Cooking Internationally in Ithaca

I really like cooking south and southeast Asian food. These areas feature some of my favorite combinations of flavors, and have food that's just generally tasty. When I have folks over for dinner, these are generally my foods of choice.

I also like to be as authentic as I can in capturing the key elements of those flavors. This often requires a bit of scrambling to find ingredients. In Ithaca, this can be a non-trivial challenge. Wegman's is pretty good, but they don't have everything. In this entry I will walk you through a recent Thai-style dinner I hosted, and explain where I was able to find the ingredients in Ithaca.

I was working mostly from a cookbook I got when taking a cooking class at the (fabulous) Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School in Thailand. The recipes have probably been adapted slightly for a western palate (half the chilies, anyone?), but they're pretty close to real. I also wanted to make my own curry paste. I've not done this before, and it seemed a worthy endeavor.

I decided to make: mieng kum (leaf wraps), green papaya salad (but only if I could find a green papaya), pad thai with tofu, coconut curry with chicken, and some sort of lemongrass ice cream (ice cream not really Thai at all, but this seemed like it would fit and it was a good excuse to play with my new ice cream maker).

Ok…so I won't bore you with a full list of ingredients, but here are the more unusual things (read: stuff not usually in US supermarkets) that would be required for this: green papaya, lemongrass (for ice cream and curry paste), shrimp paste (for curry paste), lime leaves (for curry), Thai basil (for curry), galangal (for a few things), dried shrimp, and Asian eggplant.

First stop was Wegman's. They have an impressive Asian dry goods department and a decent selection of Asian produce. Lesson #1: Their Thai dry goods are not well suited to making stuff from scratch. They had lots of prepared Thai curry pastes, but no shrimp paste or dried shrimp, which are key constituent ingredients. They did, impressively, have fresh galangal however. They also had lemongrass, but it was very expensive and didn't look very good. Pass.

Next stop: Ithaca Tofu, which is a little Asian market buried behind the Triphammer Mall. I knew I was on the right track when I ran into several Asian graduate students from my department there, and this place was impressive. Thai basil? Check. Asian eggplants? check. Dried shrimp? check. Lime leaves? Needed to ask the guy behind the counter to dig them out of the freezer, but…yes, they were there. Check. Green papaya? Not so much, but I guess they sometimes have them.

Final stop: Win Li, which is an Asian market on the other end of Ithaca, almost at Home Depot. Green papaya? Yes! They had many of the other things here too (though no lime leaves or thai basil), but it was interesting to note that their prices were a lot higher than Ithaca Tofu. They also had some really nice (if slightly overpriced) Atulfo mangoes, which were pretty outstanding for this time of year.

So here are a couple shots of dinner. Making my own curry paste was somewhat stinky (if you've ever opened a jar of shrimp paste, you know what I mean), but rewarding. Some effort, yes, but really tasty. The only hitch in this was that none of the stores had red Thai chilies (only green), so my 'red' curry paste was a bit on the brown side.

The curry itself was interesting because it relied on separating (i.e., thick and thin) coconut milk, with the thick milk added first and used as a cooking fat. This also browns and thickens the coconut milk, which adds depth to the curry. It's unfortunately not possible to get the tiny (pea-sized) Thai eggplants in Ithaca (or most places in the US, as far as I can tell), but purple Asian eggplants fill in ok (though with a much less bitter taste). And it was totally worth chasing down those lime leaves; they add such a nice finish to coconut curry that just can't be had otherwise.

The mieng kum (above) were enjoyed by everybody, though not as beautiful as the ones I had in Singapore last month (I didn't even attempt to look for betel leaves, which are way cooler than Boston lettuce). Pad thai was pretty standard, perhaps slightly enhanced by the palm sugar I bought from a farmer in Cambodia (see photo). Papaya salad was tasty. And the ice cream came out nicely as well.


One other ingredient note. This isn't Thai at all, but it's also possible to find fresh curry leaves in Ithaca. The "Universal Deli" (actually a convenience store) on Eddy St. in Collegetown gets them on the first Wednesday of the month. It's $2 for a small packet (which is really pricey, for curry leaves) and you have to ask the cashier to fetch them for you.

