qianning's Profile
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Tapas and First Courses Thread
Grilled Sardines, Moro pg. 97
We had this a few days ago, but I haven't had much time to post this week. Anyway, I made these using the variation listed at the bottom of the page. Essentially grilled sardines (lightly salted before cooking) are topped with a mixture of parsley, garlic lemon zest and toasted pine nuts (toast almonds in our case). We really enjoyed these. In fact we are quite liking the Moro approach to grilling first then topping fish with spice/herb concoctions. I definitely will be trying the orange zest/parsley/garlic/olive combination sometime soon.
Butifarra; the Spanish sausage not the Peruvian sandwich
Not very familiar with it myself, but I believe there are many regional variants, dark, light & etc.
this entry over on this month COTM thread got me interested. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/846989
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Soups, Vegetables, Starches, and Legumes Thread
Oh, Gio, that write-up made me smile.
Meanwhile I'm curious has anyone ever done sauteed mushrooms w/ lemon juice (CR suggest it as an alternative to the optional white wine)?
Butifarra; the Spanish sausage not the Peruvian sandwich
Any place that sells this in greater Boston?
Homemade ketjap manis: use brown sugar, or caramelize the sugar?
Personally, I'd use palm sugar or palm jaggery.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
"Tastes are so personal", ain't that the truth. That said some folks are so good at guessing what others will like. I alas am not one of them, and it is a skill I really wish i had.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
Phew, glad to hear it, hate giving people a bum steer!
Tried and True Recipes from David Thompson's "Thai Food"
Gosh Zambia, east coast US sources aren't very helpful to you, sorry!
Growing your own sounds great. I try too, but in New Hampshire its a challenge, my lime tree is 5 or 6 years old and only a foot and a half tall!
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
You're right, wonderful summer food.
And BTW, you're earlier advice, re: if you like big flavors the Moro marinade is a good bet, was spot on for us. Thanks.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Soups, Vegetables, Starches, and Legumes Thread
Roasted Pepper and Onion Salad, FOS pg. 241
I sort of made this, kinda. Well, here's the thing, most of the recipe is instructions on how to roast the peppers, onions and garlic in an oven so as to emulate the original peasant version "made in the fields over fire". I scrapped the whole oven rigamarole, and grilled the pepper, onion and garlic over charcoal. Much easier, especially as I was planning to use the grill for Moorish Skewers anyway.
The grilled (or roasted) peppers and onions are sliced, and then dressed with o.oil and lemon juice made a bit special by the addition of roasted garlic and cumin. The cumin flavor really did set the dish apart from a standard roasted veg w/ vinaigrette. Finally, black olives are tossed in, but I didn't have any, so skipped them altogether.
What I did have was the Moorish Skewers from Moro. What a fortuitous pairing! We both loved it. I found myself deliberately taking a little piece of meat, a little piece of onion, and a little piece of pimento on each fork, very very nice.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Soups, Vegetables, Starches, and Legumes Thread
Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy these. I probably should have mentioned in my original report that these are more like a steamed eggplant (which we happen to enjoy) than a roasted.
Anyway, sounds like the creme brulee finish might have eased the pain!
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
Moorish Skewers, Moro, pg 108
Big Sal did a great comparison review of several different versions of Moorish Skewers over on the companion thread, and it confirmed my interest in trying at least one batch this month.
I made the recipe from Moro pretty much verbatim. I did sub boston butt for pork fillet, because I had forgotten to get fillet when I shopped, but had the butt in the freezer so decided to give it a try. I was concerned the meat might be tough, but not at all. In fact we loved these. For us the robust marinade; coriander, cumin, fennel seed, saffron, garlic, sweet paprika, oregano & bay, plus wine vinegar and o. oil added fabulous flavor to the meat. And I have to think it did a great job tenderizing as well.
I have a feeling these are going to make at least a few appearances at dinner this summer.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
so sorry it wasn't a hit for you.
Tried and True Recipes from David Thompson's "Thai Food"
I've found this site really useful for identifying and getting the names of various roots and herbs used in various Asian cooking.
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Kaem_gal.html
Also, don't know if it is available in your area, but Eastland Foods (sold under their Asian Best label) has a line of frozen Southeast Asian Aromatics that many of the SEA and Chinese grocery stores in our area carry, the labeling can be confusing, often the Latin name rather than a common name, but the product range and quality is quite good. You might want to call/write them and see if anyone near you carries their line. http://www.eastlandfood.com/
New Fuchsia Dunlop book
Yes, I think he is Singaporean, but his mother and her family are Nonya from near Malacca. Lots of references in the book to his grandmother, various aunts, and times spent living with/visiting them in Malaysia. My impression is that this was one of if not his first book, hard to get a hold of, but worthwhile if you like Nonya food.
New Fuchsia Dunlop book
Will look forward to your report. I have his "Straits Chinese Cooking", very good hard to find Nonya home-cooking recipes.
New Fuchsia Dunlop book
LOL!
My list of wants for English language books on Chinese sub-cuisines is sooooo long, (Huaiyang, Zhejiangese, Tanjia Cai, Hakka, and Snack foods of the Northwest, head things up, but it goes on and on....) every time I see Cantonese recipes i kinda groan, but at least w/ Ms. Dunlop they should be good versions.
