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.

Vietnamese Five-Spice Chicken and Coconut-Mango Rice

(adapted from Williams-Sonoma's San Francisco: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World, and Fred Thompson's Grill Master: The Ultimate Arsenal of Back-to-Basics Recipes for the Grill)

OK, so I'm not even going to tell you the first time I made this. I'm that behind. I can't even remember. BUT! I've made it three times since that first attempt, because it is so, SO good. I mean, crazy-delicious, finger-licking good. I made it around Thanksgiving for the fam, and it was a hit - even my one-year old nephew was smacking his lips. It might just be my favorite grilled chicken recipe. And I've always been a fan of coconut rice.

I hadn't really heard of five-spice till we moved to the Bay Area. You can make your own, or you can buy it from the grocery store (win!). To me, the ingredients are surprising - star anise, cinnamon, cloves - sweet stuff - but in this recipe, you add fish sauce, which combines to make this sweet, salty, savory, marinade. Mmm.

So, here's what you need (this should be enough marinade for a whole chicken, but I use the same amount for five-six drumsticks...):
6 cloves garlic, halved
1 large shallot, quartered
1 tbsp peeled ginger
4 tsp sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/2 tsp five spice powder
Freshly ground pepper
5-6 chicken pieces - thighs or drumsticks

And here's what you do:
Combine the garlic, shallot, ginger, and sugar in a small food processor, and process to form a paste. Transfer to a bowl and whisk in the soy sauce, fish sauce, five spice powder, and a few grinds of black pepper. This is your marinade.

Rinse the chicken pieces in cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Place in a shallow dish, and pour in all the marinade. Turn the pieces in the marinade to coat, cover, and refrigerate for as long as possible, up to 8 hours (2 hours work in a pinch). You'll want to turn the chicken a few times. Keep the marinade.

Set up your grill!

Remove the chicken from the marinade (don't throw it out), grill the chicken, and baste it with a marinade a few times. Turn the chicken, baste again, grill until juices run clear. Don't baste the chicken in the final 10 minutes.

Done!

And for the rice (from Grill Master):
1 tbsp canola oil
1 large shallot, minced
1 tsp peeled, grated fresh ginger
2 cups jasmine rice (brown rice works, too)
1 cup coconut milk
Salt
1 (or 2) mango, cubed

In a large saucepan over medium-high, warm the oil. Add the shallot and ginger and saute for about 30 seconds. Add the rice and stir to coat and mix. Add 2 cups water, the coconut milk, and salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, simmer for about 20 minutes - just like you'd normally cook rice.

When done cooking, stir/fluff with a fork, then add the mango and stir that in, too. 

(Green beans - blanched, with olive oil, salt, pepper.)

Chile Chicken with Lime and Coconut Milk

(adapted from Dave DeWitt's 1,001 Best Hot and Spicy Recipes)

Man, I am not doing so well on this whole blogging thing lately, am I? Somehow I've been having trouble coordinating the new recipe lookup with grocery shopping...and now I feel like I'm repeating myself from a previous post...rut, anyone? Well, this one snapped me out of it a bit. The best part is that I think it gave me a hint as to how to prepare one of my favorite restaurant dishes - a coconut curry that I've only been able to find at a Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Grand, in St. Louis (stay tuned for that one).

This was really good and really simple. All the ingredients just get thrown into a pan and left for awhile, and then you eat! It was so good that I actually enjoyed eating it with brown rice. Now that's a testimonial.

I think next time I'd either leave out the limes, or I'd certainly remove them before serving. And if the grocery store hadn't been out of lemongrass, that would've been a great addition. Even with that, it was tasty, satisfying, and a nice change of pace - especially with how little effort it required.

So:
5 chicken drumsticks (or equivalent chicken parts of your choice)
2 cups coconut milk (about 1 can)
1/2 tsp turmeric
4 shallots, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1 tsp salt
1 stalk lemongrass (optional, but preferred)
1/4-1/2 lime, slice in rounds
2-4 dried hot chiles (DeWitt calls for Santaka; I used tien tsin), crushed

Combine all of the ingredients in a large pan, spooning the sauce over the chicken. Cook, covered, over medium heat for about 30 minutes, stirring now and then, until the chicken is cooked and tender. The sauce will thicken. Remove limes and serve over brown rice.

Travel Edition: Dining in Japan

(Tokyo - Pickled Vegetables, Various Tofus and Bean Curds, Sardines, Rice with Tiny Fish (Jayko!), Miso with Shellfish)

Time for a post that's long overdue: dining in Japan! Come on, you know I'm that embarrassing tourist who photographs every single meal item. And now - lucky, lucky you - I'm dedicating a whole post to those embarrassing photos.

One of my many, many favorite things about Japan was the food. The traditional cuisine is fantastic, the options are endless (we barely ate the same thing twice), and you can get just about any other international cuisine you want, and get it done right. So, in addition to Japanese food, we had Spanish, Thai, French, Irish Pub...aaaaand one trip to McDonald's (the most polite McD's experience ever, by the way - they even arranged the food in neat rows on the tray table).

Because everything is so clean, etc., you can really feel good about trying more adventurous dishes, which is fantastic.

One thing we noticed halfway into the trip was how fast the food was prepared, too. I didn't really realize this until two restaurants apologized that the food would take - horror of all horros - 15 minutes to make it to our table. Of course, that seemed more than reasonable to us, especially considering what was being prepared.

The single thing I didn't like: fermented soybeans, which made an unfortunate appearance in my last meal of soba noodles. Hey, I tried it. Not. Good.

Final food note: Tsukiji Fish Market. Massive and amazing. And they do it EVERY day!

