Get your meez on

Basic curry

Basics. Curries are a common technique in Thai cooking in which meat and veg are cooked in a flavorful liquid, which is usually thickened and served with rice. There are 6 parts to a curry, as listed below, with some common ingredients for each part.

• Flavoring: a paste like we did yesterday
• Liquid: water and/or coconut milk. May be thickened with nut paste.
• Seasoning: fish sauce, lime juice, sugar (this comes up so much I just abbreviate it FLS)
• Meat/veg: in any favorite combination
• Finish: BMC, nuts, fried shallot, chile
• Condiments: pickled items, FLS-based sauce, lime wedge

For curries I almost always fry the paste first because I like how the flavors bloom and change throughout the frying. Frying will develop darker and sweeter flavors, and not frying will emphasize the fresh flavors in the paste.

This one. For this one I used the meat and veg left over from the Thai skewers I had done. I fried up some of the paste, added coconut milk and chicken stock, then put in the meat and veg to simmer for a bit. I finished with BMC, chopped almonds, fried shallot, and some red chiles. Again, the cooking isn't too hard; the hard part is having the stuff around to use.

I probably got a little carried away with this one, but holy crap was it good.

Basic Thai paste

Simple? It's not that cooking Thai is simple. It's that once you have an understanding of the basic ingredients and techniques that come up again and again, you have a kind of access to the cuisine that you don't get by following a few recipes. I have read a lot of recipes in a lot of cookbooks, and have had a lot of fun doing so, but I almost never follow one. Instead, I'm looking for ingredient combinations that recur over and over again across different techniques, and vice versa.

The basics. Pastes are typically used as the basis of curries in Thai cooking, but they are also the basis of other dishes, as we will see. A basic paste has

• Aromatic veg like galangal, ginger, shallot, garlic, lemongrass
• Chiles: dried and/or fresh
• Preserved fish in some form: shrimp powder or shrimp paste being common
• Spices: white pepper, cumin, coriander, cardamom

A good base can be made by starting with the aromatics in equal amounts, but pull back on the garlic by about half. You can get a good sense of what is going on with the paste by smelling it, even though it will be a little different when it cooks. At this point you can adjust: add more galangal if you want to highlight that exotic gingery flavor, or the same way with lemongrass for the mellow citrus flavor, etc. The other ingredients are more optional: if you don't want heat, omit the chiles. I leave them out of the paste but make a hot sauce to accompany because I'm cooking for kids. The fishy stuff adds a great savory flavor that is worth getting to know. And spices are used in some curries but certainly not all.

For example.  I was going for more of a citrus flavor with this one, so I added lime and grapefruit zest, kaffir lime leaves, some coriander, and some preserved lime that I had kicking around.

Putting it together. A mortar and pestle (M&P) is the traditional way to prepare them, but a blender works fine as long as you add enough water to get the stuff moving. I use the M&P because I think it's fun. The thing I love about it, the thing that makes it one of my favorite kitchen toys, is that it's just two big friggin' rocks. I do start the paste in a food processor to get it broken down, and then finish in the M&P to get it nice and smooth. Does it taste any different? I seriously doubt it. The texture may be a little smoother in the M&P, and if you're frying the paste, the extra water needed for the blender might cause the paste to steam before it fries. I should test this and see...

Put some away. Freezing pastes is a good way to preserve the Asian Market Death Row that can develop in the fridge after you run out and get a bunch of stuff to make Thai and find yourself with more left over than you know what to do with. The aromatics do OK in the freezer; frozen is not quite as good as fresh, but still way better than something out of a can or jar; for my money it is well worth it to make more than you need.

Greek skewers

For the next skewer I went with something more obvious: Greek-style lamb. The night before, I smashed up some rosemary, thyme, basil, and mint with salt and XVO, and put it with the meat along with some lemon zest, pepper, and L&P. Threaded the meat the next day with red onion and served with tomato, cucumber, and grilled pita.

