chez pim

Easy strawberry shortcakes, this weekend's dessert

Here in California strawberries are everywhere at the moment, so it's the perfect time for one of my favorite desserts, strawberry shortcake.  I made these for a garden lunch party with out of town friends last week.  My friend Yin snapped this lovely photo, and I just had to share it with you.

Because strawberry shortcakes are so simple, they rely on the good graces of perfect ingredients.  You'll need sublime berries and delicious cream--don't even think about that stuff you spray out of a can.  Well, actually you can get away with less-than-perfect berries, macerating them in flavored syrup can help lift the pedestrian ones to the realm of the wonderful.  (Try the "strawberry in hibiscus syrup" recipe I posted a while back.)  Nothing this side of the Milky Way can rescue the nasty white substance sprayed from the can though--so if that's all you have, do yourself (and me) a favor and go buy some good cream.

This shortcake recipe is so simple.  You can roll it out and cut neat little rounds to make perfectly formed shortcakes if you feel a bit orderly that day.  Or if you're in a rebellious mood you can just stir the ingredients together and spoon-drop it in big lumps to make more rustic looking biscuits.  Either way you'll end up with delicious shortcakes ready to take on your delectable berries and heavenly mound of whipped cream cloud.

Chicken porn

Well, it's actually just a Gai Yang, or Thai grilled chicken.  But it does look mildly obscene, don't you agree?  The poor innocent chicken, stripped bare and spread out in a rather immodest position for all the world to see.  It's also quite immoderately delicious, and inordinately easy to do.

There's a term for this flatten out chicken, it's called "spatchcock".  To spatchcock a chicken is to remove its backbone and flatten it out before cooking.  I doubt the folks grilling the chickens on the street in Bangkok know the proper culinary term, but this is precisely how they do it over there.  It makes things a whole lot easier to do a whole chicken on the grill.  I also think that it normalizes cooking time so that the breasts, legs, and thighs finish cooking at about the same time.  I've never had dried out breasts and undercooked thighs when grilled like this over low fire.

This chicken got a Thai seasoning rubbed all over and let marinated for a bit.  It doesn't take that long, really, just prepare the chicken before you set your barbecue afire.  By the time the fire dies down enough to cook the chicken, the marinade will have done its job.

In Thailand, a grilled chicken like this is usually served with two sauces: one is often referred to as "grilled-chicken sauce", which is basically a sweetish chili sauce you can buy in a bottle, and the other is a Jaew sauce, which is basically this dressing I used in my Ugly Salad post last week.  You can use either, or both, or none at all. 

One-pot herb garden

I'm not one of those green-thumb people.  I really am not.  I've killed many a potted plant, among them cacti and even aloe vera.  So, it's not without trepidation that I took this lovely one-pot herb garden home. 

I've been wanting to have potted herbs at home for a long time though.  Every Spring I mumble to myself, this year for sure, this year I'll grow my own herbs.  I've grown tried of buying expensive, emaciated-looking herbs in little plastic packets from the store, yet every time I buy them in big bunches at the farmers market so much go to waste because I just don't use enough at a time.

A few weeks ago I made my usual early Spring grumble in front of Cynthia at the garden.  Last week I went up there and there it was, a big "strawberry pot" filled with gorgeous, vibrant, vigorous-looking herbs, ready for me to take home.  Cynthia has made it especially for me.

Chili-salt, a fruit booster

Three simple ingredients that do amazing things to fruits: fresh chili, salt, and sugar, simply mixed together.  If you've been to Thailand, I'm sure you've seen this trilogy before.  You get them in little paper packets with every piece of fruit you buy off one of those carts on the street.

They are wonderful on sweet fruits, adding an interesting layer of flavors that take it beyond simple sweetness.  They are even better on fruits that are slightly acidic--the salt and sugar taming the acidity and the chili giving it a kick that make everything even better.  It's so easy, and so crazy good.  You simply must try it.

It's durian season. Would you try it?

