Beef Rendang

This is the CC's second-favorite beef dish with the honors going to steak tartare.

A true masterpiece of Indonesian cooking but it does take some work to make. It requires a ton of time and it's even better the next day. The CC once started it at five in the evening which turned out to be a terrible idea. The hungry hordes waited and we ate at ten at night.

The CC suggests starting at noon for dinner. The dish literally makes itself. All you need is a timer and towards the end a little bit of stirring every 10 minutes. (This is one of those places where a large non-stick flat pan works great!)

Rendang is actually a preservation technique not significantly different from the French duck confit or the Philippine adobo. It's as much a mechanism of preserving the meat in the absence of refrigeration as it is a cooking technique.

(There's a reason that the meat is tender but almost dry and coated with a fatty sheen and the list of spices includes garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and especially turmeric all of which have strong anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.)

The recipe is adapted from James Oseland. (He skips a few crucial spices but since these are old-hat to people used to Indian cooking, the CC has restored them.)

Traditionally, made with water buffalo, you really want the leanest cut of beef that you can get — boneless chuck, top round, bottom round, or even shoulder. It's going to be braised in coconut milk and a ton of spices so there will be the plenty of time for the dish to turn meltingly tender.

James Oseland does have one of the great lines of all time:

Rendang has its own lethargic cooking rhythm, so that the more you try to rush it, the longer it seems to take.

This is talking truth to lazy cooks. Just let it do it's own thing, stir it occasionally, indulge in a book or a crossword, and it will make itself.  It has its own meditative rhythm which cannot be rushed.

The accompaniment (shown below) is a classic nasi kuning (= turmeric rice) which is nothing more than rice boiled with fresh turmeric and salt — pandanus leaves if you have them.

(Note that traditional nasi kuning would generally be cooked with coconut milk but if you do that for such a rich dish, the two would clash so you should go with the simpler style.)

While the recipe is complexly spiced, it's emphatically not "spicy". It has a layered complexity not pure heat.

You will need a side salad and while the CC went with greens and tomatoes (which is a tad French); you'll be equally well served with the classic — slices of cucumbers, salt, and whole chillies.

 
Ingredients

Flavoring Paste

1 whole nutmeg (cracked)
5 cloves
2 cardamoms
1/4 tsp cumin

5 candlenuts (read notes)

1 largish piece of turmeric (or 2 small ones)
2" ginger
2" galangal
3 stalks lemongrass (sliced diagonally very thin)

5-7 fresh red chilis (more if you like it spicy)

3 cloves garlic

6 shallots (coarsely chopped)

dash of palm sugar (substitute by brown sugar)

Main

2 lbs boneless beef chuck (or bottom round) - cubed in 2" pieces
2 1/2 cups coconut milk

1/2 cup asam keping water
1/2 cup roasted dried coconut

3 thick stalks lemongrass (tied into a knot)
1 piece cinnamon stick
7 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 whole daun salan leaves (read notes)
salt

To Serve

1 tbsp kaffir lime leaves (very finely shredded)

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle. No, the food processor will not work. Deal with it! The CC knows that people claim it does including Oseland but it gets the textures all wrong. Oddly, the shallots are not soft enough to just dice finely. You need to pound them.

Note 2: Add kosher salt to the mixture while you are pounding soft ingredients. It makes it far easier to control the texture. You won't need to add salt to the final product.

Note 3: Candle nuts are hard to find outside of specialty stores. While most recipes call for macadamia, the CC finds that hazelnuts actually provide the right kind of fat content and taste. You will need 10 hazelnuts since candle nuts are larger.

Note 4: You're bluntly going to have trouble finding asam keping (= "garcinia atroviridis".) Your best choice is to use kudampuli from Southern Indian cooking (= "garcinia cambogia"  or "garcinia gummi-gutta".) If you are totally stuck, use the North Indian kokum (= "garcinia indica") or even in the worst case, plain ol' tamarind. (This makes less difference than you think. It's primary job is the both tenderize the meat and make it less "meaty" while adding a subtle sour flavor.)

Note 5: The remaining fresh spices are easily available at your local Thai store. They're so popular now that the CC found all of them this weekend at his local farmers' market. The dried spices are Indian classics. You should be able to find them in any supermarket or even cheaper in the Indian markets. Use whole ones freshly ground not pre-ground ones!

Note 6: The leaves known as daun salan are actually dried leaves of the cassia tree. Not cinnamon but cassia. They are called tējapattā in Hindi (= तेजपत्ता, literally: "cinnamon leaves") and you find them in Indian stores labeled as "bay leaves" which is complete nonsense since they taste nothing like traditional bay laurel. (If you don't have them, your best bet is a smattering of cinnamon or cassia although the dried leaves are stronger in flavor so amp it up a notch or two.)

Note 7: The two absolute non-negotiables are lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves both of which add very strong citrus notes. In fact, as you read in the recipe below, you need more kaffir lime leaves finely slivered to add to the beef as you serve it (easily seen in the picture above.)

Note 8: Nutmeg is also crucial. Enjoy your happy vivid dreams!

Recipe

To make the asam keping water, just add the dried ingredient to some water and boil it for a few minutes. This is one of the places the microwave works great. (If using tamarind, just cover it with boiling water. When it cools down, squish it with your hands and pass through a sieve. Discard the solids.)

Take all the ingredients for the flavoring paste and pound them using a mortar and pestle. First do all the spices and the hard ingredients then all the soft ingredients. (They are listed in the order that you should do them above.)

Don't worry if your mortar gets full. Just empty it into a bowl and mix afterwards.

This pounding will take the better part of 20-30 minutes so patience is required.

(It's harder to pound soft ingredients rather than hard ones since they just squish and slide around rather than get pounded into a paste. Very counter-intuitive but important to know.)