The sauce. Just some yogurt and dill with a little garlic. Seasoned pretty aggressively with lemon juice, pepper, salt, and a little sugar.

 

Thai meatballs

Forget basil. I am definitely not growing basil again this summer. The flavor is OK, but nothing like the psychic explosion of the purple basil. The first thing I do when I clean the basil is take off all the little purple buds from the tops and set them aside. They’re like half the reason to eat Thai food. I put them on top of all my Thai food like little cherries on a sunday.

Quick Thai. With the score from the market I wanted to make something that was easy and that would use a lot of what I had just bought, so I went with meatballs on the grill. I always have some chicken breasts and pork loin chops in the freezer for typical week-night meals, and so I ground some up. A pound of meat to one egg is a typical ratio for meatballs and meat loaf; I added one egg white and some cornstarch, maybe a little less than a tablespoon. Then in went

• Fish sauce
• Peanut butter
• Pepper
• A little sugar
• Some of that unidentified concentrated coconut stuff
• Garlic
• BMC

The secret. After frying some and tasting it, I pretty much doubled everything. Fried some again, tasted again, and it was there. And herein lies the secret of cooking: taste the food. With most of the basic Thai ingredients, pretty much everything goes together, so it is simply a matter of balancing the things you like and getting the seasoning right; we’ll talk a lot more about this as we go.

How they cooked. I was going to skewer these things, but it soon became clear that there was no way they were going to stay on, so I made them a little bigger and put them right on the grill. The fire had some wood chunks burning to add some smoke flavor. Once they were browned, I moved them over to the cool part of the grill and put the lid on with the vent over them so the smoke would be drawn across the meatballs. I’ve seen it in writing plenty of times that you are not supposed to cover food on your grill unless it is at least for an hour. You’re supposed to get an off taste by doing this, but frankly, I’ve never had that, and I really needed a way to cook these meatballs all the way through without putting them directly over a flame, because they were already browned. And you know what? They tasted fine. A little hint of smoke, and cooked through and through. In fact, I actually swooned right there in my back yard. The first one gave a wet pop as though it were a sausage.

The sauce. I would have put lots of chiles in, but since these had to feed a family I put them in the sauce. I used some of that chile basil paste, fish sauce, lime, and some more of that concentrated coconut stuff from Monday’s post. I expected it to be super sweet, but it has this tang to it almost like tamarind paste, and really deep flavors, especially with the fish sauce and lime.

BONUS. As an added bonus, Wegman’s had kosher Coke, which is made from sugar like the old coke, instead of corn syrup like Coke Classic. To a connoisseur, this makes a real difference: it has a lighter flavor and better finish that is more like what I remember.

The skewers of summer

It wasn’t until last summer that I became a fan of skewers, or kabobs if you prefer. To my mind they have everything going against them: it takes forever to thread them on the sticks, nothing cooks quite right, they are a hassle to turn unless you double up (more of a hassle) or have flat ones (I don’t), and you will probably get poked at some point.

I was telling myself all these things while I was making some, and you know what? They’re not so bad, even kind of fun. They are colorful, and the flavors kind of steam together and meld on the inside while the outside gets a nice char. It's also nice to have a way to cook meat and veg together.  And as it turns out, they are easy enough to turn if you cradle them on both sides with some long tongs.