Next post: Mexican candy.

Screw Pine Shortbread: Lessons from an Experiment

As I think I've made clear, I like experimenting with flavors. I'm constantly scanning for products that sound interesting, particularly when traveling in new parts of the world. It was with this in mind that I was incapable of not purchasing a bottle reading "Kewra Essence: Screw Pine" at the sprawling Mustafa Centre in Singapore a few weeks ago. I had no idea what kewra or screw pine were, but they sounded intriguing. And $1 or so seemed a reasonable investment in curiosity.

I opened the bottle later; it smells a bit like rose water (which smells like, well, roses), but perhaps a bit earthier. Some Googling revealed that screw pine is another term for Pandanus, the leaves of which are often used to flavor southeast asian sweets (like kaya) and other dishes. Kewra essence, though, comes from the flower of this plant and has a quite different taste.

Ok…so what to do with my newfound bottle of rose-like liquid? I'm still not sure. It felt like it might go well with almonds in a dessert. Or maybe make an interesting cupcake or sorbet. I decided to experiment a bit by incorporating it into shortbread.

I find that rich, sweet desserts like shortbread or ice cream are good ways to see how a flavor will stand up, what it might work with, and how it is affected by sugar. I discovered this when making Thai basil ice cream a few years ago; revelation: sugar does magical things to basil. So I made some screw pine shortbread last night (lovers of word play will note that this name can also be interpreted as an imperative).

Outcome? Not very good shortbread, but some lessons. The kewra really is an "essence" and was not strengthened very much by the sugar at all. I had to add quite a bit (3 tablespoons!) to the dough to get any scent of it before baking, and the finished product only has the vaguest hint of the taste, mostly at the end. Making matters worse, an extra 3 TBSP of liquid means that the shortbread is sort of soggy, even with the top browned.

I think this is a flavor best combined with others, and it's not well-suited to being the focus of attention. I might try to use it as an enhancer for something nutty (as I suggested before), or maybe as part of a sorbet or syrup with berries or other sweet fruit. Stay tuned!

Street Food in Cambodia

I'm writing this back in Singapore after spending this past week in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The real reason for the trip was to join the throngs of tourists wanting to see Angkor Wat and its neighboring temples. I was able to combine this with a bit of (guided) mountain biking through the area and, of course, tasty Cambodian food.

This being a blog dedicated to interesting foods, I will tell you what I did (and did not) eat while I was there. I'm happy to tell you about the rest of the trip too -- just ask.


First, a bit on what I did not eat. Before I left home, I told the tour organizer I wanted to eat interesting local foods. As things worked out, I was the only person on this tour, so that didn't seem like too hard a request to comply with. I did get to eat delicious food, but there were a few things I didn't even want to attempt. The woman in the center photo, for example, runs a stand that apparently specializes in things I did not want to eat: watersnakes, frogs, crickets and other bugs. These were also common on roadside stands. Ditto chicken feet, also pictured here.

Ok, so what did I eat? Tasty stuff. Cambodia is, not surprisingly, a fairly poor country. It's possible to eat extraordinarily cheaply there, even when paying a tourist premium. Dishes at typical restaurants go for about US$3, with pricey places (cloth napkins, wine glasses, attentive service) closer to $6 or $7. Oddly, they use US dollars there (but only paper notes; change is made using riels, of which there are 4000 per dollar). My first night I had a fish curry (amok) with coconut milk and lots of lemongrass. It was good, but clearly not seasoned for even a weak Cambodian palate. I asked for some fresh chillies, which helped a bit. I also decided to eat more street food.

Street food is a bit elusive. It's sold by pushcart vendors who travel around. You never quite know what you're going to get or where. You have to jump at an opportunity to grab, say, a papaya salad or baguette, because you don't know when the next vendor will appear. And the prices start to escalate as you get closer to the city center.

I first went off in search of a baguette sandwich. Like Vietnam, Cambodia was a French protectorate for a while. And like in Vietnam, the ubiquitous rice flour baguette is the fortunate residue of this relationship. The sandwiches here are slightly different than in Vietnam. The baguettes are narrower, there is less meat (just a bit of pork), and a wider variety of pickled vegetables. This is the woman that sold me my first of a few baguette sandwiches, and she is the recipient of the only 100% tip I have ever given. She charged 1000 riels (25 cents) for the sandwich. I gave her 2000. It was worth it.

