Theplaa

The quintessentially Gujarati dish. Stereotypically even.

So stereotypical that we used to refer to the more rural types as theplaa's back in the day. Heck, the typecasting seems to have spread far beyond the borders of India because a Japanese-American friend of the CC's who lived in London commented on it once.

That having been said, let us not be deprived of the brilliance that is theplaa.

Just for the record, the concept is pseudo-generic. You really can use any flour. However, if you are a moron that uses only wheat flour (like most of the Gujarati population), you will what the CC considers the main feature of theplaa namely that chewing it turns the spicy deliciousness into sweet (thank you, chemistry of saliva!)

You must use millet for that. The CC will flat out not eat theplaa that does not feature millet. It's cheaper, has a fantastic non-boring texture, and a rich taste.

Why on earth would you possibly go against that?

Ingredients

3 cups baajri flour (millet)
1 cup wheat flour (read instructions below)

1 cup chopped fenugreek leaves (methi)

1" ginger
3-4 garlic cloves
3-4 Thai green chillies

1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp ajwain seeds
1 tsp asafoetida
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground red chilli powder

yogurt mixed with water (to make the dough)

salt (to taste)

Recipe

ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste
Add salt, turmeric, red chilli powder, sesame seeds, and the ajwain seeds.

Add the rest of the ingredients. You can see the darker color of the baajri flour along with the lighter wheat flour. Somewhere underneath you can see the fenugreek leaves too.

Don't add all the wheat flour. Keep some aside.

Now, you need to knead the dough with the yogurt-water mixture.

It is absolutely critical that the dough be made with the yogurt-water mix not just water.

The dough is going to super soft and a bit sticky (there is complex chemistry at the heart of this.) Gently keep adding more wheat flour, until the dough becomes manageably solid-ish. It will NEVER get truly solid, and always remain slightly soft.

You need to gently roll it out, and pan fry it. Another trick that works is to just roll it out with your fingers on a lightly oiled piece of aluminum foil before pan frying.

Theplaa

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk

Every time you get fed up of this city, it reminds you why you are here one more time.


The CC has just spent the evening with a friend at an absurdly brilliant Mediterranean restaurant.

Right when he was leaving, he chatted with the owner (Bulgarian, if you're curious) who was so happy to talk about food that he not only plied the CC with enough alcohol to set him alight but sent him home staggering loaded with delicacies, and shook his drunken hand at the end of the night.

New York, New York, what else is there?

Aloo Palak

This is really one of your pan-Indian classics. What makes it "regional" is the varying spices they use, and even the varying underlying frying fat they use.

In this presentation, we are going to do better than your average Indian mamma, and use classic Italian technique to turn a two-pot double-frying fiddly-mom-dish into a single potter without sacrificing absolutely anything.

At the heart of it is a rather simple idea (although the implementation may be complex.) In order to get flavor, you need to let vegetables fry first, and then boil/steam later. The point is that once you get even a reasonable amount of water in the dish, you are no longer frying but steaming/boiling so you really need to control the amount of moisture so that the stuff is actually frying not making the transition into boiling.

Everyone still with me?

Hoo-kay, onwards and upwards.

This is not one of those fiddly dishes. For some bizarre reason, what goes below is loved by adults and children, most likely for different reasons. This is what Indian mammas cook up when they are bored, or possibly when they are shtupping their boyfriends. Then they claim they made it because it's good for you (which it is.)

Whatever. Either way. Basic but delightful.

Ingredients

3 large potatoes (cubed)
2 bunches spinach (blanched, squeezed, diced fine)

1 large onion (diced fine)
1" ginger
4-5 Thai green chillies
3 cloves garlic

1 tbsp cumin
oil
salt (to taste)

Recipe
Grind the ginger, garlic, green chillies into a paste. Try and use as little water as possible.

First fry the onions.

Then fry the ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste. Toss in the cumin (not shown) towards the end.

Then fry the potatoes. This will try your patience big time. It takes bleedin' forever, and it tries everyone's patience. Learn how to deal.

Finally the spinach. You need to fry it for a while. If you plan to use frozen spinach, please read this note first.

