft shell crab if they were deep fried with the shell on and didn't have a lot of meat. Sweet, spicy, sticky, crunchy. Pretty decent beer food if you're not too skeeved by the idea of it to reframe it as food.

Really, folks. It's just a crustacean. Try getting me to eat a cockroach, though, and that's a whole 'nother story.

shinae

A Wok Inn To A Different Perspective...

As much as I care to ensure that the food I make is delicious (well, to me anyway), I'm a little bit of a dice roller when it comes to dining out in low to mid price restaurants. While I frequently yelp to find new restaurants, I am almost as likely to try a place for some odd compulsion often understood only by my subconscious mind.

Their version of red curry.
P.S. If you look real close, you can see Christmas...

This is supposed to be the pahd kee mow.
It looks a lot like pahd thai.
It tastes like neither.
But that's ok.

And having moved from Orange County to coastal North San Diego County (with short in-between stints in other places), and no longer being willing to drive more than 20 minutes for a casual meal, I've had to reset the bar when it comes to dining out. It's not exactly a culinary desert out here, and it's easy enough to find decent food of a few sorts, (I'm particularly pleased to have found a decent sushi joint), but the food scene in North County is still somewhat unpolished from a lack of demand and competition it would seem...

But back to my whack methodology of restaurant selection, which is not unlike the way I pick football teams if someone is dumb enough to ask me to make picks. Sometimes it's the fonts and colors on the signage, other times an intriguing name, and yet other times the nearest option that suits the current craving. Yesterday, we picked Door Number 3.

A little bit of everything on my plate.
P.S. If you look underneath, you'll see London.

I saw London, the Man saw France...

I wanted something generally Southeast Asian, and as luck would have it, The Wok Inn - which happens to be five minutes from our place and run by a middle-aged, peroxide blonde, half Vietnamese, half Thai lady named Linda who reminds me of every madame I've ever seen in a Vietnam War pic - serves Vietnamese, Thai, AND Chinese food.

Three - count 'em - THREE cuisines.
That's Linda up top.
'Ssup, Linda? :)

???Three cuisines under one roof and no talk of fusion. Isn't that a red flag, Shinae??? 

Why, yes. IT IS. A HUGEBIG, HONKIN' RED FLAG, and precisely the strangely compelling kind of reason that makes me want to shoot craps for my lunch and eat there.

Turn on, tune in, drop out.
Is that a dog made of pink feathers???

And by *there*, I mean dusty, old silk flowers strewn all over the place, some with lights hanging from them, blown up pictures of someone's daughter's prom night hanging on the east wall, garishly red cheong sams and designer knock-off purses for sale in the southeast corner (along with other things that look vaguely like Beanie Babies and a stuffed Ziggy), a whole bunch of other things tacked (literally) onto non-strategic places on the wall that range from menus to baskets to photos to paintings to newspaper clippings that tell me this place has been in business for over 20 years, and finally a piece de resistance of sorts to cap off the dizzying array of everything some Asian person's hillbilly cousin might find aesthetically pleasing, light fixtures that remind you of a brothel and Valentine's Day at the same time.

Something to take the edge off the heat
and the *TRIP*py Chic decor...

I don't know what it is about Thai food that
makes me double up on the starch...
P.S. If you look real close, it's leaves this time.

Overwhelmed by three cuisines' worth of menu options, we told Linda we wanted something spicy, and she told us to order anything off the Thai menu. We ordered red curry and pahd kee mow, both with shrimp, because the shrimp was good and plentiful on this day according to her. So, apparently, were the red and green bell peppers that managed to find their way in large quantities into both dishes, neither of which tasted quite like the things they were supposed to be, and yet oddly edible in that way they become so when you decide you're not going to judge them as the things they purport to be. Both a little on the sweet side and likely adapted to the palates of the Marines who live and work just down the street.

These lights made me consider telling the Man that
 I'd love him long time when we got home,
but something about garlic and chilies
keeps a decent woman from
doing such a thing...

But sometimes you walk into a place, hopefully for the food, and you walk out having experienced something else that makes you think your time and money weren't spent for naught even if the food was fair to middlin'. This restaurant, which has been in operation for twenty-five years now, appears in so many ways to be a monument to this woman Linda's tenacity, adaptability, persistence and resourcefulness.

Thai cuisine if Vietnamese doesn't suit you, Vietnamese if Chinese doesn't suit you, Chinese if Vietnamese and Thai don't suit you. Don't want to eat? Howzabout a purse? Don't need a purse? You might like this stuffed Ziggy. Don't like Ziggy? Maybe you need a new cheong sam...