Next, time for a papaya salad. I had spotted a vendor earlier in the day, but didn't realize quite how elusive these guys could be. I vowed that I'd buy a salad from the next vendor I saw, and that's who is pictured here. He first took a chili, some salt and garlic and mashed them in a giant mortar and pestle. He then added green papaya, long beans, peanuts, green tomato, lime juice, some crawly things (shrimp, crab, etc.), an herb blend (Thai basil, rau ram, maybe others), and some fish sauce. Somehow he fit all of these things in his tiny cart, and produced a delicious salad that I enjoyed on a nearby park bench. Cost? 75 cents.

For dessert, a banana pancake. Perhaps another legacy of the French (they're similar to crepes, but made a bit differently), these are thin pancakes cooked with lots of butter (actually probably margarine, but we'll skip that detail), then rolled up with sweetened condensed milk and sliced baby bananas. Good, but not fabulous. Another 75 cents.

I did eat other meals in Cambodia, of course, but these were some of my favorites. I also picked up my share of street fruit -- one of my favorite features of Southeast Asia (see my guest blog entry on this topic from several years ago).

Eating in Singapore - Part 1

As many of you know, my sister, brother-in-law and (perhaps most notably these days) 3-month-old niece live in Singapore. After a few months of video chatting in which she probably wasn't aware of my presence, I finally got to meet her earlier this week. It's really been a ton of fun to interact with her this week, and hang out with my sister in her new 'mom' role.

This isn't my first trip to Singapore, but it's my first since the birth of Pearwise (just for the record, I'm referring to the blog; my niece's name is Samara). So I will take this opportunity to share with you some of my favo[u]rite foods I've been eating in Singapore.

First on the list are laksa and ota. These are both Peranakan dishes that are particularly good at neighbo[u]ring restaurants on Katong St. in Singapore. Ota is sort of like SE Asian gefilte fish. It's a ground fish pate that is heavily spiced and then grilled inside a banana leaf. After unwrapping the leaf, it is eaten with the toothpick that holds the bundle together. Laksa is a noodle dish served in a spicy coconut-y fish broth with bits of seafood. Laksa and Ota are best enjoyed whilst sitting on a tiny plastic stool on the sidewalk, and sipping on lime juice.

We also had some great Thai food the other night. We started with one of my favo[u]rite Thai appetizers -- mieng kum. Whole betel leaves are wrapped around a mini-salad of peanuts, diced lime, chillies and various other tasty bits. We also had a really nice green curry (made with the little tiny Thai eggplants that are available here), a delicious papaya salad, fried chicken, and olive rice. For dessert: mango and sticky rice, one with a candle for Mel's birthday.

More on some of the other foods later.

What are your staples?

Happy new year! I hope 2010 ended well for you, and that 2011 is getting off to a great start. Speaking of you, I first want to acknowledge all of the positive feedback I've gotten from many of you about Pearwise in its first few months. Compliments are great, of course. Constructive criticism is also welcome.

This will be the first post in which I will pose a specific question for you all to answer. You are an extremely diverse group, and I'm kind of excited to tap your collective knowledge.

So…what's the question, you ask? I'm curious about staple foods. The things you keep around so that you can quickly whip up something tasty on short notice. Stuff that sits on pantry shelves or that goes in the freezer or fridge and lasts for a while. The things you put on your shopping list when you set up a kitchen in a new place.

I'll tell you about mine first. I've become rather enamored with Asian flavors over the past few years, so a lot of them skew in that direction. I also assume here that the extreme basics (flour, sugar, salt, oil, etc.) are a given. Here are a few things I've discovered:

In the freezer

Thai chilies They're hot and freeze nicely. (Yes, I know Cook's Illustrated claims they lose flavor. Not so much as to make them useless, I think). They defrost in minutes and can be minced to enliven quick stir fries, eggs, etc.