When you are bored out of your skull, which you will be, add the water, and let it cook until the potatoes are tender (at least 10-12 minutes.)

Aloo palak

Salt

A post on salt. Ridiculous or relevant? You decide.

The CC is rapidly coming around to understanding the view that controlling salt is a key to controlling perception of taste.

Try this next time. Make a soup/stew without the salt. Taste it. Add salt. Taste it again.

Even y'all will find it obvious. Even fairly obvious flavors (like acidity) will reveal themselves only in the bold light of salt.

First up, we talk about commercial salt.

Drop it. NOW.

Iodine?

You get plenty of iodine, my love. You eat out enough, and they use plenty of iodized stuff. This is not our forefather's generation. So skip it. You don't need that much, anyway.

Next up, the cost.

The cheap sea salt (far from bad, incidentally) is a dollar cheaper than the commercial crap at the CC's local store.

So you don't live out here in New York, you claim? So drop two more dollars and skip a coffee, fer cryin' out loud!

Next up, the need for powder v. crystals.

This is the first serious objection that the CC will actually entertain because it matters. It's all good and dandy to drop sea salt crystals into a broth, or a soup, or a stew but what happens if you need to eat steak? Or popcorn?

This is serious no-messin' around territory. The CC is serious about his popcorn.

You need to invest in a "pepper grinder" and then fill it with salt. Or keep the commercial crap around anyway (this is a bit of a cheat but we're OK with that on this blog here as you might have noticed, just as long as it's not too egregious.)

At any rate, upgrade your salt.

Kapi (gkapi)

The motherlode.

The stuff that tests your commitment to serious Thai cuisine (and most serious Far East cuisines.) The line that separates the women from the girls.

The initial smell while frying? Intense; not entirely unpleasant but decidedly an acquired taste.

The initial smell while roasting? Over-the-top intense. Definitely a test of character and commitment to the culinary arts.

The taste? Indescribably silky-smooth "mouth feel" that is completely impossible to replicate + a layered complexity to the dish + umami up-the-wazoo.

How is it made? Perhaps you don't care to know in the spirit of not wanting to know how sausage is made. If so, bailout now.

Basically, there are these tiny shrimp called keuy, and they are macerated with tons of sea salt, and left to dry. The stuff is then macerated again with more salt, and left to dry, and so on and so forth until you get the above smooth dark-brown almost-purplish paste.

The stuff lasts pretty much indefinitely. Nothing is going to grow in that amount of salt.

The quality of the ingredients matter as does the care taken to produce it. Folks in the "know" are just as sniffy and snooty about their shrimp paste as they would be about the finest parmigiano-reggiano, or the finest miso or the finest mangoes.

Just for the record, here's a translation table:

Indonesian: terasi
Malay: belacan
Vietnamese: mắm tôm
Filipino: alamang

In practice, the CC has most commonly encountered the Thai + Malay words. Why, he cannot possibly tell you.

Go forth and enjoy. May all your sauces be rich and complex.

Vaal ni daal

This one here's a Gujarati classic.

We're going to make it the ol' school way. The irony of ironies is that the ol' school way is also the lazy person's way. Somewhere along the line there was a glitch in the transmission matrix, and generations of Indians have been wasting their time for no particular good reason.

As to who pissed in the pasta, the CC only has a vague guess, and no particular way of proving the hypothesis.

Rest happy in being modern (both indolent and ironic) and also ancient (preserving the flavor.)

Ingredients

1 cup vaal (split hulled field beans, soaked)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup cashewnuts

3 dried boriya chillies (read notes below)

1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ajwain (carom seeds)
asafoetida
salt

oil

Recipe

A few notes on the ingredients.

You need the vaal soaked at least for 5-6 hours. These are very soft beans, and are pretty much going to "disintegrate" in the recipe.

The boriya chillies are these round ones that you can just fish out at the end. They are called that because they look like berries. The word is a cognate of "berry".

You need these babies.

