86. Thai-Style Beef Salad

Date Cooked: July 17, 2009
Page: 117
Rating: B+

I had been eyeing this recipe for quite some time and finally got around to cooking it. Thanks in large part to my neighbor for delivering a rather large bunch of fresh lettuce from his garden. Salads are one of those things I keep telling myself to eat more of but I always consider them a lot of work. This one showed me that I have nothing to be afraid of, but that I need to invest in a good salad spinner.

I started off washing the lettuce. The one thing about fresh from the garden produce are little crawly things. I thoroughly, bordering on obsessively, washed the lettuce in my sink. After freeing a few mini slugs, ants and some other unidentifiable critters, the lettuce was fit for consumption. Drying the lettuce would have been easier with a salad spinner. I had several feet of my counter cover with kitchen towels and lettuce.

With the lettuce done it was time to cook the flank steak. I pan-seared it in a small amount of oil and while that was happening I prepped the cucumber and onions and the marinade/dressing. The marinade was equal parts fish sauce and lime juice with some red pepper flakes and sugar. Half of this was reserved as the dressing while the remainder was used to marinate the sliced flank steak.

When the flank steak was finished cooking it was sliced and marinated for 10 minutes. Once done marinating the steak, cucumber and onions were tossed in the dressing and then served on a bed of lettuce and finally topped with peanuts.

Rating: B+. I liked this salad but I had one complaint. Between seasoning the flank steak prior to searing in, and then marinating it in a dressing based on fish sauce, it was a bit salty. The dressing alone was fantastic but the flank steak probably could have skipped the short marinating session. Overall I was happy with this dish and I look forward to making more salads.

22. Pad Thai

Date Cooked: September 25th, 2008
Page: 296
Rating: A+

I had been thinking about making this dish for several weeks but I was struggling with gathering all of the ingredients. Although most of the items are easy to find I wouldn’t commit to the produce until I had the rest gathered. The real hang up though was tamarind paste. To be honest I didn’t even know what it looked like so I spent several visits to local grocery stores perusing the aisles looking for this stuff. I finally gave in and hit a local Asian grocer and asked someone. They literally reached to the counter in front of me and handed a small package of a dark brown fruit paste that said Tamarind on it. Well at least I now knew what I was looking for. Here is the interesting thing though, and I am sure many of you have experienced this. Once I bought it I started seeing it elsewhere, the oddest location being Wal-Mart, although I don’t know if I would buy it from Wal-Mart. It looked pretty dry and was more like packed sawdust than a thick dark fruit paste.

So I finally had the tough ingredient to find and now I could move onto picking up the produce and shrimp to get this meal started. The one thing about pad thai is how quick it all comes together which means that a lot of work is actually required to prep the dish. I started by soaking the noodles in hot water and the tamarind paste in boiling water. As these were soaking I peeled and deveined the shrimp and set those aside as I started chopping the scallions, peanuts and dried shrimp… let talk about the dried shrimp. As soon as I opened up the bag I was assaulted by the shrimp aroma. My wife looked at me and with a little look of distaste on her face asked if I was actually going to use that. I smiled as I poured them out onto the counter and began to chop.

I confess, my wife did help me a great deal in getting things prepped. I’m trying to make it sound like I was organized while getting this done but in fact I was all over the place. When I was soaking the tamarind I left it as large chunks and in the future I would chop it up a bit more. I would probably run the peanuts and dried shrimp through a food processor to speed up chopping them. Also I would remember to defrost, peel and devein the shrimp before starting everything else. I had everything soaking and chopped when I remembered the shrimp were still in the freezer. It’s a good thing shrimp are quick to defrost in water. I spoke about dried shrimp but let’s reflect on the completely hydrated version for a moment.

I have raw shrimp in their shell simply because I plan to make gumbo pretty soon (once I find a place to get good Andouille sausage), and the shells of the shrimp are used for a simple stock. Anyway that is for another time. Shelling them is easy but deveining them was tedious and I’m not sure of the value of the process. I did a bit of research on shrimp and most agree the vein neither detracts from the flavor nor adds to it. In larger shrimp it can become a textural issue though. So while digging out this thin soggy wormlike strand I had to wonder if this was really worth it. Unfortunately that decision will have to wait until I cook shrimp again to compare… which could be soon.

After the prep was done it was time to begin cooking. The shrimp get a quick sauté and then set aside. The shallots and garlic are next into the pan and when they are softened and fragrant the eggs get tossed in for a light scramble. The noodles get added, tossed before the rest of the spices and tamarind liquid get added. Cooked for a few minutes and then finally the sprouts, scallions, dried shrimp and peanuts get tossed in. The whole dish gets tossed together and then it was plated to serve. Garnished with some scallions, peanuts and fresh cilantro it was complete.

