Khao Phat Muu (Thai-style Fried Rice with Pork)

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

I love fried rice. I guess I love a lot of rice-based dishes - paella, risotto, etc.; I find them comforting and hearty and delicious. If you're not going to make pasta, you might as well go for rice! Yep, this gal loves her carbs.

This is another great, pretty simple recipe from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok; Joef is, once again, the person to thank for cooking this up. Like all of the recipes in this cookbook, the results are far better than anything you could order at (most) restaurants, and definitely better than delivery. Once you get over the slightly odd ingredient list (most of the ingredients repeat from other recipes in the book, so once you've stocked up once, you have a lot of options open up for you), it cooks quickly and easily.

So, for ONE (just double it and cook all at once for two people, or make it twice for extra-freshness):

1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tsp Thai thin soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
Pinch ground white pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large egg, room temp
1/4 cup peeled small shallots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced with the grain
1 tbsp peeled garlic cloves, halved lengthwise and lightly crushed in a mortar
4 oz boneless pork shoulder, sliced against the grain into 1/8-inch-thick, bite-size pieces
2 cups cooked Jasmine rice (day-old is best, fresh is fine)
2 tbsp thinly sliced green onions, lightly packed
1 tbsp coarsely chopped cilantro, lightly packed
Lime wedges and cucumber slices, optional, for serving

Combine the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and pepper in a small bowl and stir well.

Heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl it around in the wok, coating the sides of the wok. Crack in the egg when the oil starts to smoke, and cook without touching it until all but the center of the egg has set, about 15 seconds. Flip the egg and push it aside. .

Add the shallots and garlic and cook and stir them (but not the egg), until lightly browned, about 1 minute.

Add the pork, stir everything together well, and stir-fry - constantly stir, scoop, flip - until the pork is no longer pink on the outside.

Add the rice and stir-fry that with everything else, breaking up the egg a bit, for about 30 seconds. Add the fish sauce mixture, and stir-fry until the pork is just cooked through..

Turn off the heat and stir in 2 tbsp of green onions. Plate and sprinkle with remaining green onions, cilantro, and cucumber and lime if using.

Kai Kaphrao Khai Dao (Stir-Fried Chicken with Hot Basil)

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

Joef is our resident chef these days, and his favorite cookbook is Pok Pok, which has the most amazing Thai recipes. He's made this one a few times - it's relatively simple, and super-satisfying and delicious.

We haven't yet been able to find actual "hot basil", or "holy basil", which apparently has a different flavor and aroma that Ricker describes as "essential". No, not even Berkeley Bowl has it! Instead, we've used Thai basil and Persian basil, both of which arguably are not the right ingredient, but have worked just fine.

As with the other Thai recipes in this cookbook, the ingredients can seem tricky. But what we've found is that they repeat, so if you can find them and create a little larder for yourself, you can dive into a lot of other recipes very easily, making it a pretty accessible undertaking.

The recipe below is for one - we always double it and cook it all in one batch to serve two. Best to have all the ingredients prepped and ready to go, because it moves very quickly once you start cooking.

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 tsp Thai black soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp garlic, crushed in a mortar
5 oz ground chicken
1/4 cup long beans, cut crosswise into 1/8-inch slices
1/4 cup peeled yellow onion, thinly sliced
4 fresh Thai red chiles, thinly sliced
3-4 dried Thai chiles, fried (pretty sure we don't fry them), and coarsely crumbled
1 cup hot basil leaves
Jasmine rice

Start by cooking the egg: heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl the oil around in the wok, coating the sides. When it starts to smoke lightly, crack in the egg and cook it for about 5 seconds - the whites will bubble and puff, and the whole thing will sizzle. Lower the heat to medium and cook the egg, tipping the pan and covering the egg with the oil, until it's golden at the edges and cooked to your liking. Turn off the heat, and remove the egg to a paper towel, keeping the oil in the wok.

Next, combine the sugar, fish sauce, and soy sauce in a small bowl and stir to combine. Heat up the wok again on high. When it smokes lightly, add the garlic and take the wok off the heat. Let the garlic sizzle and stir it often until it's light golden brown, about 30 seconds.