If you don't have them, just substitute by regular ones, or in the worst case, a tiny bit of chilli powder. However you're definitely missing something. These are unique, and you can't just wish them away. Even most the CC's relatives dumb it down but the CC has ol' school purist tendencies.

A final note. You will see the recipe call for sugar. That is a sign of failure. With just pure skill (and the notes below), you will be able to get that characteristic sweet taste without any sugar.

That's our old friend, Maestro Maillard one more time with two ingredients, the vaal itself which has a unique sweetish taste, and the raisins.

After all these notes, you may think that the recipe is hard. Au contraire, mes amis, the recipe is almost shockingly simple.

The pictures are not great but there's really no time in the first few steps. Apologies.


Fry the cumin, and the ajwain and the asafoetida (not shown.)


Then, the boriya chillies. Note the coloring of the cumin.


Then, the cashews.


And, the raisins.


Finally, the beans which you have to ensure are dry after the soaking because you want to fry them, not just boil them. Not yet, anyway.


Watch the color turn darker.


Finally, add the water. You can always add more later.


Let it simmer on a slow burn until the beans are soft to your liking. The CC likes them on the chewy side.

While it is cooking, you will "smell" the heat from the chillies. Trust your senses. Fish them out when it "feels" right. You will know exactly what the CC means by this the first time you make it. It's pretty unambiguous.

The chillies will add a slow smoldering subtle heat to the final proceedings. This is quite emphatically not a "hot" dish. If anything it verges on a balanced interplay of sweet-spicy-savory.

Vaal ni daal

A Note on Frozen Spinach

The CC recognizes the need to not do stuff from scratch. Sometimes it's just not possible, and sometimes you have a choice between getting ingredients in frozen form or not at all. This note really applies to all frozen greens.

First up, thaw the thing. Just throw it on the counter in the morning, and you'll be fine in the evening. If in a hurry, put it in a colander, and a basin of warm water. Periodically replace the water with more warm water.

Now, this is the good part. Most recipes call for you to stir-fry this stuff. With both fresh and frozen stuff, you need to squeeze the water out of the stuff.

Squeeze that mother; squeeze that mother dry; when you think you can't squeeze no more, squeeze it some more. SQUEEZE THAT THANG!!!

Ahem.

That's enough screaming for one day.

You'll get brilliant results with the above technique.

Why? Well, sweethearts, the science will just have to wait for a future post, won't it?

Galangal

It's NOT ginger. Let's start with that.

For one, it's absurdly tough to cut even with the CC's fancy French chef's knife. Two, it has a vaguely citrusy aroma, and sweet perfumy taste, and just the hint of a bite. Nobody has ever referred to ginger as "sweet".

Substitution is largely useless. In soups, the dried stuff does quite fine actually but in the more complex dishes, you need the real deal. If you do grab hold of it, use it to make some of the stored complex pastes (recipes to follow) which actually freeze really well.

Ful Medames

Breakfast of peasants. And of champions.

Ingredients

1 cup dried fava beans (soaked overnight)
1 onion (diced into semi-rounds)
2 cloves garlic (smashed)
1 green bell pepper (slivered)
3 tomatoes (diced)

1 tbsp powdered cumin
1 lemon
1/2 cup diced parsley
salt and pepper

Recipe

The notes to this recipe are much more valuable than the recipe (which is "obvious.")

Firstly, you need the small fava beans not the bigger ones.

The soaking of the fava beans also matters. The CC is guessing it has something to do with the age of the dried fava beans.

The CC has made this before, and the recipe was always good. Then, accidentally, the CC was forced to delay making the thing so he rinsed the beans after 24 hours, and resoaked them for another 24, and the recipe totally blew his mind.

Here we go:

First cook the beans in water, and while they cook keep skimming the scum that rises to the top. There will be plenty of "nasty stuff". Depending on the soaking, takes between 40 mins to an hour till they are adequately soft.

The skin of the fava beans will never soften. It's an "added feature" or an "acquired taste" of this particular recipe. Deal.

After that's done, in a separate vessel, fry the onions and the garlic at medium low heat. Then fry the bell peppers. Then add the cumin, salt, pepper and tomatoes. Finally the fava beans lightly crushed. Heat for about 10 mins or so.

