Homemade udon miso

Is udon miso allowable? I always feel a bit overwhelmed when trying to cook Japanese at home. It seems that the rules are so strict and that certain things shouldn't go with other things - like udon and miso. But in reality, I imagine just like anywhere, whatever you want to put together that perks the tate buds is fine.

Above is my udon miso with purple potatoes, yukon golds leeks, spring onions, thai chiles and cilantro. I threw some dried shrip in at the end for my bowl, leaving Kathleen's deviod, of course. For her we put in some smoked jalepeno firm tofu from a local place in the East bay - better than the shrimp.

I parboiled the potatoes before hand, heated the miso up and then threw everything in to steep for 10 minutes. Start to finish, 20 minutes.

Lamb Curry - South African Style

Me, Lucas Behnke and Anna Hargreaves. Six months in and no lamb curry in sight.

 I lived in South Africa for a year when I was 21. Well much of that year remains a blur in my memory, this recipe has stuck with me and takes me right back to curry pies, curry roti and the black label afternoons of Dewotshof, Pietermaritzburg.

It must have been my second week in country and I was walking downtown with Lucas Behnke, a fellow NorCal bud, exploring the sights and getting a feel for Maritzburg, our home away from home in the foothills of the Drakensburg. Being from Northern California, or maybe just being who we were, we were all about the food and Maritzburg was great for food because it had a huge Indian population, British South Africans (who doesn't like a fried tomato now and again), Boer boerwars and African spices and veg.

Walking along the downtown we followed our noses to the spice shop and there was this beautiful (BEAUTIFUL) Indian woman with about four children crawling in and about her and jars and jars of spices, packages of spices - the sorts of things I had never seen before and made me drool. We got into a conversation and ended up buying this dank musty curry powder that was just the darkest red and spicy spicy spicy. Not only that, the woman gave us a recipe that she said was a can't miss. We bought some other powders of varying heat and took them home, ready to cook.

That night we invited all of our other study abroaders to my abode and made a veg curry and a meat curry. It must have taken us five hours to get the curries ready and it was summer there at this point and wicked hot outside. When everyone showed up the dorm was well over a hundred degrees, there were no fans and the beer was warm. The cooks were covered in curry oil and scorched from an afternoon of cooking and drinking and then we tried the curry. Still, to this day, I haven't had anything as hot as that curry. I think we(by that I mean I) added probably added four or five ounces of this curry powder to what we were making and it just exploded in your mouth, coated your insides and either made you lay down, take a dump or run around in circles trying to scream while saliva ran down your face because your mouth was so hot you couldn't close it. But as soon as your mouth did calm down and you could close it, and you learned to pick at the curry and soak it in some bread, the taste was delish and I've been making it ever since.


1-2 lbs stewing lamb, bone in and cut into eating sized pieces
One gigantic yellow onion
Three yukon potatoes
Hot peppers to taste (not jalepenos or serranos)
Ginger piece - as long and wide as two fingers
Three cloves garlic
Two shallots
Two regular cans whole tomatoes
Curry powder - preferably red, but yellow will do
Curry spices such as cardomon, fennel seed, cumin, peppercorns
Fat (ghee, canola oil - or today I used bacon fat and left over chicken fat)

Heat a cast iron dutch oven over medium heat. Add in the fat so there is about 1/4 inch in the bottom of the pan. Generously cover the lamb with curry powder, rub-in, and let sit for five minutes. When the oven is heated, gently lay the lamb down and cook on each side until crusty.

While the lamb is cooking, cut the onion into quarter inch pieces, smash and cut garlic, peel shallots (leave whole), grate ginger, coarsely chop the peppers (you can also leave them whole to more easily pull them out later), and chop potato into one inch cubes

Ginger grater, curry powder and the mess of curry

Aromatics cooking.

 When crusty, remove the lamb to another pan. Lower heat to medium low and in the hot oil, add curry spices whole and let cook for thirty seconds. Add all the chopped materials and cook until the potatoes are just a little soft. Add back in the lamb, pour the tomatoes over the top, lower the heat to low and let cook for 3-4 hours.

Dank

For the original recipe, add twice as much oil, use fresh tomatoes, and instead of frying whole curry spices, just fry the curry powder.

Done.

Well I do apologize to all of our readers out there who have been so anxiously awaiting our next post. It has been too long, and really, it isn't fair to you or to us. Without further adieux.