Combine the paste, all the other ingredients including the beef, coconut milk, leaves and spices into a large pan. Stir gently to mix them all. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.

Let it bubble away stirring every 20 minutes so that the paste and coconut milk do not stick to the bottom and burn.

James Oseland describes the rest vividly:

The meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will now go on a fascinating journey. At first, the broth will be thin and gorgeously bright orange^†. As it cooks, the coconut milk will reduce, its fats (as well as the fat the meat renders) separating from the solids. It will be become progressively thicker and darker eventually turning brown.

Keep stirring until the meat becomes rather glossy with a very thick sauce. This will take the better part of anywhere between 3 to 4 hours^‡. The meat should be tender enough to easily poke with a fork. (You may need to add some water from time to time.)

When all the liquid has evaporated, reduce the heat to low and allow the beef to brown in the fat. Stir every 5 minutes because it has a tendency to stick.

The beef should be coffee-colored and barely moist with a glossy sheen.

(As a general rule, there should not be any fat left in the pan but if there is skim it with a spoon and store for later use. It's great for a classic Indonesian dish made with new potatoes!)

Discard the whole lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, daun salan leaves, and cinnamon.

Allow the beef to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. More if you can swing it. It's best served at room temperature (or slightly warm rather than hot) topped with the finely slivered kaffir lime leaves.

---

† from the turmeric.

‡ This may very well be an underestimate. Five hours is not out of the question if the cut of the meat is extremely lean.

Sri Lankan Fish Patties (Malu Paan)

One of the great things about "fusion" cooking is how seamless it can actually be.

Canned tuna is not exactly the most exotic of ingredients. It's quite boring and bourgeois and very middle-American. We're just going to use Sri Lankan magic to amp it up a few notches.

There's nothing new about Sri Lankan spices either. They're all there in India but it's the combinations that are new and as the CC has pointed out endlessly, this is just a combinatorial game.

You're most likely to encounter this stuff as "fish cutlets" — the mixture is deep-fried. However, a little dig underneath the surface and you see it also as "fish patties" and "fish rolls" and "fish balls".

There's also the ubiquitous malu paan which is the same fish filling inside a bread that is baked.

For the record, the paan is from the Portuguese pão and is the same as the Japanese パン (pan), the Filipino pandesal (bread with salt), and the Indian paav (a much more accurate transcription of pão.) The Portuguese spread the cult of yeasty bread baking all along South-East Asia.

What matters, of course, is the filling at the center of these concepts.

All the CC has done is to take the patties and stick them in a burger bun (which is vastly simpler) and achieves the same purpose.

Dinner is served.

Ingredients

1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1 tsp black pepper

1 sprig curry leaves
1 piece of fresh turmeric (or 1 tsp ground turmeric)
1" ginger
4-5 green chilis

2 large potatoes
1 can tuna

1 medium-sized onion (diced finely)

cilantro (finely chopped)
1 lime

salt (to taste)

Note 1: The combination of cumin, coriander, and fennel in the ratio 2:2:1 along with ground turmeric is often used in Sri Lankan cooking particularly in dishes involving fish. It gives it that characteristic "Sri Lankan" taste.

Note 2: While this mixture is freely available in Sri Lanka pre-made, the CC assumes that the majority of the audience will not have access to this. Also, if you're going to add black pepper to the final mix, you might as well grind it all together.

Note 3: Fresh turmeric adds a complexity that ground turmeric simply doesn't. The CC vastly prefers the former but feel free to use the later.

Recipe

Grind the spices to a fine powder.

Grind the ginger, green chilis, and turmeric to a paste. (If you grind the spices in a mortar and pestle, you can do this in the same step.)

Boil the potatoes in water until tender. Peel and mash gently.

Heat some oil in a pan. Add the diced onions and curry leaves and fry for a bit until the onions have softened. Add the spices and ground paste and fry till the raw smell has dissipated. Roughly 2 minutes.

Add the tuna from the can and break it up. Let it cook for 4-5 minutes. Add the boiled potatoes and mix it all well together.

(If you are going to deep-fry into "fish balls", make it drier than normal. Otherwise it should be wet enough to form into patties.)

Dump the whole stuff into a bowl. Let it cool for a bit. Pick out the curry leaves and discard. (They don't do this in Sri Lanka but then the leaves there are more tender than the ones found here.)

Add the chopped cilantro and the juice of one lime and crush gently using a potato masher. Mix and check for salt.

To make the patties, you can just either pan-fry them with some oil (which is the way the CC prefers) or for a fancier richer taste, do the same after an egg-wash and coated with breadcrumbs.

Pad See Ew (ผัดซีอิ๊ว)

This dish is a favorite in Thai restaurants everywhere and the CC has spent plenty of money on it in increasingly dubious renditions. It was time to take the bull by the horns (or the wok by the handle) and get it right.

There is one massive hurdle that all home chefs are going to have to jump over. Your stove (and the CC's too!) simply don't generate enough heat. They don't pump out enough BTU's. There is no way to recover from this and compare your dish with the street food that it is. You'll get a very good approximation but you'll never match the street.

(If you happen to have one of those professional ranges, the CC is jealous as all hell.)

There is another thought that the CC has had on and off over the years.

The CC was near Chinatown for jury duty when he thought that he should he make this recipe. He did pick up one or two of the ingredients that he was missing. It would've been effortless to pick up the Chinese broccoli since it was plentiful and cheap. However, the CC knew that he had a ton of kale with splendid stalks in his fridge.

It's very easy to just duplicate a recipe but in order to get to the next level and understand its internal grammar, you must understand what makes it really tick.

This recipe is street food. Do you genuinely believe they care about anything more than what makes them a profit and what is locally available?