Right before serving, mix in the lemon juice and the parsley.

Another trick is to split the bell peppers into two piles, and add some at the end thus getting two textures from the same ingredient.

(And just for the record, the pita below was home-made.)

Ful medames

Coconut Balls : The Aftermath

This recipe seems to have generated an absurd number of private emails.

Unbelievable.

Who woulda thunk that a recipe and a picture that the CC wasn't even planning on posting, in a genre that the CC doesn't even care about (dessert), would generate this kinda response?

After the synonyms on "easy" and "yummy", the most common phrase was "guilty pleasure" while referring to condensed milk.

To which the CC can only say: "Stand proud, stand tall, and may the naysayers be reduced to eating frozen yogurt and boxed cheese."

Ahem.

Anyway, there will be more recipes featuring our friend including one on how to make your own condensed milk. It's a bit fiddly and time-consuming but totally worth it.

Unbelievable.

A Note on Relabelings

Periodically, the CC needs to glance at old posts, and in order to have consistent and accurate labels, he goes back and relabels old posts (typically only additions rarely deletions.)

Relabeling is completely necessary when entirely new categories are introduced. It's the only way to keep labels accurate, and to be perfectly honest, it's rather painful laborious work.

No posts are changed though.

Life Changers

Every once in a while you come across a kitchen tool that snakes its way from a mere twinkle of an idea in your consciousness ("someday must buy that") to being completely and utterly indispensable ("how did I live without that?")

There is a life before and after the instrument, and never the twain shall meet.

Rare, naturally.

Not every instrument can qualify for such exalted status.

Meet the box grater.

Just for the record, the wimpy little nebbishy bottom thing was tossed away into some dank corner of the recesses of the CC's cupboard. Who grates in such tiny quantities anyway?

Anyway, this teeny-tiny little thing, much beloved of Italian mammas, and Spanish mamacitas, and Turkish anne-s, and oh, just about all the mammas everywhere is truly a wondrous creature. (and a tiny salute to modernity too for the little rubber edges which prevent slippage when grating over a glass bowl.)

Hurrah for the box grater!

Kaffir Lime Leaves (Bai Magroot)

Completely indispensible in Thai cooking for their unique citrusy aroma. There is nothing like it so substitution is moot.

The leaves themselves are usually not eaten just added to broths, etc. You will also see instructions for them to be cut into into thin strips and added to Thai curries.

The juice of the limes is used in other contexts but it has a unique overpowering perfume so it must be used sparingly. Squeeze one in a mixer before you make martinis, and watch your guests be delighted all evening long from the subtle elusive aroma.

Traditional Thai curry sauces also call for the zest of the kaffir limes. Sometimes fresh and sometimes dried so you really need both at hand.

Unlike many ingredients, both the leaves and the limes freeze beautifully so the CC always has some in his freezer.

What the CC ate

Stir-fried vegetables and bay scallops in homemade chili paste

The description does not do justice to the dish's subtle complexity.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings

The CC's dad forwarded him a recipe from the local newspapers. The CC liked the look of it, and it consisted of old ideas in a spanking new bottle so the CC decided to try it out (that, and the fact that the ingredients were coincidentally precisely what the CC needed to use up.)

The verdict? Gobbliciously good.

High on fiber too leading to a quadruple-flusher the next day (not that you needed to know that but what can the CC do? The blog mandate permits it.)

The CC changed one thing though. He will never understand his forefathers' love of the cabbage. Flabby, vile, nasty with a historical side-helping of being "good for you". Read Pliny, if you don't believe the CC.

So what's the old, and what's the new?

New would be combo of ol' Gujarati technique with North Indian spices and ingredients, and a free helping of New World stuff like corn thrown in to seal the deal.

Old would be the method of steaming the dumplings (which the Indians received via Chinese traders circa the 10th century incidentally), and the lentil batter (quite ancient.)

Just for the record, the final texture is astonishingly similar to the steamed pork dumplings (shu mai) served at dim sum, a thought that possibly scandalizes the CC's vegetarian forefathers.

