I have a secret ingredient I’ve been using a lot recently. To understand it at all, you first need to know about larb.
The Wikipedia article about larb is really comprehensive, and you should just probably read it sometime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larb
Summary:
Enough for between one to four people, depending on what else is on the table with it.
I just dug up this draft I started 3 years ago. I decided to tidy up what text there was, add some notes, and publish it.
I missed my cookbooks when they were in storage for five-plus months. The cookbooks were one of the first things I dug out of boxes when we moved into the bigger new place. Our little place was only big enough for one guest, yet I daydreamed about dinner parties. Now I could fill in the details of my daydreams by perusing recipes.
In the first days at the big place, when we had no internet, I read the cookbooks. Many have introductory and interstitial text that you never encounter if you stick to reading only the index and the recipes. I decided then that I would set out to read such cookbooks from start to end, only skipping through the most mechanical bits. I have started with Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia. I have been reading it a few pages at a time for about a month. [Editorial note from 2017: I did finished it. I don’t recall if I read any other cookbooks after that.]
This post is mostly for my own reference. I made Vietnamese “Beef” Stew twice, though neither time with beef. The recipe below is lightly adapted from Vietnamese Beef Stew (Bò Kho) Recipe #SundaySupper by Thien-Kim Lam.
Continue reading “Vietnamese Beef Stew, but with goat or chicken”
I woke up with a great idea. I went to the local Bioladen (organic grocery) because that is the only thing open near here on a Sunday. I bought what I could i.e. no dill, and green onions instead of chives. When I got home, I spent an hour prepping, cooking and assembling breakfast.
Recap: back in January 2016, I photographed every item in my pantry (excluding spices, teas, and staples). I blogged about the dishes I made with these items. I wrote up a mid-year summary of my progress wherein I concluded that there were 28 items I still had not used.
So, what happened with those 28 items? I’m glad you asked!
A few weeks ago it was the height of blackberry season, and the weather felt cold for the first time, and I felt like something dark and rich. So I Googled “crispy duck blackberry sauce”, scanned the details of the top hit and decided it was exactly what I wanted.
