Brown Family

St. Joseph's Hill

 

Yesterday we went out to look for the San Andrea's fault. I'd been given a clue that I might be able to find a visible spot up at St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve in Los Gatos, but no luck. We did have a nice walk up the hill and intend to go back soon.

St. Joseph's Hill is at Lexington Resovoir just off of Highway 17. I've lived in the Bay Area on and off for most of my life and never once have I driven off Highway 17 to take a look at the resovoir nor walk at the open space; I am certainly glad I have found it now. Starting at the parking lot near the water, we walked up the steep hill that marks the end of Jones Trail to the first marker where we could grab a map. We didn't walk all the way up to St. Joseph's Hill on this day, but plan on making it back for a longer walk. We did do a bit of a stroll, stopping to look at the views and pondering the rocks and mountain walls looking for signs of the fault line with no luck. The signs all give hints of potential encounters with Mountain Lions, which sounds dangerous but something I would like to see personally. We didn't see an Mountain Lions, but did come across what looked like large kitty tracks in the mud.

 

Probably a large dog, I know, but it after reading all the signs it is nice to let your imagination take it away a bit.

 

We went down to Los Gatos for lunch, wandering around the main drag and seeing it for the first time in what felt like at least 6 plus years. We ate lunch at Gilley's Coffee Shop where all things grilled were available; a nice American diner. Sunday ended with us trying to clean the refrigerator of leftovers from the week and I think I've had enough Japanese curry to last me another year now.

Pretzel Sunday

Today's food project: Pretzels. They were good last time we made them, seemed like we should do it again. The whole process is really simple and fun for Kana, Kyoko and I. I highly recommend making pretzels at home - they are really tasty.

 

After making the dough you cut in to individual portion, lengthen and create. Here's Kana stretching like a Singaporean noodle vendor she saw once did - by spinning like a jump rope.

 

Adding a bit more flour, because the flour is right there.

 

 

 

Here are our pretzels rising a bit before their boil.

 

 

 

After a short boil (water and baking soda at home), you brush with an egg wash and salt.

 

 

The final product - I've eaten two already this morning. They don't taste as good the second day. I like mine with mustard, even though all we have is Grey Poupon which makes for a slightly snobby pretzel.

 

 

Saeco arrives at work

Much to the surprise of Kyoko last night, I have shuttled my Saeco espresso maker to work as planned. This model appears to be identical to my previous Saeco Armonia that I used at work and at home in Singapore, and my tamper fits the portahead perfectly. Now I am only in need of espresso to make it all work – something I’ll grab at lunch time.

Phở - Mother's day dinner

Today is mother's day in Singapore, and soon for the rest of you. We had a nice day taking care of Kyoko and just being a family together, playing in the park, having lunch with friends and relaxing. Yesterday I started an experiment of making my own Phở from scratch, something I haven't done well. The basic idea is a beef stock flavored with star anise, cinnamon, onions and ginger. The hard part to me has been getting a savory beef stock. I started with 1 kg of beef bones and some brisket and simmered it all for a few hours. After checking the flavor both Kyoko and I thought eww, a failure. Then Kyoko remembered salt - the magic of dust of the soup stock world and it all came together.

Today I turned the stock in to Phở with the simple addition of noodles, vegetables and aromatic herbs, hoisin and sriracha sauce, and beef. Yum. Came out pretty well.

I think I can still work on my beef stock. Maybe starting with more marrow. I need a richer stock as the noodles and vegetables you add when eating thin the soup so I'd like a little more kick to start. Next time.

Roberto's video of Thai food day

A fun follow-up to Thai food Sunday by Roberto. Thanks.

Thai lunch with Wincklers

Taking a Sunday to cook is my idea of a good time and having an excuse to have our friends over for the day makes it all the sweeter. Today's menu was based on Kyoko's request for Glass Noodle Salad, and my interest in making Pork with Basil and a Pad Thai for some noodles. And the kids? Well, Kyoko made some sandwiches for them as they have not yet learned to love the kick of a Thai bird chili yet. Everyone helped out with Kyoko catching all the odds and ends of serving and organization, Kana working on some mint prep, and Roberto supervising the kitchen and taking some photos and videos - fame and fortune here I come.