There is a secondary point. The first time the CC made it for himself (solo siempre solamente solo), he fucked up so spectacularly that it was embarrassing. What was interesting was that even though the noodles were absolutely inedible, the chicken, kale, eggs and sauce were absolutely delicious. Noodles got discarded and the rest was more amazing than any restaurant could make.

So the flavors had been nailed but the texture had some issues. No problem. Tried a few days later. Got there.

(On a related note, why don't food writers talk about their failures? Failures are vastly more instructive than success.)

The dish literally just means "stir-fried with soy sauce". Its name betrays its Chinese origins. You'll see the same dish as char kway teow in Singapore and Malaysia or lard na in Laos. However, just with a few tweaks, the dish has been made "Thai" and it's truly amazing how such small tweaks can make a dish "native". It also points out how immigrants have made cuisine richer through cross-pollination.

There's a massive difference between Chinese broccoli and anything else you could use. It's softer and eminently workable as a stir-fry.

Kale would work as would just regular broccoli. What would totally kill would be broccoli rabe. The trick for the home cook since they don't have the heat for the wok is to make sure the stalks and the florets have the right texture. French chefs have been dealing with this forever. It's called par-boiling. The CC will give you the general parameters but for once you will have to par-boil for yourself. Early winter kale is very different from later winter stalk-y kale. There is no way to standardize. Just par-boil until the stuff is "barely chewy" and then drain, dry completely before you stir-fry.

For the record, the kale slayed. The CC's intuition was absolutely on target. The darker slightly more bitter taste held up much more to the sweetness and umami of the stir-fry and made it vastly more interesting. The balance of flavors corresponds to the Thai ideal.

Lunch is served.

Ingredients

(serves 1 - read note about scaling)

rice noodles (sen yai)

1 cup Chinese broccoli (gai lan)

1-2 cloves garlic (minced)
1/4 cup chicken (sliced against the grain)
1 egg (beaten)

1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
black pepper
sugar

peanut oil

Note 1: Make sure that the total "wet" sauce is no more than 2 1/2 tbsp per serving. You will never get your home wok hot enough to counter that. This is IMPORTANT.

Note 2: Because of the above, you may need to use salt to balance out the sugar. Normally, you'd just use more soy sauce or fish sauce but it's not going to work if you make the stuff wetter than necessary.

Note 3: This ain't no "health dish". You'll need to add some extra oil so that the stuff doesn't stick.

Note 4: The max "scaling" for a home cook is 2 portions. There is just no way to get the wok hotter and make it work. You'll have to clean the wok and start over for more.

Note 5: The original recipe calls for "white pepper". It's a Thai aesthetic thing except this particular sauce is black. Ain't no one that got time for such shenanigans. Just use black pepper finely ground.

Note 6: The rice noodles (unless fresh which are hard to get) must be par-boiled according to the instructions. They must be drained, dried and separated.

Note 7: They also add carrots sliced very thin (stir-fry, stir-fry!) steeply on the diagonal. Highly recommended not just for the color pop but also the taste and nutrition.

Note 8: This is a stir-fry. The drier you get your ingredients, the more success you will have. Invest in paper towels.

Note 9: Thank you, David Thompson.

Recipe

The recipe is quite straightforward but do try and follow it. Make sure everything is diced and ready to in quickly.

Mix all the sauces in a container. Taste. Modify according to what you like.

Heat the wok. Just let it heat for at least 5-7 minutes.

Add 1-2 tbsp peanut oil. When it is shimmering, add the garlic and immediately add the chicken. Stir quickly. Add the egg and mix it up. Push it to the edge of the wok. Add the stalks first and fry for a bit. Then the leaves. Push everything to the edge.

Add the rice noodles which have been par-cooked. Stir and separate. You may need to use your hands and add an extra 1-2 tbsp of peanut oil.

Let the mixture stir for a while. Once the noodles have caramelized a bit, add the sauces and stir-fry for a minute or two. Serve at once.

This recipe has no shelf life.

Kaeng Som (Thai Sour Curry - แกงส้ม)

This is the ultimate grande dame of Thai curries.

On the one hand, it's so simple to make that it's made almost weekly in Thai households. On the other hand, simply because of that everyone, their mother, their grandmother, their dead great-grandmother and her long-dead ancestors have an opinion about it!

(Read the post about food and identity to understand this phenomenon.)

That having been said, the dish is easy to make casually but extarordinarily hard to make expertly.

It's hard for the same reason that chefs routinely test novices with making an omelette, or that you end up skating naked making certain Italian dishes.

You're using a minimal set of ingredients, and there's no place to hide. Either you nail it or you don't, and if you don't, there's no way to fix it.

It's the ultimate test of technique. It's doubly hard for those of us who didn't grow up with a Thai grandmother beating us up while we were learning. We're going to have to take our beatings the ol'-fashioned way via experience.

What is it?

It's a simple water-based "sour" curry that's really quite "primitive" (to use David Thompson's description) in which vegetables and fish are simmered. It's served with rice (of course!)

There are only five ingredients that matter - chillies (which are emphatically not Thai but New World), garlic, shallots, shrimp paste, and tamarind.

There are also ingredients that will "balance" it - e.g. palm sugar, etc.

All the magic is in the paste which takes a bit of effort with a mortar and pestle. Thai curries simply don't work with food processors. You need to pound the ingredients.  (The neighbors rang the bell to check that everything was OK since the sound of pounding wafted out the kitchen window. It sure was, kids, it sure was!)

For the record, it's harder to pound soft ingredients into the right consistency than hard ingredients. This one is filled with soft ingredients — garlic and shallots.

If you persist, and the CC is sure that the readers on this blog are the kind that would do so, you'll be rewarded with sheer magnificence. Everything that is so wonderful about Thai food distilled down into one elegant minimalist package.