Indonesia certainly wowed us with the different type of spice and food on hand. Everywhere had its own version of chicken soup and the two I tried were soto banjar and soto ayam. The difference being the banjar is a bit spicier and made with a duck
egg. Check the pics below. The first is ayam (courtesy of Ibu Is, Larry's cook of all colors. And let me tell you, I had ayam made from necks and knuckles and feet. This one is straight breast) and the second is banjar - banjar menas soup from Banjarmasin in Kalimantan and ayam means chicken in bahasa.



The most interesting meal I ate in Indonesia was ate at a street stall in Joyokarta. The lady served me up jackfruit curry, which tasted like smoked beef loin, steamed greens and chile buffalo skin. I loved the jackfruit curry, was intrigued enough by the buffalo that I asked for seconds and gobbled the greens before Kath could lay a hand on them.


Another favorite of mine in Joyokarta was deep fried quail, possibly chicken, that had its eggs left in it. Cover the whole thing in sambal peanut sauce and digin. Watch for the bones though, they are sharp!

And I leave you with this. What is it? What were they? I didn't try them but they just sat there ready to be bought and eaten.

General Greatness in Ahmed Bali

Postcard perfect Kath.

One thing we have discovered on this trip is that if you find a place you like, don't go somewhere else just because you said you would, and especially don't go somewhere else because whatever book you have says it is a can't miss. The people make the difference and the views turn into one another after a while. This very thing happened to us in Ahmed Bali. We showed up for a couple of days and stayed over a week. The people we were staying with were kind, the lifestyle relaxed and the diving terrific. We could rent a scooter and travel out into the fishing villages and up the mountains and come back in the evening to a great little Warung where we could drink cold bintang, eat fresh fish and play cribbage by candle light.

One day I went fishing at five in the morning and saw the sunrise over Lombok. I also fished out of the boat below that has outriggers along with a longtail motor.

Another day we took a scotter and ate curried rice in the rice fields and climbed Lempunyang and were nearly attacked by rabid monkees.

This dude is vicious. Don't let him fool you.

Another day we did nothing and on another day I ate gado gado and fish satay that I thought would kill me.

Suckling Pig - Ubud Bali

Kath and I rented a scooter and were driving North to escape the heat and exceptional busyness of Ubud when I heard suckling pig yelled in my ear at speed. I yelled back, "WHAT?" Pig she said and I stopped the scooter (though she is a vegetarian she knows of and sometimes encourages my love of all things pork). She told me that she saw a whole pig getting served on the side of the road in a rice paddy. I said I love you Jonesy and lets go there for lunch

After completing our sojourn to the mountains and the cool, not the cold, we returned to the spot of said suckling sighting and sure enough, there was a pig, half gone, surrounded by men of all shapes and sizes making grunt like noises and signaling for this or that with their pig grease fingers. Behind the pig was a man with a handlebar mustache that reached his tits, teeth tobaccoed the color of a good buttery beef au jus and a middle aged sun stained woman, her hair piled on top of her head and pig juices and grease covering her to her elbows. Little pieces of meat were stuck below her fingernails and i think I caught sight of a piece of loin near her ear, but whose to tell?

I pointed, I pointed again, they gave a hearty laugh and opened my ginger ale that was home brewed and put into an old corona bottle. The plate came and it was piled high.
* Pig on a plate. Notice the various types of pig from skin, to sausage to chicarron to loin to intestine, to shredded pork salad with ginger sambal
*happy as a pig in shit, literally, as I think I am eating an intestine stuffed with some other part of the pig
* pig with accoutrements. left to right it it is pig juices with meat, pig juices with pig fat, hot sambakl with pig juices and ginger sambal with pig juices, near my foot on the bottom is leftover pig juices and on the top is pig with pig juices * pig face, pig trotters, pig ears, pig innards, and pig delicious

The meal cost less than three dollars and I would have had another but for the need to not always act the glutton, especially when in the presence of others. Suckling pig in Ubud, I miss you.

Hormok on Koh Samui

*Market at the dock

On the Island of Koh Samui there is a food market near where the ferry drops off that is suprisingly one of the best food markets I have been to. I am biased however, seeing that the best food stall treat I had in Thailand, I had here.