The country is clearly still suffering from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters, and will likely continue to do so for years to come. As many people have observed, however, the Japanese are not ones to let themselves be set back by extreme adversity: three days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the community had the trolleys running again. I loved our trip, the country, and the people, and am hopeful for Japan's recovery.

Tokyo - Thai


Tokyo - Conveyor Belt Sushi


Tokyo - Yakitori; Sushi, Fresh from Tsukiji Fish Market; Udon; Making Soba Noodles


Nikko - (Politely Slurping) Ramen and Mizuyokan (Red Bean Jelly)

Hiroshima - Okonomiyaki and Food Display

Miyajima - Grilled Oysters, Prawn Tempura with Udon, and Momiji Manjū


Kyoto - Paella, Boulangerie Breakfast, Fish and Chips, McDonald's


Kyoto - Tempura; Carpaccio; Spaghetti with Shrimp, Asparagus, Garlic, White Wine, Parsley - Topped with Fish Eggs! (Seriously Delicious)


Kyoto - French Bistro - Carpaccio, Potage, Tender Beef




Kyoto - Gion - All One Meal!


Nara - Mackerel and Salmon Sushi Wrapped in Persimmon Leaves (Delicious!)


Tokyo - Fugu (Pufferfish) - (I didn't get to try it, but Joef did!)

Mexican Feast, Part 3: Classic Red Tomato Rice

(adapted from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen)

If you're going to make the Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa from earlier in this series, you might as well make this rice along with it (or vice versa). Just double the salsa recipe from 2 cups to 4 cups, and use 2 of those cups for this rice. We ate this rice with the main chicken dish (Part 4!).

The original recipe calls for baking the rice, which I'm sure would be great. Unfortunately, I didn't have an ovenproof, lidded saucepan - so I just cooked it on the stovetop, much like I would regular rice. And it turned out just fine. Here's how it goes:

2 cups Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups medium grain rice
1 1/2 cups chicken broth or water
1/2 cup loosely packed cilantro, chopped

Make your salsa. In a saucepan/pot, heat the olive oil over medium, then add the rice and cook for about five minutes while stirring. Add the salsa right to the rice, then add the broth and 1 tsp salt. Bring to a boil, then turn to low and cover until the liquid evaporates and the rice is cooked, about 25 minutes. Sprinkle in the cilantro, fluff, and serve.

Lemon Chicken

(adapted from my father, SPQR)

We should probably find another name for this dish that more adequately captures how unbelievably delicious it is. Chicken Scallopini with Lemon? With Lemon-Butter Sauce? Getting closer. Anyway, growing up it was lemon chicken, so lemon chicken it shall remain.

This was one of my most frequent requests for birthday meals at home. And it very nicely fits our current meal requirement: low-budget. Got flour? Lemon? Butter? Done. Plus, check it out - I actually made a balanced meal, with sides and veggies and everything! It's not just pasta!

So, here's what you need for two people:
2 decently sized/thick chicken breasts (or 3 smaller ones, or 3 if you're just really hungry), thawed
Flour
Salt
Pepper
2 tbsp butter, divided
Olive oil
1 large lemon

(Sides: I made the rice and asparagus first so I could focus on the chicken. If you're better at timing things than I am, you could of course do them all at once. I blanched the asparagus, drizzled it in olive oil, and sprinkled it with a little salt.)

The first step is to turn the chicken into scallopini. The key is really to have a good, sharp knife. Place a chicken breast on a cutting board, put your hand on top of it, and slice it sideways to make very thin filets. You'll end up with some small pieces, some long, some large - this is fine. Just make sure they're thin.

When that's done, put some flour on a plate and dust each filet with flour individually on both sides. You want it coated, but not thick - just a thin layer of flour around each filet. Set those aside.

Take a large frying pan, nonstick preferred, and drizzle a couple/a few tbsp of olive oil into it along with 1 tbsp of butter. Turn the heat to medium-high and let the pan get hot. Add a little salt and black pepper.

When the pan is good and hot, use tongs to cook batches of the filets/scallopini. They will cook FAST. Flip them so they cook on both sides. Remove the cooked filets from the pan and set them aside on a plate (in the winter, to keep them warm, you can put them on a plate in the oven).

Once all the chicken is cooked, squeeze the juice of one lemon into the pan you just used - keep the heat the same. Also add another 1 tbsp of butter. Stir around to combine and melt, then add all the chicken back to the pan and stir around to coat the chicken on both sides. Transfer to a serving plate, add more salt if you want, pour the sauce from the pan over it, and garnish with parsley.

Risotto with Rosemary, Prosciutto, and Mushrooms

(adapted from cookthink.com)

I made risotto from scratch for the first time, woot! It was a little more time-consuming, obviously, than making it from a box, but there was a certain satisfaction in learning the process and gradually adding the broth. Here's what I used:

6 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons butter, plus 1 tablespoon for later
1 medium onion, diced
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup grated parmesan
3-4 large mushrooms, sliced
Prosciutto bits to taste

1. Bring the broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Reduce the heat to low and keep the broth hot.

2. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat in a pan. When the foam subsides, add the onion and a little salt and pepper. Cook the onion, stirring often, until it's translucent but not brown, 3-5 minutes. Add the rice and stir until coated with the onions. (I added the mushrooms here. And the prosciutto. Maybe a little too early. Added a couple rosemary leaves.) Cook, stirring once or twice, until the rice turns opaque, 2-4 minutes.

3. Add the wine and enough of the simmering broth to cover the rice. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is mostly evaporated and absorbed. Keep adding the broth, 1/2 cup or so at a time, until the rice is al dente.

4. Stir in the parmesan, remaining tablespoon of butter and black pepper to taste.

On the side I cooked some spinach with a little olive oil and a little bit of the chicken broth. See? Vegetables.