Ingredients

Paste

2 tbsp dried shrimp

4-6 long red chilies
3 red shallots
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp shrimp paste

2 cups water
tamarind water (thin)

vegetables
fish

fish sauce (nahm pla) to taste
palm sugar (optional)

Note 1: The kinds of vegetables you can add varies. Long beans are classic as are bamboo shoots, or raw papaya but the CC has seen modern stuff like cauliflower, cabbage, etc.

Note 2: The village roots of this dish should be "obvious".

Note 3: There is a relatively modern variation that plonks in a square-piece of cha-om omelette. Cha-om is going to be impossible to find outside of California. It has a strongly sulfurous smell exactly like that of kala namak in Indian food. The texture is not dissimilar to samphire. If you're feeling particularly flush with money, the combination would do the trick. Otherwise substitute a bitter green and kala namak for a rough approximation.

Note 4: You still need to make the square "omelettes". Cook them thick with egg in a pan like a frittata. Flip, cook the other side. Cool and cut into squares. (They should be quite dry since you're going to plop them into a curry.)

Note 5: This is not a "fancy" dish. All the crazy caveats aside, this is closer to the fast and the furious. You should be able to make it in at most 30 minutes if you get all your ingredients in a row.

Note 6: There is considerable warfare even among the Thai population about how "thin" the curry should be. The CC is going to stay out of this particular "Vietnam".

Note 7: Side dish. The ultimate test of serving Asian food. Keep it simple. The dish is spicy hence sliced cucumbers.

Note 8: You need a fish broth ideally. David Thompson suggests pounding some dried shrimp as the first step of the recipe. Works like a charm. Instant "fish broth" as the deeply dead great-great-great-grandmother would've understood and appreciated.

Note 9: The "correct" sequence of pounding is the driest hardest first to softest wettest last. This just makes it easy to do the pounding. In this case, it would be dried shrimp, soaked chilies, garlic, shallots. and finally shrimp paste.

Recipe

First make the tamarind water. Soak the lump of tamarind in 1/2 cup of boiling water for 20 minutes. Strain it squeezing the tamarind. You can do this directly into the boiling water later.

Soak the separately chilies in boiling water for the same 20 minutes. Pull out the chilies. Reserve the water to add to the broth.

Roast the dried shrimp briefly on a skillet. Put aside. On the same skillet, roast the shrimp paste wrapped in aluminum foil. Flip and keep roasting until it gives off its characteristic smell. Be careful not to burn it.

(These first three steps can clearly be done in parallel.)

Start making the paste. Pound the dried shrimp followed by the chilies, the garlic, and the shallots. Add the roasted shrimp paste and make a smooth paste.

Combine the stock, tamarind water and paste and bring to a boil. Add fish sauce to taste. Add some palm sugar to balance the flavors. Let it simmer for 4-5 minutes.

It should taste hot, sour and salty.

Add the vegetables and let them cook through. Add the fish and let it poach for 2-3 minutes.

Serve at once with rice.

Caesar Salad

Probably the CC's favorite salad. Its salty umami-laden magic is just off the charts and it's truly sad that it's turned into a bad cliché with horrible ingredients.

Years ago, the CC visited April Bloomfield's justly famous restaurant where the "star" of the dinner was a whole pig. The lead-in to the dinner was this amazing Caesar salad and since the entire dinner was unlimited (minus the pig), at some point there was a call for salad seconds.

The table was ambivalent and after a pregnant silence, the CC shouted out a very loud, "YES!"

The table staff got some more and then they teased the CC while they served him, "I guess you don't want any more, right?"

Right.

This is her recipe unexpurgated. The CC doesn't know why it took so long to make it. It's literally perfect and the CC is smacking himself upside the head as we speak.

If you have a deep measuring cup and an immersion blender, this is a cinch to make.

There are a few changes. She prefers "neutral" oil but the CC overwhelmingly prefers olive oil. The vinegar change is marginal.

She goes with a a classic Caesar salad. Romaine, dressing, croutons but if you want a complete meal, feel free to top it with a grilled chicken (along with the filleted anchovies mentioned below.)

(Source: Directly from April Bloomfield's book A Girl and her Pig.)

Ingredients

Dressing

1 large egg
7 whole anchovies (separated into 14 fillets)
1/4 cup champagne vinegar
2 medium garlic cloves
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2-1 cup olive oil (very approximate!!!)
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

Salad

romaine lettuce (separated, washed, dried)
croutons
parmigiano-reggiano (for grating)
a "few" anchovy fillets (for topping)
pepper to taste

Note 1: The raw egg is non-negotiable. Buy eggs from a reputable source. Wash them thoroughly in warm water with soap and dry before you crack them. All the germs are (mostly) on the surface. The egg has strong properties to repel invaders even if mildly cracked. That's why raw eggs last longer in the fridge than cooked ones!

Note 2: You only need half the dressing since there's no way to make "half" an egg. That's how it goes.

Note 3: The dressing will last for at most 3 days in the fridge afterwards because of the raw egg. You'll just have to eat this excellence twice. The CC's heart bleeds for you.

Note 4: The CC used a blend of 1/8 cup champagne vinegar and 1/8 cup sherry vinegar. It makes a difference. The champagne vinegar by itself would be too tart.

Recipe

Drop everything for the dressing into a deep measuring cup except the oil. Blend gently. Add the oil a little at a time and blend it.

(She dumps the stuff one at a time but frankly, the CC saw no difference between dumping everything (minus the oil) in at once. Adding the oil a little at the time is mostly because you want it to get to a certain consistency. The CC did not need anywhere near 1 cup of oil. Chances are the CC's egg was larger.)

Taste.

It should be sharp (from the mustard and vinegar), salty, and umami-laden. You should not need to add salt. The ingredients should be salty enough. Balance the ingredients if necessary.