After lunch we swam for a while and then had an Illy espresso and some ice cream at Häagen-Dazs. Yum. We Browns headed over to Molly the Library bus for her top of the month visit and then home for a quick dinner. Lovely day.

Kana prepping mint

Ready to cook and assemble

The Table with Pork Basil, Pad Thai and Glass Noodle Salad

 

And a post-ice cream photo of Kana and I. I like it.

Pumpkin custard: tasty but not setting right….yet

Today I tried the Pumpkin Custard dessert that we made in class last night. Last night we had trouble in that the custard didn’t set in the 20-30 minutes we steamed it. Today, I had a similar problem though it somewhat solved itself.

More on that later.

Here’s a picture of the finished product and a happy customer.

 

Looks good, doesn’t it? It tasted pretty good too. The custard had a mild sweetness and pumpkin was OK. Next time I would increase the sugar in the custard a bit and probably use a Japanese pumpkin as in my experience they are a bit sweeter naturally. But it was still very nice.

The creation was similar to the previous night. Eggs, coconut milk, palm sugar and a bit of vanilla mixed to make the custard. Here’s where my first question comes up: do I need to whip the eggs before adding in sugars? For this recipe it all goes in at once and we did not whip it. In some custard recipes I’ve seen you get the egg whites a bit stiffer…but that seems more like a meringue to me than a custard. All this then goes in to the hollowed out pumpkin.

 

Next you steam it. I checked the consistency along the way. At about five minutes in all looked OK, nothing had set.

 

At about 20 minutes in, the top has set, but the majority is still liquid. This is the same problem we had last night when we had to stop due to Robinsons closing. At

 

Kyoko had a similar recipe in a Cambodian cookbook. In her cookbook they say to steam on high for 10 minutes than low heat (still steaming) for another hour. So I pushed on. At 40 minutes in to steaming the pumpkin is now very soft as you can see as the pumpkin meat is  breaking up a bit. Even at this time there is quite a bit of liquid. Sigh.

 

This other recipe has you put the pumpkin top on while steaming…so I thought maybe that would help. So I put the pumpkin’s top on the pumpkin and pushed on to 60 minutes.

And at that point the custard set. Of course the pumpkin finally gave way too.

 

So I served it as is and it was delicious. So, the questions remain: How do I make a custard? And, how do I get the steaming correct so the custard sets at the same time the pumpkin gets soft.

Any ideas? This is such an easy recipe I’m sure I’ll try again soon.

Thai cooking: week four

Sadly, my last week of Thai cooking class. This has been a lot of fun and I can see myself taking more classes in the future – it is a treat to just hang out and cook, especially when someone else does the shopping and washing up.

This week we did four recipes again and ate and tasted along the way. The first recipe we made was Red Curry with Roasted Duck. This week we made the red curry paste fresh though using a blender was tricky. This was payback for not being at the main Wessex studio as I would have liked to have a large stone mortar and pestle. In this recipe we used Thai sweet basil, the one that is most common in Singapore Thai food, Tara explained. The curry paste is typically fried until fragrant and a bit oily, coconut milk added and boiled down a bit, then the roasted duck, pumpkin, aromatics and seasonings. There were no leftovers of this dish.

 

 

 

Our second dish for the evening was Grouper Sweet and Sour. The fish is deep fried until crispy in lots of oil and then the sauce is poured over the top. The sweet and sour name is a bit deceptive as this also includes chili, and could have used even more Tara said when tasting at the end. This was very very delicious.

 

Third dish was Fried Minced Pork with Basil. Tara described this as the Thai national dish. I agree I could eat this everyday. This contained the Thai basil (holy basil). Here is a picture of the Thai basil for this dish:

This taste of this basil is far more mild than the typical purplish Thai basil I am used to buying (Thai basil). In fact, Tara said it is a common mistake to overuse the purplish Thai basil in Singapore and in many places. I’m not sure my links above are correct; I’ll need to go buy this again and taste. For this dish, Tara deep fried all the basil in the oil leftover from frying the fish to make a really crunchy texture and deepened the flavor a bit. Very nice.