What was the verdict? Truly amazing! I almost never eat pad thai at a restaurant because I find it oily and the noodles are usually pretty slippery with sauce. This dish was all of the wonderful flavor, without the unpleasant texture. Each noodle was tender but still had some chew to it and it was coated in flavor without a slippery greasy feel. The shrimp were delicious and everything had a nice crunch to it from the sprouts and peanuts. My wife (who likes Thai food much more than I do) was requesting I make it again before we had even finished.

I do believe it is time I get an assortment of plain white dishes for plating though. I’ve used the same plate for just about every photo.

Rating: A+ I was very happy with how this turned out. I will definitely make a few changes when I prepare it again but overall I don’t know how this could be improved upon.

Update: Between cooking this recipe and posting I made it a second time. I figured out how I can improve upon it. Either omit the dried shrimp or ensure they are chopped extremely fine. There is something not quite comforting about biting into a chewy intensely shrimp flavored crumb. On the plus side my son has decided he likes cooked shrimp now. I can barely get him to eat beef or chicken but so far shrimp and calamari are good. Oh yeah, I deveined the shrimp because the thought of that blue little string is pretty unappealing, cooked or not.

Thai Green Curry with Chicken, Broccoli and Mushrooms (Supplemental Recipe #2) - Drowning in Deliciousness!

Date Cooked: August 24, 2008

My wife has been a big supporter of my newest little project and she had requested that I make a Thai curry of some sort so I looked through the ‘Best’ book and unfortunately there were no Thai curries to be found. But The Best Soups & Stews did contain recipes for several variations of both red and green curry. So we settled on a green chicken curry simply because we had chicken in the fridge which needed to be used.

I was faced with a decision as to whether or not I should try to make my own curry paste. In the end I decided that if I liked the dish enough I would consider making it in the future, but for now I would just use store bought green curry paste which wasn’t too difficult to find. So armed with the many ingredients required for this recipe I dove in.

If I had been preparing this dish two weeks ago I would have just dumped everything together, cooked it and called the meal complete. That was the old me, uninspired, clueless and let’s face it, probably a little lazy. But since I decided to start this project I was determined to make changes to the way I approach cooking and food. One thing I have learned in the handful of dishes I’ve prepared so far is that I am slow and unorganized, starting before having everything ready. I have already begun to improve in this regards. Gone are the days of burning the chicken while I look for a clean knife to cut the vegetables. Gone are the days when I discover I am out of eggs after mixing the other ingredients together. Then I found out the broccoli florets I had in the freezer weren’t florets.

The recipe begins by reducing the green curry paste and some of the thicker/solid coconut milk until it separates into solids and oil and I must say this is a rather fragrant state and surprising since the smell of green curry paste by itself is not exactly pleasant to me. Add to this the rest of the coconut milk, fish sauce and sugar and simmer till the flavors meld. The aroma in my kitchen was fantastic! The chicken was added and allowed to cook for a few minutes before adding the mushrooms and broccoli. After a few more minutes in went the red peppers and hot Thai chili peppers.

As I seeded the hot peppers the only thought going through my mind was that it would probably be a bad day to decide to put my contact lenses in. What was truly absurd though was I had almost involuntarily rubbed my eyes. Not sure why I was about to do that but I can assure you that would have been a disaster.

Once the Thai curry was done I removed it from the heat and added the fresh basil, mint and lemon juice and wow! The smell was amazing! I don’t normally cook with fresh herbs mostly because the frequency with which they get used usually means they end up in the garbage before I get around to using them again but I must say after that fragrant experience I will make an effort to use them more often.

So after the dish was completed and the pictures taken I decided to have a bowl of it just by itself. I took the bowl out to our deck where Katt was busy mowing the lawn to allow her a chance to taste this dish (after all she requested it). As I called her name a little fly decided that the smell was just too amazing and like the kamikaze pilots of WWII Japan, he dove head first into my bowl of hot Thai green curry and with a pathetic little flutter promptly submerged and drowned. I’m pretty sure the look of disbelief on my face overshadowed the slight revulsion, but at least I knew my Thai Green Curry with Chicken, Broccoli and Mushrooms was worth dying for.

The Next Day

I brought a monster sized bowl of this for lunch at work the next day and it just didn’t have the same effect. The flavors had melded together too much and it had a milder uniform flavor. The fresh and truly enticing aroma of the mint, basil and lime juice was now blended into the rest of the dish. It was filling but definitely not very exciting.