Mix the salad thoroughly with half of the dressing. The filleted anchovies and the parmesan are on top. Chill for at least 5 minutes and then serve.

Ikan Kuning (Fish stew with Lime, Turmeric and Basil)

The CC bought some amazing black bass from the local fisherman and was going to make the afore-mentioned steamed fish with fermented black beans, ginger and scallion except that the CC hates repetition and is easily bored.

This is a wondrous dish from southern Indonesia. You see the Indian influences right off the bat (turmeric) and the Southeast-Asian influences (galangal, kaffir lime leaves, basil, etc.) The New World shows up as chilis, of course.

Ideally this dish is cooked with a whole fish or fish segments with bones but let's get real. Just make it with a fillet. It's not the same and it does matter but not substantially so.

Pair it with the most basic rice you can make because the flavors in the dish are already overwhelming.

Ingredients

black sea-bass
4 tbsp lime juice
tamarind

2 shallots (chopped coarsely)
2 cloves garlic
1 red chili
1/2" ginger (chopped coarsely)
1/2" galangal (chopped coarsely)
1 fresh turmeric (chopped coarsely)

lemongrass (sliced diagonally)
1" pandanus leaf
4 kaffir lime leaves

peanut oil
salt

2 cups water

lemon basil (or Thai basil or Italian basil)

Recipe

Note 1: Once you combine the lime juice with the fish, the clock is ticking. Do it after you make the paste, and right before you start cooking.

Make the tamarind water. Pour boiling water over the tamarind and let it steep for 20 minutes. Pass the mixture through a sieve keeping the water and discarding the residue.

Pound the shallots, garlic, chili, ginger, galangal, and turmeric to a paste. Set aside.

Combine the fish gently with the lime juice and tamarind water set aside. Let it sit for 10 minutes.

Heat up some peanut oil till it shimmers. Add the paste, lemongrass, pandanus, kaffir lime leaves and let it fry till the raw smell disappears. Add the water and bring to a boil. Let it cook for 5 minutes.

Add the fish and the lime juice and tamarind water. Let it cook through. This is swift. No more than a few minutes.

Top with the basil and serve at once.

Hiyashi Tan-Tan ((冷やしたんたん)

One of the wondrous things about ramen is that it gives Japanese chefs full freedom to explore creativity outside the traditional norms of washoku. It allows them to escape the "wa" (和) of the washoku (和食) — the "Japanese-ness" of meal formats, rules, etc.

Every culture has some escape pod by which they can break the rules and are no longer subject to the dictates of "traditional culture". You need a release mechanism for creativity and rebellion.

Ramen is unambiguously Chinese and hence "foreign" however the Japanese have adapted it, refined it, and taken it to great heights. In the spirit of experimentation, it's not unusual to find "Thai Ramen" and "Indian Ramen" and "Italian Seafood Ramen", etc. in Tokyo. Any number of tricks from other cuisines are amenable as long as they ultimately get integrated into the ramen format.

The CC first ate the dish at a restaurant near his former workplace. It's a riff on a riff on a riff.

The owner of the restaurant is Burmese who ran away to Japan, lived there for a decade, and in spite of marrying Japanese, was unable to get a permanent visa. The couple opted for "life, liberty and happiness" and Japan's loss is New York's gain.

Tan-tan men is a variation on the classic Sichuanese dan-dan mian (担担面) — the spicy-tingly noodles with ground pork, pickled vegetables, and chili oil.

The Japanese version sticks to the idea broadly. It somehow got caught up with the very Sichuanese doubanjiang (辣豆瓣酱) possibly because its umami is very similar to miso.

So the ground pork is stir-fried with ginger, garlic, scallions and toban jan (as it's called in Japanese) until you have a loose dry mixture.

The ramen noodles are topped with an intense pork broth, the spicy ground pork mixture, slivered scallions, etc. This is a broad idea. The specifics depend on the creativity of each chef. You'd probably find slivered cucumbers or bean sprouts. It may be topped with rayu (chili oil.) It all depends.

Ramen, being served piping hot is cold weather food. Japan has blistering summers and a history of a lack of air-conditioning. The very hot weather dish, hiyashi chūka, featured here often is a response to that.

Hiyashi tan-tan is the bastard love child of hiyashi chūka and tan-tan men as conceived by a Burmese entrepreneur trained in Japan to satiate the ramen-crazy Yankees in a blistering New York summer.

What could be cooler than that?

There are some elegant subtle melodies inside it that make it sing.

Traditional ramen is frequently made with stock made from pork bones. It has a milky-white color.

The stock here is much lighter as befits a summer dish. Seafood-based or chicken-based which has been hit with a solid amount of sesame paste. Traditional Japanese sesame powder (gomashio) is made with roasted sesame seeds and has a brownish color. This one is clearly made with unroasted ones which gives the broth the same intense milky-white color. The CC strongly suspects that the restauranteur is just using tahini thus introducing a Middle-Eastern ingredient. It's New York, after all. Why not?

The advantage of cold-ingredients pre-prepared to a restaurant should be obvious but one of the complete non-negotiables is that the ramen has to be made fresh. You can dunk it in ice-water to cool it down but it must be freshly made.

Since the recipe clearly has diverged so far from its roots, such as they are, the CC feels absolutely no shame in diverging further. It would almost be regretful to stick to the format. The pork has been subbed by ground seafood (non-traditional) and bamboo shoots (absolutely traditional.) The cucumbers and scallions are retained in the summer heat.

It's the beauty of ramen. Within the broad tradition, as Cole Porter might have put it, "Anything goes".


