A food how to.
We entered the grocery store for staples: bread, cheese, eggs. The plan was get in get out.
Then I spotted the shelled peas which unleashed a desire for Spring vegetables, and I stuffed the basket with the peas, pretty red endive, a bunch of ruby red radishes, a zucchini, a couple heavy glossy lemons, and a wedge of Parmesan.
Enough for between one to four people, depending on what else is on the table with it.
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.
Oh. My god. I just discovered the Thai-style dipping sauce, nam chim, when made with habaneros and a ton of cilantro, is an outrageously good sauce that I could imagine eating on basically any kind of meat or vegetables. It’s a gloriously green, intoxicatingly scented, and richly flavoured fresh sauce with a lot of tang.
At least a year ago, maybe two, I was sitting in a park and I imagined a “pop-up picnic” vendor that would roll up with a cargo bike and sell full picnics complete with a blanket and a bottle of wine. In my fantasy, picnickers would get a tote bag filled with tasty food, plus all the things they’d need to enjoy them, like glasses and cutlery. I realized though that in reality you’d have better luck, financially, if the picnics were pre-ordered, the way one reserves and pre-pays for a supper club. Continue reading “A fully catered picnic”
I’m writing this down for myself to remember. It was an experiment worth repeating. I used black kale aka Tuscan kale aka Italian kale for this. Here is the process for making two sandwiches, which we ate as a side dish to a steak that we shared.
In a 250 ml glass, combine the juice of one lime (about 20 ml) and the same amount of pandan syrup (recipe below). Fill the glass to the top with ice cubes. Stir the ice cubes vigorously until the liquid from melting ice is halfway up the glass. Top with chilled strong green tea, ideally sencha. Stir again to mix in the tea.
Terminology around foods across languages and cultures is so confusing.
In Canada, no one would know what you meant if you said “farina” which is, apparently, the English term for what I have only ever called Cream of Wheat, which is a brand name. It’s the same coarseness as what is called semolina, and I often wondered about the difference. I gather from various sources that the difference is the variety of wheat, with semolina being yellow and made from hard wheat and farina is white and made from soft wheat.
So. When you get salt & pepper shrimp at a restaurant, they serve it on vegetables. I have successfully made the shrimp, and I’ve made dry-fried beans, so when I realized I had onions and green pepper to stretch the few green beans I had into enough for two people, I applied my collected experience into making the vegetables they serve under salt & pepper shrimp.
It was easy. And it was glorious.
VIVRE POUR MANGER 