Curry leaves You can buy a bag of these at most Indian groceries for $1 or so, and then stick them in the freezer. They last a few months before they start to lose flavor. And the flavor is unique. They're delicious not just in curries, but also go super nicely with eggs or potatoes.

Butter Freezes well and means you can always have cookies at a moment's notice. This is critical.

In the fridge

Chili paste Thicker than the more common sriracha, and better-tasting, I think. I use it like ketchup whenever something lacks enough heat, and also on sandwiches. Spread thinly.

Curry paste There are a zillion of these in both Indian and Thai varieties. I often have both, but find that I use Thai red curry paste the most. Good for making a quick curry, of course, but also delicious in mashed potatoes along with a little coconut milk.

Ginger paste I know it's not as good as fresh ginger, but this stuff is pretty good and lasts a long time. Fresh ginger does not. I've used it in baking, for curries and with eggs (along with onions, curry leaves and chilies -- this is a recurring item on my weekend menu).

(I also pretty much always have onions, eggs, potatoes, and plain yogurt in the fridge)


On the shelves

Coconut milk Comes in handy more than I ever expect it to. It's handy for curries, of course, but also in some baked goods, smoothies (in place of milk) or other drinks, making potatoes (esp. mashed), etc.

Canned tomatoes Again, very useful to have around for when you can't get to the store for fresh ones (or for when the fresh ones lack any sort of appeal).

At least one type of split lentil. Add water and cook. Throw together with some spices and maybe sauteed onions. Add rice. Dinner's ready.

Rice I'm currently partial to basmati, and have both white and brown. I buy it in 10-lb bags, as it lasts a really long time. I go through these bags faster than I'd like to admit.

Key spices cumin seeds, coriander seeds, turmeric, cayenne, cinnamon. Whole seeds hold their flavor longer than ground spices.

Chocolate chips Combine with butter, sugar and other stuff to have cookies at a moment's notice. Like I said before, critical.

So…those are my staples. What are yours?

Food is the New Lego

I spent most of my childhood in my bedroom building stuff with Lego. Sometimes by myself; sometimes with friends. Sometimes following the directions that came with the sets; sometimes making stuff up. Often building my own version of something I had seen in the real world (an interesting house, car, etc) and wanted to process a bit.

It occurred to me the other day that, though I no longer play with Lego very much, food now plays a very similar role in my life. I've hopefully demonstrated by now that I really like to play with food, and that it affords a similar sort of creativity: using existing recipes, improvising, and trying to replicate stuff I've seen in the world.

One aspect of this that I find particularly fun is the dinner party. Some of my favorite experiences over the past several years have involved elaborate, fascinating meals with friends at exceptional restaurants. I will save specific details for other posts, but the key point here is that these meals are something I very much enjoy trying to replicate.

That said, I will never be able to replicate any of these meals. I don't have the skills, staff of sous chefs, fancy equipment, or access to extreme ingredients. In the same way, though, I could never really replicate stuff in the real world with Lego. But I could come up with my own approximation that had some similar properties. That was fun in and of itself.

That's exactly what I try to do with dinner parties. I like my dinner parties to be elaborate enough to replicate what I consider to be key elements of my favorite meals: lots of courses (which gives a meal a certain sense of decadence and means you'll spend a long time together), interesting ingredients (stuff you don't eat every day makes a meal special, even if the ingredient is not expensive or rare), and creative technique (ditto the previous explanation).

I hosted one of these parties the other night (actually hosted it at a friend's place, who has a much cooler and larger apartment than I do). It was rather ambitious for a mostly solo effort, but it was lots of fun. Here is a rundown of the menu, with thanks to my friend Mike for taking photos all evening.

Amuse Bouche: Sweet potato smoothie with cinnamon and cumin. A few years ago I began starting all dinners with a savory smoothie. It's a fun way to start. This one was rich, creamy and featured warm flavors.









Soup: Butternut squash with roasted tomatillos and chipotles. This is out of Moosewood's New Classics (a _great_ book). Hearty, warming and spicy soup. Garnished with cilantro.