Ingredients

(serves 2)

Dashi

2 pieces kombu
4 cups water
1/2 cup dried shrimp (or bonito flakes or both)

1/3 cup sesame seeds

Ground Pork

1/2" ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp toban jan
1 tbsp soy sauce
sugar (to balance)
peanut oil

1/2 cup ground pork (or ground seafood or ground chicken)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots

2 packages ramen

cucumber
carrots
scallions

sesame oil

Recipe

Note 1: Once the sesame paste is stirred into the cool broth, you cannot reheat it again. The broth and paste will separate which will destroy the texture. It must have its ice-cold white texture.

Note 2: Mound the pile of the ground pork mixture in the center. The toppings should be to the side. Yes, this is "only" aesthetics but it really goes a long way to emphasizing the cold-hot nature of the dish. The spicy pork with the ice-cold ingredients. It will all turn red-gold once you start slurping.

Note 3: If you have time, soak the sesame seeds in water. Don't worry too much about this step. You can always loosen the sesame paste with the dashi you make.

Note 4: The whole recipe is eminently scalable and can be made ahead of time. Except the ramen. They must be made fresh. You'll probably learn the hard way the science behind this step.

Note 5: It takes a while to chill all the ingredients especially the broth. Maybe the CC's fridge is crappy but it took more than 6 hours to get it down to the right temperature.

First, make the dashi. Heat up the kombu with the water. Just before the water boils, fish the kombu out and discard. If you don't do it, the broth will turn bitter. Add the dried shrimp/dried anchovies/bonito flakes and bring to a loose boil. Let it steep for at least 15 minutes. Pass the broth through a double layer of paper towels. You should be left with a clear golden broth.

Meanwhile, take the soaked sesame seeds and grind them to a fine paste in a mortar and pestle. Add some of the above dashi if you need to loosen the paste. Add the paste to the dashi and add salt. Set aside and let it chill.

Cut up the cucumber, carrots, scallions into long very thin batons of the same size and set aside to chill.

Make the ground pork mixture. Smash up the ginger and garlic in a mortar and pestle to a paste. Heat up some peanut oil in a skillet. When shimmering, add the ginger-garlic paste. Fry for a bit. Add the toban jan and fry for a little bit. Add the ground pork, soy sauce and sugar and let it cook until it is dry. You will probably need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to make sure it doesn't burn. Add the bamboo shoots towards the end. Take off the heat and cool. You can store this for a few days. Chill it.

When ready to serve, make the ramen. The ones the CC has require 2.5 minutes. Immediately dunk in an ice bath.

Top the ramen with the chilled dashi. Put the ground pork mixture in the center. The cut up scallions, carrots and cucumbers to the side.

(You can add sesame oil but that's gilding the lily.)

Slurp the intense icy awesomeness.

Stir-Fried Squid with Long Beans, Thai Eggplants, Shrimp Paste & Green Peppercorns

There's this wonderful Thai restaurant near the CC's old workplace which has a dish that the CC is obsessed with.

It ticks off all the right notes - funky, umami, complex with enough heat to set your mouth alight and yet, in that precise Thai way, it works!

The CC has had plenty of opportunities to "reverse engineer" this particular dish. It looks like a variation on the equally famous pad prik khing.

The CC is totally a sucker for the green peppercorns that come in the dish. They are not easy to find but you must get the ones pickled in brine not in vinegar.

There seemed to be a complex metallic note behind it, and the CC figured it the old fashioned way when he spilled some on his shirt. It was fresh turmeric. The CC was out a shirt but had gained a recipe. Cosmic balance and all that.

Ingredients

Paste

4 kaffir lime leaves (sliced very fine)
4 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
2 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
1" galangal
1 lemongrass stalk
1 small turmeric
2-3 Thai bird chilies
sugar (to balance the taste)

Stir-Fry

peanut oil

2 squid (read notes below)
6 Thai eggplants (quartered)
8-12 long beans (cut into 1" pieces)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots
3 tbsp green peppercorns

Thai basil

Recipe

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle to pound it to a paste. A food processor is simply not the same.

Note 2: Traditionally, the paste may require more or less ingredients depending on the quality thereof. For example, the CC only used 1 chili pepper since it was super hot. You need to taste and adjust based on the ingredients you have.

Note 3: The squid are cut into 1.5" x 1" pieces and cross-hatched with a knife. They will curl up and quickly cook in the stir-fry.

Note 4: The stir-fry goes at a rapid pace. You will need to have everything ready.

First prepare the paste. In a mortar and pestle, pound all the ingredients together to a fine paste. You may need to add more fish paste to loosen the sauce, or a little more sugar if it feels too salty. The paste should be thick, pungent and definitely have a bite from the chilies.

Heat the peanut oil until it is shimmering. Add the paste and fry for a bit. Add the eggplants and continue frying for 2 mins. Add the bamboo shoots and the long beans and fry for 2-3 mins. You may need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to loosen the sauce at this point. Add the squid and the peppercorns. Take off the heat as soon as the squid curl.

Top with the basil leaves.

Serve at once with jasmine rice.

Sopa de Almejas (Clam Soup)

There is this wonderful Peruvian restaurant in Connecticut that the CC has been visiting for more than a decade. It makes a killer sopa de almejas.

Since the restaurant is a bit of a hike for the CC, he always ends up ordering the soup — rather than the other possibly amazing dishes — and he's never disappointed. It's served with some bread (at best, average) and some amazing homemade aji criollo.

However, it's the soup that really sings and the CC has been trying to reproduce it ever since.

At long last — it only took a decade — he's untangled the various strands and made it for himself, and it's exactly as killer.

There were several hidden problems that needed to be solved. One was that the soup came with this emulsified broth with a very deep taste. Inside it were placed four or five rather large clams. Finely chopped cilantro was sprinkled on the top. The broth had no solids but it had an intense flavor. There was a reasonable amount of oil in the broth like all restaurants. However, this turned out to be a red herring. There were more important things at play.