New Fuchsia Dunlop book
Hope she wouldn't, and can believe neither she nor the publisher want much in the way of recipes out on the net before publication. So it makes sense that the previews are for things that are already out there.
Must admit, though, I've been a little bit "nervous" since learning the focus of this coming book is less geographically specific than her other books had been. Still, I don't think she's capable of writing a bad recipe, so it should still be one of this years highlights.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Tapas and First Courses Thread
Well, if you want to wing it, here's the rough draft;
4 endive, quartered and blanched for 2 min in salted water w/ half a lemon. Drain.
In a large heavy skillet, lightly brown 2+TBS butter, add the endive and cook til browned/caramelized. when done season w/ S&P, and some lemon juice.
meanwhile, sauce is about 1/3 lb Picos Cheese (i.e. Blue cheese from Valdeon area) with 1/2 C heavy cream, and a good pinch of fresh ground nutmeg, all brought almost to the bubble. Cheese should only be half melted. (really, though, we needed much less sauce than this yielded).
Plate endive, add cheese sauce, garnish w/ fresh chopped parsley.
For the most part I have to say "moro" has been a delight, when you do get a copy you'll probably enjoy it.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
This month there really does seem to be a lot of "one member of the household loves it, the other doesn't" going around. Wonder why?
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
Well, yours sure looked good to me & were much darker and richer looking than mine!
Completely forgot about greeneggsandham's earlier post on using the fond from the meatballs to brown the picada ingredients. My meatballs were made in a separate pan and a day earlier than my sauce, so it wouldn't have worked this time, but now I will remember what to try next time. thanks.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Tapas and First Courses Thread
Braised Chicory with Picos Cheese, Moro pg. 136
This deceptively simple recipe gave me some trouble, although it all came right in the end. If I made it again (and I might, since Mr. QN thought it was totally swoon worthy), there would be some adjustments. But first, here's how it is written with notes on the troubles I had.
Blanch quartered endive in salted and lemon juice acidified water until tender, drain. Easy enough, but in the future I'd split the endives in half not quarters, they are so much easier to handle cut that way. I'm also not convinced the blanching step is necessary, I'd probably rather cook them slowly in the butter than try rush things by blanching.
Anyway, next, brown butter in a large frying pan, add the endive and cook until caramelized. No instructions on what heat settings to use. The blanched endive gave off a ton of water, and weren't getting even close to brown at a medium-ish heat, so in desperation I upped the temp, and they did final start to brown, but it did seem kind of risky to cook them at such a high heat.
Meanwhile make the sauce, which is cream, Picos cheese (a Blue cheese from Valdeon, new to me and very nice) and a dash of nutmeg warmed just to the bubbling point. My sauce turned out to be quite a bit thinner than I had thought it would be and the recipe yielded way more sauce than 4 endive needed, I've still got over half of it set aside. In the future I'd greatly reduce the amount of cream but keep the amount of cheese pretty close to the original.
Plate the endive, pour over sauce, add chopped parsley, serve.
The results were tasty, heck, anything this rich ought to be tasty! Here they are sauced but pre-parsley.
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
Great photo!
Meanwhile, I made a mini batch of these (1/4 recipe) to see what all the hoopla was about and to use up some ground pork. We loved them too!
But, mine were definitely much paler than either those in LN picture above and the picture in the book....I'm trying to decide if I should have browned the meatballs longer, or, more likely, the almonds, bread and garlic. Any hints on where the rich color of the sauce comes from?
May 2012 COTM: Food of Spain and Moro The Fish, Poultry, and Meat Thread
Hake Cooked in cider, FOS pg. 327
Delightful, and very straightforward too. Saute onion, add garlic and continue to cook for a bit, then some chopped tomato sauteing til soft, and here's the twist, add hard cider, reduce, add hake steaks (filets in my case) that have been lightly browned in a separate pan, cook an additional 3-5 minutes. The cooking's done and you are ready to eat this very tasty dish.
We were both wowed by how well the cider flavor went with the fish (and for that matter the tomatoes in the sauce). One of those "I'd have never thought of it" flavor combinations that really works very well.
Tried and True Recipes from David Thompson's "Thai Food"
Interesting that it put you in mind of Indian prep, as I was reading the spice blend & cooking method, I was thinking it sounded very Malaysian.
Have you ever tried Burmese crab curry? Very very good stuff.
Tried and True Recipes from David Thompson's "Thai Food"
Good point(s). What the heck do fish kidneys look like anyway? Now that I think about it other than the Chinese use of fish maw, Japanese Monkfish liver, and various types of roe, I've never paid much attention to the individual parts of fish guts!
Chowdown at Gene's Chinese Flatbread Cafe
You can readily get shaved noodles in Beijing. But I believe they are most associated with Shanxi which is the province just to the east of Shaanxi --that's not a typo, these two provinces have very similar looking names in English--, of which Xi'an is the capital. So you have a good point in that they aren't exactly a Xi'an specialty.
But then again, "pulled" noodles are most associated with Lanzhou, which is the capital of Gansu, the province just to the west of Shaanxi. And I used to frequent a Xi'an restaurant in Beijing that made great you po shaved noodles; have never found them in the U.S. including in Flushing chinatown, which is why I'm craving them!
Tried and True Recipes from David Thompson's "Thai Food"
1) 1st paragraph made me smile.
2) But you never say, how was the curry?
