chez pim

Pad Krapow Moo - spicy stir-fried pork with Thai holy basil

 

I have Bai Krapow growing in my garden.  They are called Holy Basil around these parts.  I put two itty-bitty starts in the ground four weeks ago, and they now look so happy and thriving I've decided it's time to harvest some.  So last night I did.  I made a favorite fast Thai dish, Pad Krapow, which is basically a spicy stir-fry with the holy basil as the star flavor of the show.  

Pad Krapow is a ubiquitous fast food dish in Thailand.  You can walk into just about any food shack on any street corner and ask for Pad Krapow, they'll make one for you.  You can also have it with just about any protein you want, pork (minced or cut into bite size chunks), chicken (ditto), beef (yup, ditto too), or even tofu.  Some people like to add cut up onions or sweet bell peppers to add a little more interest to the dish.  But the best thing about it, besides being really delicious, is that it's so simple to make you hardly need a recipe.  So I'm not going to give you one.  Instead I'll tell you how you can easily make it at home.  If you can't find Bai Krapow or Holy Basil, you can even use the regular Thai basil you can find at any Asian markets near you.  In which case you'll technically be making Pad Horapa (Stir-fry with Thai Basil) instead of Pad Krapow (Stir-fry with Holy Basil), but it'll be good just the same.  

Lard, your fat of choice?

Going through the pictures I took in New Orleans, I stumbled upon this cute sign inside the fantastic Kitchen Witch bookstore in the French Quarter.  It got me thinking about lard.  Even with renaissance of our love affair with pork, I don't hear much about lard as the fat of choice in our cooking.  I myself love lard.  When I was growing up in Thailand, there was always a crock of home-rendered lard right above the gas stove, from which our cook would scoop up the semi-congealed fat by the ladle every time she stir-fried or deep-fried something.  If I had a choice, my last meal would be crisp Thai-style omelette fried in lard, on top of fragrant steamed Jasmine rice with lots of Sriracha (see-ra-sha) sauce.  It had to be lard, of course, because other fat would not fry the eggs as fluffy and as crisp.

What about you?  Are you, too, happy because you eat lard?  Or are you afraid of it?  What's your fat of choice in your cooking, and why?

New Orleans Pralines

You didn’t think I forgot I had a blog, did you?  Well, I almost did.  With all the trips and the non-piggie Flu I picked up along the way, I’ve been neglecting the space here for quite a while.  (If you’re following me on Twitter you’ve heard it all before.)  Sorry.  But I’m back, and I brought you a pretty cool souvenir from the road, an amazing (and amazingly easy) recipe for true New Orleans pralines.  For me, one of the best things about traveling is learning how to cook local specialties so that I can bring that taste home with me and recreate it when I want to.  So imagine my delight when Ms.Linda and her husband Peter (my friend Josh's dad) invited me over to their place to make pralines with them.

First, we must get something straight.  I don’t care where you are in -or even out- of the country, you’ll need to learn how to pronounce the word right - and by ‘right’ I meant the way they do in New Orleans.  Repeat after me.  PRAA-leans.  Not praa-LEANS, or PRAY-leens.  And definitely not PRAA-lynes.  Got that?

Ok, now that we know how to pronounce it properly, it’s time I confess something.  This recipe makes textbook-perfect New Orleans pralines, yes, but it’s actually not from New Orleans!  Ms.Linda -she’s a proper Southern Lady so it’s Ms.Linda to you and me- said she got the recipe from “a Greyhound Man in Mississippi”.  I was hoping that she would say she got it from a man she met on a grayhound bus in Mississipi, wouldn't it be such a fun story?  Alas, no, she just got it from a man who worked there.

Still, the recipe makes pretty perfect New Orleans pralines, and I learned it when I was New Orleans, so it’s New Orleans Pralines to me.  (Oh, and, yes, if you bought any marmalade from my last batch on Etsy, you got some of these tucked into the box.)

The recipe is so easy you won't believe me until you try it yourself.  

Jazz Fest Love

Pebble Beach Food & Wine, see you this weekend?

  

I'm going to be here this weekend.  See you there?