It looks like I've been in the mood for not-so-photogenic food.  There was that rather ugly, if delicious, salad, and now this.  Adding insult to injury (quite likely injury at that, can't you see the thorns?) it also stinks to high heavens.  You know what I'm talking about here, yes?  It's durian season!  I've been seeing those big, thorny, smelly fruits every time I was at a Chinese market, and I finally took one home a couple days ago.

Durians are one of those strong flavors that doesn't inspire apathy: one either adores it or abhor it totally.  Ambrosia to some and, um, well, ass--as my friend Katy succinctly put it--to others.  Having grown up in Thailand, you can guess which side of that divide I belong.  Even if you haven't tried it yourself, I'm sure you have heard of it.

When I lived in Thailand, the arrival of durian season signaled the beginning of summer, the blissful end of long-suffered school year, and days on the seaside where salty air mingled with the sweet scent of my favorite dessert, Khao Niew Durian, sweet sticky rice bathed in a custardy sauce made with durian, coconut milk, and sweet palm sugar. 

Even in the best of circumstances--like having high-quality, fresh, never frozen durians to eat--durians can be overpowering enough, but these frozen ones can get worse.  The delicate flesh of the durian fruits also suffer after having been frozen, turning into practically mush once thawed.  I myself find frozen durians unfit to eat outright, but it's just perfect for the Khao Niew Durian.      

Linky Monday

Good things I've found around the interweb lately.

The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized
Inside the raw milk underground, in last month's Harper's

A Man of Taste
An engrossing profile of Grant Achatz of Alinea by D.T. Max in the New Yorker (What else?)  And, while on the subject of Grant and Alinea...

Alinea Mosaic
You must first buy the book to get access to this neat website.  You plan on buying the book all along, yes?

...and not on the interweb, our one and only Clotilde is in the Bay Area today, and will be reading from her new book "Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris" down the street from me in Santa Cruz tomorrow night at Book Shop Santa Cruz.  You plan on going there all along, yes?

Oh, right, and, a propos of nothing, Scarlett Johansson is engaged.  Sorry boys, looks like you've been too slow on this one.

anatomy of an ugly salad

Once in a while you find there's little you could do to save a plate of food from being ugly.  You composed it with pretty things: bright green butter lettuce, blushing watermelon radish, slivers of red chili, a beautiful piece of skirt steak--sometimes I can hardly think of anything prettier than a perfectly grilled steak.  You dressed it up in a gorgeous Celadon plate made by hand by a talented friend.  You tried pretty much anything but the upskirt shot and the pictures still came out looking positively ugly.  The homeliness of this plate of salad was rather confounding, especially considering how delightfully delicious it was, as evident by the five minutes flat it took for you know who to polished off his first serving.

Despite it all, this ugly salad is something I do quite often when I want something quick and light for supper.  It's a vaguely Thai salad, with a dressing made with lime juice, fish sauce, chili powder, sliced shallots, mint, and cilantro, with an added (and indispensable) nuttiness from roasted rice ground into powder.  In Thailand, the grilled beef "salad" is a mostly protein affair, with grilled beef slices tossed with the super spicy dressing and served with fresh vegetables and steamed sticky rice on the side as respite from bites of the spicy salad.

Top Chef preview....or, how to blog without blogging

Let's see how many blog post I can do this week without really writing at all.  Well, the magical elves (redundant?) at Top Chef headquarter have been sending me these sneak previews each week, so I guess I'd just put one up for them.

What's my take on Top Chef thus far?

Dale: A pretty good cook who could possibly win but for Hung having taken the only Asian-Dude-Winner spot already last year.

Richard: What's with the faux hawk?  Seriously.

Spike: What's with them lesbian-hatin' words?  I'm sure a lot of it is from editing but still..

Nikki: She should've been off long ago.  Seriously, how did she make it this long?

Andrew: Andrew who? 

Stephanie: She's this year's Top Chef.  Mark my words.

The antipodean dude: Self taught, eh?  Hit the books again, mate.

Lisa: Seriously would you please wash your hair like once before the season is over (or before you're kicked out)?