Return the wok to the hat. Add the chicken, long beans, onions, and fresh chiles. Stir fry the ingredients (flip, stir, etc. constantly), and break up the chicken until it has just cooked through - about 1 minute.

Add the dried chiles and the fish sauce mixture and stir fry until the meat absorbs the liquid, about another minute. Turn off the heat.

When you're just about ready to serve, turn the heat back to high, and add the basil till it has wilted.

Serve with rice and fried egg!

Phat Si Ew

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

This is the second awesome recipe we tried from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok. This time, we cooked together, which was not only a hoot and a holler, but made the fast pace of the cooking a lot easier. I was kind of amazed at what we produced from this recipe. I don't know what I was expecting, but it looked like the Phat (which I usually see as "Pad") Si Ew you get in restaurants, and tasted…well, better! This is truly not a difficult recipe, and it's fun to make and delicious to eat. You'll need a wok, and if you have it, a wok spatula, which is kind of square-ish and slightly turned up at the sides. Ikea sells one for like $4. A mortar and pestle is also good to have (Ikea has a cheap one of those, too - $15!).

Probably the trickiest part was making the fried-garlic oil, just because you have to cut up so much garlic. You could also make a fried-shallot oil - you only need three shallots, sliced very thinly, and you follow the same process, except they cook a little longer - looks more like 10-20 minutes to get them crispy and golden brown.

His recipe calls for a few things to enhance the dish for serving, most of which are recipes in the book as well - fish sauce-soaked chiles, vinegar-soaked chiles, toasted-chile powder, and sugar. We didn't take the time to make and add these, but I bet they'd be delicious if you had them.

I was thrown off at first by how Ricker's recipes are organized. He breaks the recipe into sections - in this case, separating the ingredients and steps for pork and noodles; some ingredients then get repeated in both sections. But actually, this helps to break the recipe down and understand it better.

Finally, he recommends making this in single-serving batches. We cheated and made two batches at once, but the recipe below is to serve one. Just go ahead and double it - cooking two at once was fine.

Things go pretty fast once you start cooking, so having everything prepped, and having a helper, are great.

We started by making the fried garlic oil:
15 cloves peeled garlic, cut into about 1/8 inch pieces
1 cups vegetable oil

Set a fine-mesh strainer over a heatproof bowl.

Pour the oil into a small pan (oil should be about 3/4 inch deep). Put the pan over high heat and heat until a piece of garlic bubbles right away when added to the oil. Add all the garlic, and turn the heat down immediately to low. Stir once or twice.

Cook, stirring, until the garlic is light golden brown and crisp. It should take about 4-6 minutes. Don't rush it.

Pour the pan's contents through the strainer. Done! The oil keeps for about 2 weeks in an airtight container, and you can also save the garlic (not in the fridge) for up to two days.

And for the main event:
PORK
1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1 small clove peeled garlic, crushed into small pieces in a mortar
4 oz boneless pork loin or lean shoulder, thinly sliced against the grain into bite-size strips (about 1/8 inch thick)
1/2 tsp Thai fish sauce
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

NOODLES
6 oz fresh wide, flat rice noodles (you will buy these pre-cooked; we found ours in sheets and then cut them up)
1 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
1 tsp Thai black soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
Small pinch ground white pepper
1 tbsp fried-garlic oil (see above)
1 large egg, room temp
1 tbsp crushed garlic (in mortar)
2 oz baby Chinese broccoli, stems trimmed to 1or 2 inches and clusters separated (or regular Chinese broccoli, leaves coarsely chopped and stems thinly sliced)

Cook the Pork
Heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl it around the wok, coating the sides. It should start to smoke just lightly - take it off the heat and add the garlic. Let the garlic sizzle, stirring a little, until it's fragrant but still white (about 15 seconds).

Wok goes back on the heat. Add the pork, stir well. Add the fish sauce, sugar, and stir and scoop and flip until the cork is just cooked through. Transfer the pork into a bowl.

Prep the Noodles
Separate the noodles. Put them in a bowl and pop them in the microwave for about a minute.

Cook and Finish
In a small bowl, combine the thin and black soy sauces, sugar, and pepper, and stir well.