Oh well! The CC was never long on formality.

Ingredients

carrots (shredded)
spinach (blanched, and chopped fine)
corn
1/4 cup whole masoor soaked (or just use any lentils)

3 cloves garlic
1" ginger
3-4 green chillies

rava (substitute with bulgur wheat)

cilantro leaves (finely chopped)
lime juice
salt

Recipe

The quantities are approximate because it's hard to screw this up, and you will have control in the last step anyway. If you have a food processor, you're golden. Won't even take you 20 minutes. (And since the CC is a full disclosionist, yes, he used frozen spinach, and frozen corn. Gasp, the horror!!!)

As you might have guessed, you can really use any vegetables but you do need some shredded stuff to help the dough all hold together.

Soak the lentils for at least 6 hours. This is the only real prep step.

Grind the garlic, ginger, green-chillies into a paste. Grind the lentils into a paste too (can be combined.)

Mix all the ingredients except the rava. Add the rava in small quantities till you get a very loose dough but one that you can form balls in. (This is the reason everything is approximate since you can control the texture here.)

The little balls ready to steam on the CC's steamer thingy. They were steamed for about 8-9 minutes.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings

Pesto Rosso

This really is an extraordinarily simple recipe, and an absolute marvel to boot. However, it's quite overwhelming in flavor so use sparingly.

How to use it?

Toss fresh penne with some olive oil and pesto rosso and toasted pine nuts which, along with some fresh basil, also makes a terrific "cold" pasta dish.

("Cold" pasta dishes are meant to be served at room temperature, incidentally.)

Spread some on a baguette, and eat with a thin slice of parmigiano reggiano (similar to a tapenade.)

It's extraordinarily versatile. Give it a whirl, literally and figuratively.

Ingredients

sun-dried tomatoes
walnuts
2 cloves garlic (no more!)

extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt (no exceptions!)

Recipe

Soak the sun-dried tomatoes in hot water for about 20 minutes.

In a food processor blend the ingredients adding tablespoons of the above water + olive oil at periodic intervals to get a smoothish paste.

A few general notes on tricks. If you actually have cured olives, add those instead of the olive oil. Don't skimp of the salt. You need it to store it. You can always adjust the recipes later.

Traditionally, this was stored under more olive oil but it's gonna store perfectly in your fridge (for intermediate-term consumption) or freezer (long-term.)

Pesto rosso

Pita Problems

Well, the CC decided to make fresh pita and ful medames (pictures and recipes later) for breakfast.

The first pita was an unmitigated disaster. Not even a mother could love this one.

What to do, what to do?

Dough on the counter. Continue or abandon, and go buy commercial ones?

Bravely, the CC forged ahead.

The rest of the dough made picture-perfect pitas. Go figure!

The CC wonders if there's a moral but he can't think of any.

Poha

Poha is flattened puffed rice, and this dish is particularly popular in the Western regions of India.

The flattened rice is also symbol of "humility" in Indian circles thanks to certain mythological stories.

Those expecting dewy-eyed and misty stories about humility and devotion are likely to be disappointed since the CC adopts the thoroughly Churchillian perspective that "the humble indeed have a lot to be humble about."

Not this dish though.

Ingredients

4 cups poha
1 large potato
1 small red onion
2-3 green chillies
1 tbsp mustard seeds
8-10 curry leaves
1 tsp turmeric

1/2 cup grated coconut
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 lime

Recipe

Just quickly rinse the poha, and let it drain. Every few minutes, "fluff" it to ensure it's loose and dry.

This is really an easy step, and hence easily "delegated" but to do it right, you need to keep kinda "fluffing" the stuff every 10 mins-ish to make it dry out. Those of you who possess a "Jamie" (or three) might want to take advantage of this meta-recipe step that the CC provides gratis for your delectation and pleasure.

Fry some oil, add the mustard seeds until they splutter, then the curry leaves, then the onions and green chillies. Y'all are all old hats at this (or turning into old hats which is the same thing.)

Then fry the potatoes. This is our old friend Maestro Maillard again.