 

First you stir fry the garlic and chilies, add in the pork and season away. The basil is tossed in at the end. Yum Yum. I love this photo showing all the spoons going in to taste to make sure we understand what Tara is going for.

 

The final dish was delicious, yet our first cooking failure as a team. The project was a pumpkin custard. You hollow out a pumpkin, pour in a vanilla flavored egg custard, then steam until it sets. Unfortunately ours didn’t set. I am blaming the steamer we had as it seemed to have a lot of steam escaping. The pumpkin got soft, but the custard stayed a liquid. Sigh. We ate the top part of the custard that was done, scooping up the sweet pumpkin with each bite. A picture of the top being  done and the disaster we created. Still wonderful – I’ll make this one soon.

Thai food day

I worked from home today so was able to have lunch with Kyoko at Golden Mile. We ate at a place called Nah Nah (I think) which is in the back left corner under the supermarket. I had a tremendously spicy beef salad similar to the one we made Tuesday. The difference? The spice level used. Excellent. The salad, some sticky rice, and veggies made up my lunch while Kyoko had a fried rice with seafood.

 

 

I took the chance while over at Golden Mile to shop and made dinner tonight. I repeated two Tuesday night recipes: Green curry chicken and Pad Thai. The market at Golden Mile is great and I was able to find the right noodles, the  pickled radish, all the aromatics and spices I needed. I think Kyoko is finally considering the need for a bigger refrigerator. Here’s photos of the ingredients for Pad Thai and the final dishes.

 

 

 

And having a camera at the table is a bad idea – I end up playing during dinner. Here’s Kana the ghost. I love my little Canon S90.

Thai cooking class week 3

Last night was the third week of my Thai cooking class offered by Palette Sensations. This time the class was held in their main facility inconveniently located a taxi ride away from the Commonwealth MRT station. My total transit time was around 50 minutes including riding on a packed MRT and a winding drive to the location off Portsdown Road. One of those days a car would have been nice. As the class was fun and tasty it was worth the journey so I wasn’t too put out, but certainly less convenient than Robinson at Sommerset.

This week we had four dishes on the menu. The first we worked on was a Green chicken curry – a standard on all Thai menus. We didn’t go to the trouble of making the curry paste due to timing this class, and the results were delicious. The trick is in boiling down the coconut milk enough to get it oily and frying in the paste. From there the Thai eggplants, chicken and chilies are a beautiful and tasty combination. This went great with rice. Here are pictures of the egg plants soaking before we cooked in salt water, and the final dish.

 

 

 

Our second dish was a Grilled spicy beef. The heat comes from a hefty amount of dried red chilies (versus a raw birds eye Thai chili) and a texture from ground roasted rice. Very nice. Tara created a nice display bowl out of cabbage for presentation. A close up of the roasted rice (roasted in dry wok and then pulsed in a blender Tara said), Tara crafting the display bowl and final result follow.

 

Our third dish was Cashew chicken. This is a dish of Chinese origin, but adopted and adapted by the Thai for their tastes. New to me while we were creating this dish was using Thai soy sauce, which has an earthier taste due to the infused mushrooms. Nice change from a pure soy taste; I’ll pick some up next time I’m at Golden Mile. Also for this dish we used thick soy sauce at the end, the same old motor consistency soy sauce you get with your bak kut tey sometimes. This was used for darkening the color at the end. Thai soy sauce bottle and final result pics follow.

 

 

Our final dish of the evening was Pad Thai. I’ve always wanted to make this and haven’t in the past. This recipe was simple and quick and something I’ll try this week. Interesting to me was the texture of the glass noodles as they went in to the wok – not soft at all. I can see how soft noodles would disintegrate during the frying time and the noodles cooking with the sauce ingredients gave them a great taste. We’d run out of lime by the time we finished this dish but a little squeeze before eating would have been nice. Delicious. Tara created an omelet wrapper for the presentation.

 

 

All and all a wonderful night of cooking. I’ll try all of these this week again if time allows. Lots of fun again with my classmates making it very enjoyable. Thanks again to Tara for adding in an extra dish at our request.