Heat the wok over very high heat again. Add the garlic oil, swirl it around the wok to coat the sides. The oil will start to smoke lightly again - at this point, crack in the egg. It should spit and sizzle. Don't touch it until the egg starts to turn light golden brown around the edges. Then, flip the egg, not worrying if the yolk breaks. Push it to one side of the wok.

Add the noodles and cook about 15 seconds, prodding them so they don't clump together. Add the garlic and cook another 15 seconds, stirring to mix and break up the noodles and egg a bit. Add the broccoli and stir, scoop, and flip, until the leaves just start to wilt, about another 15-30 seconds.

Last, add the pork and the soy sauce mixture (you can put a splash of water in the bowl that held the mixture, and swirl it around and add to the stir fry to get all the sauce out). Stir, scoop, and flip, letting the egg break up, and mixing everything together to absorb all the flavors, about another minute or so.

And you're done!

Thai-Style Pork Ribs (Sii Khrong Muu Yaang)

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

My family knows me well, and I got about five new cookbooks for Christmas this year, all of them awesome. One is Pok Pok, a Thai cookbook that at first completely intimidated me. I tend to feel more comfortable with recipes with limited, easily-recognized ingredients. But where's the fun in that? I think this cookbook might be turning me around. It is really fantastic, different, fun. We've made two dishes from this book in the past week, and they've both been incredible, and not really that complicated when it comes down to it.

Now, in fairness, Joef made these ribs. 100%. I didn't even really help. I just enjoyed the amazingly delicious result. He marinated the ribs the day before, and then grilled them the next day for about two hours. Yes, that's a lot of prep; yes, it's absolutely worth it.

Ideally, you'd grill these over a charcoal fire. All we had to work with was a gas grill, and they still came out great. If you can't find some of the ingredients, you could probably do regular soy sauce (vs. "thin"), although it is a little different, use medium-dry sherry for the Shaoxing wine, use regular black pepper, etc. But if you can find the right ingredients, so much the better.

So, here's Andy Ricker's fantastic recipe for about 20 "riblets" (drool):

6 tbsp honey
2 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
1 tbsp finely grated ginger
1/2 tsp Asian sesame oil (try to find brands that are 100% sesame oil)
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1/8 tsp ground Ceylon or Mexican cinnamon
Pinch grated nutmeg
2 lbs pork spareribs, cut lengthwise across the bone into 2-inch-wide racks (ask your butcher to do this for you)
2 tbsp hot water

Start by marinating the ribs for at least two hours, and as long as overnight. Whisk 2 tbsp of the money with the soy sauce, wine, ginger, sesame oil, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg together until the honey dissolves. Put the ribs in a large Ziploc bag, pour in the marinade, get the air out, and seal it up. Put it in the fridge.

Once the ribs have marinated, you're ready to grill. Prep a baste - stir the remaining 4 tbsp honey with the 2 tbsp hot water until the honey dissolves, and set aside.

Prep your grill to cook at 200-250 degrees. Ideally, you want to cook your ribs over indirect heat. If you're using charcoal, push the coals to one side of the grill and shape them into a mound. Place the ribs, meat side up, to the part of the grill opposite the charcoal. If possible, rotate the grill top so that the open vents are directly over the ribs. Cover the grill.

Slow-cook the ribs for 2-2.25 hours, flipping them occasionally and rotating them 180 degrees when flipped. You might need to add more charcoal to maintain the temp. They should end up a mahogany color, crisp, with slightly charred edges. In the last 30-45 minutes of cooking or so, you can start brushing the ribs with the honey mixture every 10 minutes or so.

When they're ready, take them off the grill, let them sit for about 5 minutes, and slice them into individual ribs. Devour!

(You can oven-bake these, too. Preheat the oven to 250. Put the ribs on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 2 hours, rotating the sheet a couple times. Increase the heat to 300 degrees, and brush with honey every 10 minutes, about 30-60 minutes more.)