Hells bells and puppydog tails, he shows up a lot, dun' he?

Add the turmeric, salt to taste, and some water, and let the potatoes boil in it.

This step always takes longer than you think it will take. Of such impatience is cooking made.

Does this reinforce "humility"? Possibly. Ask the Indians. The Cowboys just wanna eat.

Towards the end, add the poha (not shown.) It will only take about a minute to cook. Y'all won't go wrong in this step, trust the CC. There are plenty of recipes for y'all (and the CC) to screw up; this is not one of them.

Garnish with coconut and cilantro leaves, and squeeze a lime all over it.

Poha

Coconut Balls

Goodness, gracious, great balls of ... coconut.

Ingredients

dried coconut shavings (dried is crucial!)
condensed milk

Recipe

The CC using canned stuff? Try it first. You will have time to talk back later.

The recipe is simple but unfolds in two steps.

First add, the dried coconut shavings to the condensed milk and mix to form a stiff dough. The quantities depend on the kind of condensed milk and the size of the shavings. Basically, form a firm dough which should NOT be too wet. Then let it sit for 30 minutes or so.

What you then need to do is shape small balls out of it, and roll them around in more dried coconut shavings to coat the outside and give it texture.

Lay them all out on a tray. They taste better if they are slightly cool so you can refrigerate them till your guests arrive.

Coconut Balls

Thai Dinner

A dear friend was leaving New York so the CC made a Thai dinner.

Sup nor mai
Bamboo Salad
Tom Yum
Spicy Thai Soup with Shrimp
Pad ped hoi shel gkap bplah meuk
Stir-fried bay scallops and squid with homemade chilli paste

War of the Worlds

Summer's coming up, and soon there will all the movies about how the "machines are taking over", and the "machines will rule men", etc.

BORING.

The CC will just settle for a toaster that can make toast correctly gauging the thickness of the sliced bread, and the moisture content.

This technology was firmly within engineering grasp thirty years ago so where is it?

We'll save the world later, okay? OKAY.

Thai Olive Fried Rice (Khao Pad Nahm Liap)

There are as many fried rices as rice-eating cultures, and as many variations as cooks. However, the generic idea remains the same.

Use up old leftover rice so as not to waste it. Fried rice is just one option. The Sicilian arancini is a completely different take on the same idea.

Given a dish based in poverty, and lack of wastage, there is quite a bit of leeway in our choices. It's whatever is in the house really. Eggs if you have them; likewise for sliced onions, ground pork, vegetables, dried shrimp, etc.

So what makes this "Thai" then?

The characteristic Thai ingredients and technique; the detailed thought given to balancing the flavors: sweet, salty, sour, spicy; then the Thai-ification, to invent a word, of ingredients that are clearly not Thai -- salted Chinese olives, dark soy sauce, cilantro. (The Thai are doffing their caps to the Chinese here. Traditional flavoring would've been various forms of basil.)

Of such contradictions are all cuisines made. Shall we proceed?

Ingredients

2 tbsp minced garlic
3-4 Thai green chillies (cut into fine rounds)
4-5 kaffir lime leaves (cut into thin strips)

1 tbsp palm sugar
2 tbsp dark soy sauce (read below!)
2 tbsp nahm pla (fish sauce)

chopped vegetables
salted olives (chopped)

leftover rice
peanut oil

wedge of lime
3-4 cilantro sprigs (finely chopped, stem and all)

Recipe

First off, a few general instructions. The rice which was leftover is probably all dried out. You need to crumble it with your hands. (This is a "Jamie" step.)

Secondly, turn the heat UP. All the freakin' way. You want hot, hot, hot. Hotter if you can. It's all about BTU's, baby!

Hot, hot, hot!!! Eat your heart out, Cure fans.

The palm sugar. Substitute with jaggery or brown sugar but it's just not the same. There's no way to explain this. You will have to experience this for yourselves.

Add the black soy sauce, and the fish sauce and stir it for a bit until the palm sugar dissolves. (Also, a "Jamie" step.)