Some things were really obvious. There was a lot of tomato purée in the broth. There were the deep notes of black pepper. It was clear it was some kind of fish broth. It also had a very deep cilantro flavor that could not be coming from the tiny amount of stuff sprinkled on top.

The other clue was the price point on the menu. It was one of the cheapest items, and the serving was large enough for a very good lunch. Now, clams are rather cheap on the Eastern seaboard but they're not that cheap so that means the ingredients inside the broth had to be cheaper. (The CC considered the possibility that they were using commercial clam juice but the taste of the broth had a subtle fresh flavor so it didn't seem very likely.)

Other clues. The clams were served on the half-shell and were very juicy. They could not have been cooked with the broth, and they were too plump to have been sitting in there for too long.

Two other important clues.

The dish always took a little longer to serve than other dishes (when the CC went with friends) and the surprising one —  the broth was served piping hot. It was served almost at boiling point (close to 90-95°C.) When the broth cooled down, the soup didn't taste as good. Clearly, the temperature mattered greatly.

Peruvian cuisine is the ultimate mashup — besides the indigenous Incan origin, it's had Spanish, Italian, Chinese, West African and particularly Japanese influences.

It was clear that the broth had tons of umami but once again the price-point was critical. They may have been using MSG but it was being done with a light hand.

The critical insight is that this was a cheap restaurant surviving on very low margins. Nothing could be wasted. There were shrimp on the menu and they were clearly buying them whole. The broth was being made with the shrimp heads and the shells. They are the source of the resonant thumping flavor. Also, the broth clearly had onions and garlic and tons of black pepper and cilantro. However, after the broth being made, it was being filtered and solids pressed and tossed out. Then the clams were being shucked, and cooked in the broth, and whole thing brought to the table piping hot. They were also generous with salt.

Why did the temperature matter?

The CC is not completely sure but it seems plausible that the bitter notes of the cilantro and the pepper were dominating at lower temperatures. When hot, you just got the heady hit of the salt and umami from the broth and the tomatoes.

Sopa de Almejas

Note 1: The clams that the CC gets are the standard East Coast clams. The giant ones are easier to find up in Connecticut, Massachusetts & Maine. This doesn't matter as much. They were definitely using local stuff not Manila clams, etc.

Note 2: The salt in this recipe is really crucial. You need to add a teeny bit more than you think completely rational. The CC added salt to the boiling broth until it tasted "correct". It was a lot more than he expected. It will not be the same without.

Note 3: Unless you have shrimp heads and shells in your freezer, the clear substitute would be dried shrimp. You will also need some kombu unless you plan to add MSG. Not going to work otherwise.

Note 4: As ridiculous as this sounds, it's better with crusty bread that has been wrapped for about 6-8 hours in foil so that it goes just slightly limp from the exhalation of the moisture from the starch. The CC is perfectly aware that this is anal retentiveness^† of the highest order.

Note 5: The broth really needs to be at a boil. The CC is not kidding.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

1 dozen clams

2 tbsp oil
1 small onion (diced fine)
6-8 cloves of garlic (chopped)
4-6 tbsp tomato purée
1 piece kombu
1/4 cup dried shrimp
1/4 cup dried anchovies (if you have them)
1/3 cup diced cilantro (stems and all)
3 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
4 cups water
salt

finely chopped cilantro leaves (to serve)

Recipe

First make the dashi.

Bring the water to the boil with the kombu. Right before the water boils, remove it and discard. If you don't do this, the broth will turn bitter. Toss in the shrimp and anchovies and let it boil for about 7-8 minutes. Skim the nasty froth that comes on top. Strain and keep the liquid. Discard the solids.

Heat up the oil. Fry the onions and the garlic until golden. Add the tomato purée and fry for a bit. Add the dashi, cilantro, salt and black pepper and bring to a rolling boil. Cook for about 6-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it steep for 10 minutes or so. Strain the broth pressing down on the solids to extract as much of the broth as necessary. Discard the solids.

(If you have two pots, the dashi can directly be strained into the second step. It will save you tons of time.)

Steam the clams with either the broth or some water. As they open, remove them and shuck off the half-shell. You can also just shuck them and store if you don't want to serve them with the half-shells.

Filter the clam broth with some paper towels. Clams are generally very gritty. Add this clam broth to the other broth.

Bring the broth to a rolling boil. Check for salt. You may need more.

Pour the broth over the clams. Add the cilantro on top. Serve at once with the crusty bread.

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^† This can't be entirely surprising for a recipe that was a decade in the making.

Huevos Rotos

After the insane tapas party, the CC needed to make something basic and elemental. He did some searching and, lo and behold, he had all the ingredients necessary for a nutritious and tasty breakfast.

This is not a "fast" dish. However, you don't need to do much. Set the timer and get away.

Best eggs ever. They combine the magic of "home fries" and poached eggs in one easy dish.

You need to serve them with jamon serrano, of course.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

1 large onion (chopped coarsely)
1 green pepper (chopped into matchsticks)
3 fingerling potatoes (chopped into thin rounds)
4 cloves garlic (minced fine)

4 eggs

1/4 cup parsley
1 tsp paprika (agridolce)

olive oil
salt
pepper

Recipe

You need a frying pan that has a lid.

Heat up some olive oil in a pan. When it shimmers, toss in the onion and the garlic. Fry for a bit. Add the peppers and let them fry for a bit. Add the potatoes, turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting and let them cook. Add the paprika, salt and pepper. Let the potatoes cook for at least 25 minutes. Add the parsley and let cook for an additional 5 minutes. (Total of 30 minutes.)

Keep stirring while the potatoes cook. Every 10 minutes is sufficient. No need to break them up.

You will be able to smell the potatoes being done. It's unmistakable.