Pictures of family and friends, probably to remind her of the people and things she's giving her life to this restaurant for. Bright, colorful, mismatched things that remind her of home, or maybe just look pretty to her. After all, she's gotta be there all damned day, 7 days a week, 11 AM to 11 PM. And plates of every design from who knows how many seasons of her life. Crappy yelp reviews from snarky young hipsters who can't see beyond the tacky decor and less than perfect food to a woman who probably shed more blood, sweat and tears just getting to this country than they've seen in their entire, short, and fabulous lives.

And still she triumphs, one scrappy day after another, twenty-five years and going...

We foodniks tend to believe it's always all about the food, but often, life is about so much more.

In all honestly, I'm not sure how likely I am to return anytime in the near future. There's a lot more ground to cover in this place I now call home. But despite getting something other than I bargained for, I'm not one bit sorry for my lunch at The Wok Inn.

The Wok Inn
511 Mission Avenue
Oceanside, CA 92054
760.754.2167

shinae

P.S. I don't crave neoprene dogpile football or football players in any way, shape, or form, ever.

Lessons In Thai Takeout...

"Thai Table. How can I help you?"

"I'd like to place an order for pickup, please."

"Okay. What you want order?"

"I'd like pahd thai with chicken and red curry with shrimp."

"How hot you want? One to ten."

"TEN, please!"

"NOOOOOOOOO. You sure? Who is it? I know you??"

"I'm sure. I promise. I just moved to town, so you don't know me, but I'm sure I can handle a ten." <vocal smile>

"NOOOOOOOOO. REALLY??? You really really sure????"

<laughing> "I'm sure. I like my food very, very hot."

<warning tone> "Okay. You going to pick up? When you come, I see you!"

"I'll be there to pick up. How long will it take?"

"Fifteen minute, okay? I see you then."

"Great. Thank you. See you in fifteen minutes!"

And that was my first proper takeout order in the new digs. Thai food so flaming hot it made my nose run, my eyes water, and my inner ears flame. Perfect. Just the way I like it. 

Red curry with shrimp

Well, ok. Actually, the pahd thai was a little on the sweet side and the curry a touch on the thin side for my liking, but the food was delicious anyway. Not just because it was as hot as I like it (which is rare), and not just because we'd been unpacking and arranging and rearranging stuff all day...

The food was indeed tasty in its own right, but it was also delicious beyond its execution because of what happened when I went to pick it up. As I walked through the doors of this little hole in the wall Thai joint in a nondescript strip center on Oceanside Boulevard, I was greeted by an elderly Thai man only slightly taller than my mother and sporting an unbelieving and impish grin at the sight of the newbie who surely would not be able to stomach the Scoville units that came with a *10*.

Pahd Thai with chicken

"You really sure you can eat, huh?"

"I'm really sure. But I promise I'll tell you next time if it's too hot! ;) Oh, and may I have some lime, too?"

"Ohhhh. LIME. To eat with pahd thai. You know, huh? You know how to eat our food! You want chili in fish sauce too?"

"YES! I'd LOVE some!"

"Chili in fish sauce for curry. Lime for pahd thai. YOU KNOW."

He then motioned to the kitchen staff - who were all smiling and peering out of the kitchen to see their apparently hapless victims - to assemble our proper condiments as he rang us up.

"Okay, okay. Here your chili in fish sauce and your lime!"

Bird chilies in fish sauce.
We know, and we *LIKE*.

And having left a tip that reflected our appreciation for the old man's genuine hospitality and happiness at having served customers who "know how to eat our food," we sped home to devour the flaming hot dishes made even more delicious by a couple of cold, cold beers.

Though I had to be without my kitchen for a few days, I was grateful. Not only for the first good meal after several meals of the fast food necessitated by moving, but also for the reminder of how food brings us together and enables us to relate through barriers of language, culture, and even age. And of how food gives many of us such a sense of pride in our heritage that we can't help but smile big when someone else shows appreciation for and interest in the foods of our families and childhoods.

Sometimes it feels like our world has become such a cynical and saturated place that we forget how a thing as basic as food, sometimes the simplest and humblest kind, can bring so much joy and depth to our lives. But if I couldn't cook for a few days, I'm glad I was reminded in a brief encounter with a little old Thai man why I do.

shinae

P.S. I can't wait to go back and tell him we ate it all and survived.

Thai Table

1910 Oceanside Blvd.

Suite C

Oceanside, CA

760.721.4850