The "black soy sauce" is not your usual ho-hum. It's actually this sweetish salty concoction (siew dam) that is rather thick and glutinous. If you're missing this, add a 50-50 mixture of palm sugar and regular soy sauce but you're drifting further and further away from the Platonic ideal.

Note the Thai qualities above. You're getting the sweet from the palm sugar and the siew dam, and the salty from the siew dam and the nahm pla. Also the umami from the nahm pla because it's basically heavily salted fermented anchovies (not terribly unlike the ancient Roman garum.)

The green chillies (below) is going to add the spice, and the lime the sour taste.

Thai households don't use salt. They just have little bottles of fish sauce if more salt is needed. Likewise for the heat and sourness -- thin rounds of green chillies in vinegar are a standard condiment.

The mise-en-place. From the top, clockwise: chopped vegetables (carrots, snow peas), the above mixture, minced garlic, green chillies, chopped olives.

It may not be obvious from the picture but the carrots have been sliced diagonally really thin so that they can fry, and not boil.

Heat the peanut oil at a high heat, and fry the garlic. Be very careful not to let the garlic burn.

Incidentally, this first step of frying minced garlic is also very characteristically Thai.

Add the green chillies, and the vegetables (not shown), and fry for quite a while until the vegetables are fried.

The CC forgot to take a picture because he was in a bit of a fluster.

Y'all will cope.

Add the crumbled rice, and the olives (not shown.)

After the rice has fried for a bit, add the sauce very slowly so that it keeps frying. You will need to keep frying the rice for a bit longer after you add this.

This is one of the best examples where both Maillard and caramelization are both taking place.

Serve this with the wedge of lime, and the cilantro mixed in.

For the true purists, you are no more going to get true wok hai with puny BTU-burners than you are going to get an Uruk-hai. However, if you are reasonably talented, you will not just exceedingly satisfactory but even borderline excellent results.

Khao Pad Nahm Liap

Baked Spinach-Stuffed Shells : The Product

So we get to the assembly.

The whole thing is kinda obvious but the CC felt it best to adopt the best techniques of tee-vee writers, and leave a cliffhanger. Keeps the folks coming back for more, and saves the CC's job, okay? OKAY.

Ingredients

pasta shells
more grated mozzarella

Recipe

First up, you need to cook the shells in salted water until they are just under al dente. Remember we are gonna finish this off by baking so don't overcook them.

The CC can't really help with times because each make is just different enough. The CC finds out by fishing out at various intervals, and tasting, and remembering the various numbers. You must too.

Sounds ridiculous though, doesn't it?

The cooked shells stuffed with the stuffing.

Pour the sauce all over it so that everything is drenched in the liquid. Cover with the rest of the shredded mozzarella.

Bake in a 350F oven UNCOVERED until the mozzarella starts to brown. The CC initially thought it was going to be roughly 20 minutes but it was closer to 40 so clearly the CC hasn't the faintest freakin' clue. Neither will you. Just keep peeking, okay? OKAY.

The browned cheese is Master Maillard in action but y'all knew that, right?

Baked spinach-stuffed shells

On Olive Oil

God is the light of the heavens and the earth
The likeness of his light is a niche
wherein is a lamp
(the lamp in a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star)
kindled from a blessed tree,
an olive that is neither of the east nor of the west
whose oil well-nigh would shine, even if no fire touched it;
Light upon Light!

(Koran, xxiv: 35)

Please note that God's light was not compared to corn or safflower, or heaven forbid, canola!

Sabudana Vada

If you come away from this recipe thinking that this is the bastard love-child of this and this, you would basically be correct.

Isn't that the point? To understand the underlying unity of the subject?

Ingredients

2 boiled potatoes
1 cup sago (soaked)
1 cup crushed peanuts
ginger-green chilli paste
1 tbsp cumin

salt

1/4 cup chopped cilantro leaves (missing below)

Recipe

Soak the sago as described here. Boil the potatoes, and mash them.

The crushed peanuts, ginger-green-chili paste, and the spices.

Toss in the sago, and the mashed potatoes.

Mix together. You may need to add some water but don't add too much.

You can just pan-fry them, or bake them.

Sabudana vada