Spread the mixture evenly over the pan. Crack the four eggs in the four corners. Cover the pan and let cook for 4 minutes. You may need an extra minute but take the pan off the heat once the whites are set.

Serve the poached eggs - two per person with the potatoes below. The yolk will be barely set but that's perfect when you crack it and it coats the potatoes. Enjoy with the jamon in tow.

Weekend Menu

Three meals. Recipes to follow.

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"Shirred" eggs with snails, persillade & tomato paste

♦

Filipino Meal 

Kinilaw "Guisado" with bamboo shoots, dried shrimp & kale Umami rice
Salt pickles

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Sautéed pea-shoots with garlic & soy sauce Lobster ravioli in vanilla butter sauce

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Historic Scientificity : The Anti-Farting Gambit

If you look at Indian food, you will notice a preponderance of cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, etc.

Why were these adopted?

The first principle, as always, is basic economics.

They grow abundantly on the Indian sub-continent and hence, they are extraordinarily cheap. So cheap that the Romans used black pepper as ballast on their ships sailing homewards. If all went well, you got a lot of black pepper. If your ship got caught at sea in a storm, you could toss the stuff overboard, and not suffer terribly because it was so cheap.

The second, which is a lot subtler, is that they are all carminative agents (anti-flatulents.) When eaten with lentils, they inhibit the bacteria that line the intestinal walls from generating gassy flatulence.

Obviously, the Indians learnt this by trial and error, and the "technology" has been passed down ever since. Most use this but few understand why.

The most effective are cloves, cinnamon, garlic and asafoetida. The second tier is made up of ginger, turmeric, and black pepper.

There is a related herb in Mexico called epazote which is traditionally added to black beans for the same reason.

Read carefully, and you'll notice that almost all of the "greatest hits" of Indian food are featured. What's missing, of course, is coriander, cumin and cardamom but not everything has to be functional. Some of it is just pure pleasure.

That's why the born-today vegans are basically fucked. They don't understand the functional component of how to make a successful lentil dish. You can't just boil that stuff and call it a day. You need to spice it right to make it both tasteful and functional.

Skill is required in almost every sphere of cooking even if you decide to follow some arbitrary rules, and this skill determines whether you toot through your rear horn all day or not.

Toodles and toots!

Roasted Garlic and Onion Soup

This is a peasant recipe. Simple to make, yet complex in its flavors.

The best part is that you have to neither peel the garlic nor the onions.


Ingredients

1 head garlic
6 red onions
1/3 cup flour
4 cups broth (or water)

1/4 cup chopped parsley

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Cut the garlic in half, and the onions in half as follows. Don't bother to peel.

Drizzle a sheet with olive oil, and lay them face down on the olive oil. Roast in a 350°F oven for roughly 45 mins.

Pop them out, and pop out the garlic and onion shells with a paring knife. They are soft and sticky, and hot so this step is the trickiest portion.

Drop them in a soup pot, and heat it to medium heat. There is plenty of olive oil in them so no need to add any more. Add the flour, and fry languidly till it is light-brown (Maillard reaction.)

Add the broth, salt and plenty of black pepper, and heat on a low flame. A lot of impurities will come to the top. Skim, baby, skim.

Blend the liquid with a blender.

Then turn the heat up, and cover and bring to a rolling boil.

Top with the chopped parsley, and serve with crusty bread.

Tapas en España : Part 2

Pulpo (Galician style)
Boquerones
Gambas al ajillo

An Evening Meal

The CC enjoys the spoils acquired at the Indonesian and Burmese markets.

The white rice is scattered with fried garlic. Mmmmmmmmmm..........

Garlic Scapes

They are the immature stems of the garlic plant. They have a mild garlicky taste and a texture of french beans.

Please note that they are different from spring garlic or ramps.

Controversial Recipes

Who knew that this bipartisan blog would draw controversy?

The recipe that seems to have generated much finger-waving, and hand-pointing is the recent recipe for Chocolate-covered garlic.

Comments (all private!) have ranged from, "Really?" to "I don't believe you!".

Thankfully, nobody so far has run a campaign to trash the CC's character on televison.

So let's understand why this recipe works from a scientific point of view. Out comes Harold McGee's tome, On Food and Cooking, which the CC will note is both exhaustive and exhausting.

Like the sunchoke family and its relatives, the onion family accumulates energy stores not in starch, but in chains of fructose sugars, which long, slow cooking breaks down to produce a marked sweetness.

Incidentally, these fructose sugars are not directly digestible by humans explaining the "gas" produced when eating raw onions, garlic, shallots, etc. Both the sulphurous content, and the indigestibility are Darwinian "defense mechanisms" against mammals eating the food store. (Hence also, the "sting" of sharp onions.)

But, we humans figured out a way.

Roasting garlic (and the whole onion family) is a time-honored way of changing its aggressive sulphurous character into a much sweeter one. In this particular case, the recipe is really braising (along with a ton of sugar) which will turn the garlic both soft and sweet while eliminating the volatile sulphurous molecules that make it "garlicky".

Hopefully, this intellectual argument will detract some of the objectors, but really, the best way is to just experience it first-hand!

Chocolate-covered garlic

This recipe sounds downright stupid at first but it's actually really really good.

Ingredients

24 cloves of garlic (peeled)
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup sugar
4 tbsp lemon zest
1 bar "high" cacao chocolate

Recipe

Bring the first four ingredients to a boil. Cook on very low heat uncovered for 25-30 minutes (stirring occasionally.) Let it cool for a bit. The cloves should be quite sticky.

Melt the chocolate (you can either microwave at a low heat, or dip a glass bowl in boiling water.)

Dip each clove in the melted chocolate, and place them on a piece of foil. Transfer to the refrigerator and let it cool for at least an hour.

Best eaten fresh.