Salad: Spicy cabbage with coconut. This one is based on a recipe from Alford & Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves (also a great book). The cabbage cooks in the water from rinsing. Curry leaves, onions and lots of chilies give it flavor. Coconut gives it a bit of richness and absorbs some of the water. Tasty.




Palate Cleanser: Lemongrass sorbet. Simple and refreshing. Just lemongrass steeped in a simple syrup. Should probably have added some stabilizer to prevent iciness.






Entree: Chicken breasts marinated in a ginger & galangal yogurt sauce, plus carrots cooked in coconut milk with chilies and curry leaves. Chicken based on a chicken kiev recipe, filled with yogurt sauce and roasted. Carrots based on a South Asian recipe for beets.





"Cheese": Not really cheese, but it was dairy and at that point in the meal. Olive oil ice cream, lemon zest, capers, walnuts, sea salt. I've been wanting to do a savory ice cream sundae for a while. Olive oil ice cream (from the Perfect Scoop) seemed a good place to start, and these ingredients mostly worked. Some felt the capers were too strong. it was interesting, in any event.



Pre-Dessert: Caramel apple, one bite (see previous blog post). These suffered from the classic problem of very fragile spheres. Might not make it again; too much stress.






Dessert: Dehydrated key lime pie, mango powder, blackberry coulis, chocolate soda (powder).
Pie is a crumbled pie crust (graham cracker, butter, sugar, cinnamon) plus a dehydrated key lime curd (based on a recipe from Achatz's Alinea cookbook; butter, eggs, sugar, key lime juice, agar gelled in the fridge and then dehydrated on acetate sheets for 15 hours).

Chocolate soda powder was cocoa powder, sugar, citric acid, baking soda, and maltodextrin. The acid and baking soda make it fizz. The maltodextrin tames it a bit. The acid also makes it sour, unfortunately. I don't think people liked this a lot.

The coulis was fairly straightforward. The mango powder was purchased.

Mango Icing with Coconut Cupcakes

Ok…raise your hand if you don't adore buttercream icing. Sweet, rich, creamy deliciousness. Reason to angle for a corner piece of birthday cake. Good enough to scrape off the plate with a fork. I'm betting not many hands are up right now.

And yet…sometimes buttercream can overwhelm. Maybe it's too much richness for an already rich cupcake that needs some sort of topping. Or the sugary sweetness overwhelms the intended flavor of the icing. Sometimes flavor matters more than sweetness and richness. What's a baker to do?

I have no doubt that purists will throw up their hands when I say this, but one answer is a really interesting set of modified food starches with cryptic names like "Ultra Tex 3" and "Ultra Sperse." The interesting thing about these starches is that they have been modified to swell in basically any liquid. Unlike corn starch, which needs to be cooked to thicken a custard, these powders will thicken anything you can put in a blender without any heating. And the texture is smooth, consistent and creamy.

I'm finding that "custards" made with these starches make a really nice, light icing for baked goods. Say you want apple icing. Put some apples through a juicer (or just buy some cider). Put the juice in a blender. Turn on the blender. Add a couple teaspoons of Ultra-Tex while it spins. Done. And it tastes like apple. Maybe add a little powdered sugar to boost the flavor.

So that's what I did this week. Many of you know that I love mangoes. I wanted to make an icing that screamed mango, and would complement some sort of tropically flavored cupcake.

Decent mangoes really aren't available at this time of year. Happily, however, one can always get delicious canned Kesar mango puree from India. "Canned mango?" you may be asking, "really?" Yes, really. Mangoes from India are so good that the canned ones are still way better than the best supermarket mango in December. So my first stop was one of the little Indian groceries on Parliament in Toronto.

Then I poured a cup or so of mango puree into the blender, along with 2 tsp of powdered sugar (to make the flavor pop a bit) and a splash of milk (to thin the pulp just a tiny bit). I turned the blender on, and dropped in about 5 tsp of Ultra-Sperse 3 while the motor was running, letting it blend quite a bit between spoonfuls.

The result was a creamy, pudding-like concoction that did indeed scream mango. I put it atop these cupcakes from Epicurious, which I made last night (and to which I added a pinch of cayenne):

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vanilla-Bean-Coconut-Cupcakes-with-Coconut-Frosting-352095