Modesty forbids

Mikan-san won’t mention that she made an awesome homemade bread so I will: Mikan-san, your bread was MOST EXCELLENT. Thank you for the sample. I om-nom-nom-ed it with great gusto.

Also, Awesomesaucers and attendees. Equinox party. I have no clue what I’m making as I don’t know what anyone else is making, and since no one knows what else they’re making, no one can decide… vicious circle!

So my question is this: does anyone know what ingredients they’re using or what kind of dish it will be –e.g. main course or dessert? I gotta tell you, anything I make for this event will be something totally new to me, so this is all uncharted territory. I feel a little “safer” doing a dessert but I don’t want to have the dinner be dessert-heavy if everyone else is doing a dessert too.

Ahem.

(Also, so we’re all on the same page, “tropical” means, I’m assuming, any of the following: coconut, pineapple, passionfruit, mango…? Anything else?)

 

Thai night

Asano-mama and I had a hankerin’ for Thai food, so we decided to have a mini Thai food night. The menu was pretty simple: homemade vegetable pad thai with tofu and a fusion-ish chili pork with scallions and sesame seeds.

The secret to good pad thai? Two things:

1. Make your own tamarind sauce. If you can get block tamarind pulp from your neighborhood Asian supermarket, do it. Avoid the canned or powdered tamarind ready-to-eat stuff; it’s much more rewarding and all around better flavor to make it yourself using the pulp. Reconstitute the pulp with water and strain the seeds and skin till only liquid remains. Then combine 1 part pulp with 1/2 part fish sauce, 1/4 part sugar, and chili paste to taste. The fish sauce and sugar bring a sweet/sour flavor to the tamarind, while the chili gives it a little (or a lot of) kick.

2. When soaking the rice noodles, only soak them until they start to get soft. They shouldn’t nearly be soft enough to eat. When you’re actually cooking the pad thai in the wok, they’ll absorb the moisture from the other ingredients and cook the rest of the way. I made this mistake so the pad thai came out a little soggy in the end, but it was still yummy.

 

Of chickens and boiling

Last night, I made chicken stock. I didn’t have as many ingredients as I would have liked: the bones from three chicken breasts, two carrots, some onion, and dried herbs. But it worked.

 

Can’t we just pay somebody to write a funny title for this post using “equinox”?

So…we’re having an Equinox shindig on the 29th, though it won’t actually be on the Equinox, it’s ok, because we’re ok. We haven’t decided yet if it’s going to be themed — ALL COCONUT ALL THE TIME?

I am very good at throwing things in a pan and burning them. A master, in fact.

Off-hand, I was thinking it’d be fun to do something way outside my comfort zone , but that’s pretty much everything. If it’s not Italian, Greek, Turkish or Lebanese, I have no idea how to make it and probably don’t have the right tools to cook it either. (“What? You mean you don’t use olive oil in this?”) Oh yea, and I’ll probably burn it.

Asano-mama will now give you all a vocabulary lesson. In Greek, the word for what we call “olive oil” is λάδι, pronounced “LAH-þee” (yes, that’s a þorn). It means oil, not olive oil, just oil, because why the heck would you use anything else? Sickos.