* best snacks ever

The dock market was discovered by accident one day. Kath and I were buying tickets to go to Laos, a trip we ended up not taking. Across the street the market was beginning to take shape and I wandered over after we were done buying our train tickets and Kath was checking her email. There was the usual assortment of hanging ducks and sliced prok, noodles in broth and things on a stick. Before deciding what to really eat I sat down and had a pearl tea and a couple of satay fish sticks. I ended up going with some sort of crab and fish wrapped in banana leaves and it was spectacular. The crab meat and fish was suspended in a solid scrambled egg that was full of garlic and lemony basil, with a heavy anise taste to eat it. There were also shredded small chiles to give it some kick and the taste of shrimp paste to give the hormok a nice a mellow bottom. They were so good I got three. They were cooked over a charcoal grill and not a single drip of egg escaped to the grill. How they made them so tight I don't know, but there was also a film crew going around the market and they couldn't get enough of our lady either

c

* Crab Hormok

Also, when Kath and I come home and have a dog, blame on these two dogs on a scooter in Koh Samui. This lady also gave amazing massages. Can you believe this dog that is a german sheppard weiner dog mix? AWESOME.

Buddhas, Food and Bangkok

Bangkok from the Banyan tree.

We have arrived in Thailand, the land of gigantor malls, street food galor, the scam, wats, rivers, coconuts, islands in the sea – one after the other after the other, and blessed and cool ac. Let’s take them in order.

The gigantor mall is a fixture of the Bangkok skyline, and not only that, each and every one is always packed. They are nicer than American malls, more expensive than American malls and have food courts the size of a normal American mall. The food courts act as sanitized versions of the food stalls that line the streets outside the malls. You can find fish balls, noddle soup, Chinese thai and Japanese food, frozen yogurt, a burger, anything you want. Also, all of the malls are bathed in amazing AC that allows for an escape from the icky sticky that is a Bangkok afternoon. It is amazing what a quick jaunt into the AC can do to refresh your barking dogs.

Even though the mall has the sanitized version of street stalls nothing beats the real thing, at least for me. For Kath it is a bit harder, as the stalls (in the malls and on the street) sell basically meat and more meat. I have tried squid, pork fat and beef on a stick. With the squid they slice it up real small after it is cooked and put it in a plastic bag where they bath it in incredibly hot and sour chilli sauce. YOWSERS. We had quail eggs wrapped in wonton deep fried and dipped in sweet sauce. We tried Chinese black jelly for desert and grilled bananas for breakfast. For 50 cents you can get a bottle of fresh squeezed mandarin juice and for 25 cents a bag of fresh cut mango, watermelon, banana or pineapple. Mango and sticky rice is a buck fifty and we haven’t even tried one percent of what is on offer. There are crepes and waffles, grilled fish, papaya salad made in worn and flavored mortars, the pestles encrusted in peanut and fish sauce. I guess we’ll just have to keep on eating…

As for the scam, Bangkok is full of them and we did fall for one the first day. Having done no research we hopped in a Tuk Tuk that promised us a cheap ride around the city. While he did take us to the Golden Mountain and the lucky Buddha and Jim Thompsons house, he also took us to his “sponsors,” who he said would give him free petrol if we stopped in and said hello. We spent half an hour in each store, got some free drinks and AC and then left. So far so good. He then took us to what we thought was a TAT office, the national office for tourism in Thailand. After another half an hour we were the proud owners of a trip to Koh Samui, bungalow on the beach and everything. Coming out of the office I noticed that TAT didn’t stand for tourism authority of Thailand but instead something like tourism and Thailand. Needless to say, the trip we bought, while good and real, was incredibly overpriced and for longer than we wanted. This woman was incredibly convincing in the office. Thinking we had been scammed we went online and read up and sure enough there was almost a direct description of what had happened to us listed on the internet along with scams for tailors and massages and other such things. I guess everybody needs to be scammed once, hopefully that is enough.

Now we find ourselves on this island, which is a beautiful island full of coconuts and beaches and warm inviting water. It is also full of resorts and lots and lots Germans and kids and did I mention the resorts, the fact that there are lots of resorts. But even the resorts are beautiful in their own way, and our bungalow is right on the beach and there is a cheap Thai restaurant up the road and things could be worse than being stuck on an island in the Gulf of Thailand for five days. I’m gonna take a dip.

Below are some food pictures more to come.

quail eggs and squid stick
River prawns about to be DEVOURED
Curly potato on a stick with red salt
diced squid from the chatuchak station with the hottest sauce ever.
mango sticky rice. second day in Bangkok.

Chicken roasted in fish sauce and papaya salad along with thai style iced tea