Skewers are sort of the opposite approach to the Thai thread; with Thai, I am holding a profile steady and varying the techniques; with skewers, I am holding the technique steady and varying the profile. Said another way, with Thai I’m doing different things with the same stuff; with skewers I’m doing the same thing with different stuff.
Everyone has their way to do them (I’d like to hear yours); here are my keys to skewering:

• Season and flavor in advance. This is really the main thing. I did not used to believe in marinating, but if there is salt involved, then flavor does in fact get into the meat. For it to be worthwhile, though, it takes at least a day for most things, and preferably several for red meats. I’m on the fence about marinating the veg; sometimes I think that the extra moisture keeps them from cooking by the time the meat is done, but I do appreciate the flavor.
• Don’t go crazy with the vegetables. I stick with onions and peppers for the most part, and sometimes sliced mushrooms. Forget tomatoes. Some fruits work well, especially pineapple, mango, pear, and apple. Whatever other veg I want I either grill separately or put into a salad.
• Start with high heat. For red meat, I start at a high heat and leave it pegged. For chicken, I start high and then lower it. Red meat seems to need constant high heat to get a good sear and still be medium rare, while chicken seems to like the lower heat so that it doesn’t dry out. Shrimp is the one thing I do by itself, because I find that they take almost no time to cook.
• Finish with a sauce. If nothing else, a little vinaigrette will make most anything off the grill taste better. Something as simple as some seasoned lemon juice and olive oil goes a long way. By “seasoned” I mean a little salt and a little sugar. From there you can add whatever suits you, especially garlic and herbs.

This week happens to be Thai because I have all that stuff sitting around. To make these skewers I tossed the chicken and veg with some fish sauce and lot of torn up herbs and black pepper, and let them sit overnight. I made a little glaze out of some fish sauce, lime juice, chile and hoisin sauce, which I brushed on toward the end. I spooned a little over the stuff too, but it doesn’t show in the pic. Finished with more herb and chopped chile. These kind of got away from me because I didn’t lower the heat.

Home from the market

This spring and summer I am doing Thai. I’ve done Thai before, mostly pad thai, basil beef, and the occasional coconut milk curry. I’ve even made my own green curry paste. But this summer I’m really going to do Thai. It is a cuisine that I think is easier to get into than most people think. It can have an air of mystery about it, but the basic flavor profile is fairly accessible, and with a few techniques it is possible to turn out some truly great food.

The hardest part is having the stuff on hand. Thai requires some things that may be unfamiliar, and also requires more fresh ingredients than you may be used to. You can get by without them, but if you are going to explore this cuisine you really owe it to yourself to get the fresh stuff,  which can be a hassle. You either need a good Asian market, or simply order online from someplace like Import Food, my personal favorite.

So, to kick off my evil plot, I went to an Asian market and got the basic stuff. While some of the stuff may be unfamiliar or hard to get, most things from Asian markets are remarkably cheap. For example, I got a big bottle of Golden Boy fish sauce, which is consistently rated as one of the best, for $1.39. And most of the pastes and jarred oddities are a only few bucks apiece, so it is a cheap and fun way to play mad scientist with food. All the stuff in the picture was about $25, which includes:

• Fish sauce
• Limes
• BMC
• Lemongrass
• Kaffir lime leaves
• Chiles
• Coconut milk
• Ginger and/or galangal
• Garlic and shallots

The last three things I already had, so they’re not pictured. If you don’t like hot food, the chiles are optional, but still highly recommended. BMC is my abbreviation for the holy trinity of Thai herbs: basil, mint, and cilantro. Also pictured are some things that just seemed interesting: some pickled chiles and some chile and basil paste, as well as some black vinegar and oyster sauce for Chinese dishes. The pickled chiles would normally be easy enough to make myself, but again, these were very cheap and fun to play with. There is a plastic insert in the top of the jar so you can pour off the brine and refill it. Pastes are also fun to experiment with; sometimes they are not as good as things you can make yourself, but sometimes they have a unique flavor that would be hard to duplicate. For example, here is something I’ve never heard of and don’t know how to use, but bought and used anyway:

Can someone help me here? I’m hoping that the things that look like dates are in the international format, so that this stuff will expire June first instead of last January sixth. There are other common items such as shrimp paste, tamarind, palm sugar, and various pickled and dried items that range from irrelevant to horrifying, but it is possible to make lots of incredible food with the stuff pictured, which we’ll do this week. Here is a little preview of where we're headed: