use real butter

Recipe: laab

First the admin stuff: I’ve decided to show only 3 posts per page. I’m not sure if this matters or not to anyone other than me, but it makes the traffic on my server easier to handle. The traffic… I thought when we left Southern California we also left traffic behind! Not so. When I made this blog public I was expecting maybe a couple dozen foodies to drop in from time to time to talk food. But now, each time someone links to me on StumbleUpon, it’s as if all of those people are kicking my dear old server in the shins. This blog, my other blogs, and my entire website go dead. So until I can switch out the hardware and optimize caching within the next week or so, I am blocking requests from StumbleUpon. Sorry folks – but you are killing me with your love and I think we need a break… just a short one. It’s not that I don’t enjoy visitors, just that I hadn’t prepared appropriately for the magnitude. So let me be a proper host and get my house in order (i.e. put the old server out to pasture).

On to the topic of the day: larb or larp or laab. It is a wonderful Thai seasoned meat salad of sorts. We were introduced to the dish by our friend, Pailin. She’s Thai and she’s a chef and she’s amazing. We met her hitch-hiking in the Eastern Sierra. Jeremy and I had hiked out of the John Muir Trail a day early because we fell a day behind and were going to miss our scheduled shuttle pick up at Whitney Portal. Instead, we exited via Kearsarge Pass to Onion Valley where we encountered Pailin and Wayne as they finished a day hike. I had never hitched before, but I’m not a very intimidating person (except that I stunk something awful after 6 days of backpacking without a shower), nor did they appear to be serial killers. Gee, I hope my mom isn’t reading this… I asked if we could catch a ride into town. We became fast friends and they stayed with us in Pasadena a couple of times when they came to LA to replenish their pantry with Asian groceries. Wayne and Pailin treated us to dinner at this authentic Thai hole-in-the-wall joint in downtown LA. That’s where we had laab and that’s where the addiction began.

My version of the dish uses ground turkey because it’s healthier, and I probably Chinesified it over the years adding ginger and garlic. When I decided to post this recipe, I realized that perhaps I should check its authenticity against some of my Thai recipe books. Hmmm, no garlic or ginger… Anyway, you can use pork or beef or chicken or tofu. There appears to be enormous flexibility on this dish.

Recipe: tamales, new mexico style

There is a certain class of food that makes its way across cultures. It involves taking some sort of starch and wrapping it around another ingredient or ingredients, cooking it, and passing into bliss as you eat it. These foods are best when homemade and I have made it one of my many small missions in life to learn to make each of these before I die.

So far, I have managed Chinese potstickers, Argentine empanadas, and as of today, tamales. Others on the todo list include, but are not limited to: samosas, ravioli, tsa-tsao bao (Chinese bbq pork buns), tsong-tse (think Chinese rice tamales). If you can think of other delicious homemade delicacies that I’m overlooking, be sure to let me know!

My whole motivation for making carne adovada a few days ago was to ultimately try my hand at homemade tamales. On our road trip back home from New Mexico a few weeks back, I procured some corn husks along with those beloved dried New Mexican reds. I’m sure I could have found them locally in Colorado if I had looked, but that’s the thing about where I live – you have to LOOK pretty hard to find certain ethnic foods and it makes me insane. I hate shopping. I like cooking.

Recipe: chinese tea-smoked chicken

Sometimes I think I need to get out more.

Is there a recipe that you grew up with and loved, believing that it was some special family recipe, only to learn later that everyone knows how to make this dish and what? did you grow up under a rock? That seems to have happened to me on several occasions. The first one that I recall was when I was maybe 3 years old. My paternal grandparents were visiting from Taiwan. I didn’t endear myself to my Nai Nai (Chinese for paternal grandmother) at first because I kept hearing my parents talk about Yieh Yieh Nai Nai coming to visit. Yieh Yieh is what Kris and I were to address Grandpa as. But no one actually spelled this out for me. So the first I thing I said when they arrived was, “That’s Yieh Yieh Nai Nai,” looking at my Grandpa, “but who is she?” pointing to Grandma.

I fixed that blunder pretty quickly though. Nai Nai made some toast one morning and gave me a slice. I thought it was the best thing I had ever tasted and kept raving about it. Toasted Wonder Bread. I thought she was the only one who knew how to make this amazing snack. Toasted Wonder Bread. I’ll bet she got a kick out of that since she wasn’t really into cooking.

But my maternal grandma, Po Po knows how to cook. She made this smoked chicken on occasion throughout my childhood and knew it was a favorite of mine. Po Po lived with us for the first 9 years or so of my childhood (they tell me she arrived when I was 2, but as far as I’m concerned, she was there from the start) and she’s so much more than a grandma to me. When she moved to Michigan to live with one of my aunts, she used to make a batch of smoked chicken whenever Kris and I visited. She would laugh while Kris and I fought over how many pieces each of us was to get. My mom learned how to make it and then Kris and I would fight over the chicken when we went home to visit. It’s that good!

**Jump for more butter**