Zuppa di Zucca e Fagioli Bianchi (Butternut Squash and White Bean Soup)

This blog has been pretty much out of commission, lately. I've been cooking, and I've been trying some new recipes, but not as many as I had been. But my Aunt Marisa shared this recipe with me, and I finally tried it and just loved it. It is comforting and flavorful and full of good things. I made some small tweaks (adding pancetta and pasta, for example, which you could just as easily omit), but overall, it's Aunt Marisa's recipe. Great for fall/winter nights, especially if you don't live in constant 65-degree Bay Area weather (not that I'm complaining!).

Alrighty:

2 1/2 tsp (or so) extra virgin olive oil
1-2 thick slices of pancetta, diced
Salt, pepper
1 large onion, chopped
2 tsp dried Italian seasonings
1 lb butternut squash, peeled/seeded/cubed
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 cans cannellini beans
About six cups chicken broth
Handful or so fresh spinach
1/4-1/3 lb pasta (orecchiette pictured)

In a large pot or dutch over, heat the oil over medium heat and add the pancetta, along with salt and pepper to taste, until pancetta starts to get crispy. Next, add the onion, squash, and seasonings. Add the garlic after about 3 minutes. Let the onion get soft and translucent. Add the beans, stir, then add the chicken broth. (I think it was six cups…make sure there's enough to cover AND to boil pasta in.)

Bring the soup to a boil, then turn heat to low. Cook until the squash is nice and tender. At the very end, bring to a boil, then add the pasta and boil until pasta is cooked. Add the spinach in the last five+ minutes so that it wilts.

Get cozy and enjoy!

The Pink Llama (White Rum with Rhubarb Simple Syrup, Grapefruit, and Rosemary)

(from http://theviewfromthegreatisland.blogspot.com: It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere Fridays) 

This is the drink that inspired Joef's homemade, fruit-based simple syrup craze (the originators call it a Spring Fling, but we've renamed it)! Once you start, the possibilities are endless! This one uses rhubarb for the simple syrup, and is then combined with grapefruit juice. This is maybe the best drink he's ever made - it's so refreshing, light, and, I might add, rather complex flavor-wise. Enjoy!

To make the simple syrup:
2 cups white sugar
2 cups water
2 large stalks rhubarb, chopped

Bring to a soft boil, and bLoil for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Mash the rhubarb as it softens. Remove from heat and strain out the pulp, then return the liquid to a medium boil. Reduce the liquid for about 10 minutes, stirring to ensure it doesn't burn.

To make the drink:
2 oz fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice (1 grapefruit=about 5 oz)
1 sprig rosemary
2 oz rhubarb simple syrup

2 oz Cachaça (white rum works)

Ice

Remove the rosemary leaves from their stem and place in a cocktail shaker. Add just a splash of grapefruit juice, and muddle together. Add the remaining ingredients and shake. Pour over ice, and serve with a sprig of rosemary. Ahh!

Bourbon Old-Fashioned with Cherry-Orange Simple Syrup

It's a new twist on an Old-Fashioned! Har!

When it comes to our kitchen, Joef is our drinks, desserts, and spice guy (I really wanted that alliteration to work...). This weekend, he made two amazing drinks, experimenting with making his own naturally-flavored, fruit-based simple syrups. This one he made up on his own, after we had something similar at a restaurant in San Francisco, Agricole. The simple syrup takes a little time, but is easy...you might even call it simple...and it really gives a ton of flavor to the drink. Delicious!

To make the simple syrup (makes about 2.5 cups):
2 cups turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw)
2 cups water
15-20 pitted Rainier cherries
1 navel orange, peeled

Combine all the ingredients together in a small/medium pot, and bring to soft boil. Boil for about 10 minutes, mashing the fruit as it softens, and stirring.

Remove the mixture from the heat and strain out the fruit pulp (it's delicious, btw!). Return the remaining liquid to a medium boil for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently. (Reduce the liquid while making sure it doesn't burn.)

Remove from heat and allow to cool. (This makes much more simple syrup than you need for one drink - you can save it for a bit, and use it in other drinks, or in fizzy water to make frobscottle!)

To make the Old Fashioned:
2 parts bourbon to 1 part simple syrup (if you like it sweeter, you can do 1:1)
Ice

Stir and enjoy!