Trying to Eat Healthy

Posted on 1 August 2011 by christao408

Most weeknights, Tawn and I try to eat dinner at home. Whatever I cook, it almost always includes a salad with lots of vegetables. This is our attempt to fill up on veggies, rather than on meats and carbs. Sometimes, I try for something a little fancier like this steak salad with thin slices of American sirloin, roasted red peppers and onions, and shavings of Parmesan cheese. Most of the time, though, the salads are a little less ambitious.

Weekday breakfasts are also eat at home meals, usually oatmeal with a combination of dried fruits and nuts, sometimes with a little quinoa, which provides some protein to start my day. Since I work from home, my lunches are also usually eaten at home, often leftovers from dinner the night before. From time to time, though, I will step out for lunch, stopping most often at a neighborhood ramen shop for some noodles.

All this weekday eating at home is offset by frequent social events on the weekends, when we end up eating out for most of the meals. On both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend, we had engagements for lunch and dinner. The odd calculus of this pattern of socializing is that while my wallet gets thinner, my mid-drift gets thicker.

A Healthy Start

Posted on 20 July 2011 by christao408

In an attempt to add a little (relatively healthful) variety to my usual breakfast of oatmeal, I bake batches of granola made of rolled oats and barley, nuts, wheat germ, dried coconut, and flax seed, all of which is lightly moistened with a mixture of canola oil and maple syrup and then roasted until lightly browned. After cooled, I add raisins, dates, or other dried fruit.

Served with some plain yogurt and some fresh fruit – in this case, passion fruit pulp – it makes for a nice breakfast, no? I’d like to believe it is also a healthful but in addition to the whole grains and good fats, I think it is pretty high in calories. Thoughts?

Cooking for 80 – the Results

Posted on 30 June 2011 by christao408

Whew! The big day has come and gone: cooking for a group of up to 80 for a community event called the River Space Dinner Party and Talk. Reservations for the event were coming in faster and earlier than ever before in their several-month history and the day before, Yvan, one of the organizers, suggested I prepare for as many as 90 diners. Thanks to a little rain, we ended up with about 70 people, still more than any previous dinner.

Much like I imagine one feels after running a marathon, I’m very glad I had the opportunity to tackle this challenge. Now I know I can do it. But it was exhausting and took a lot of hard work, not to mention the support of several friends who pitched in, so I’m probably not going to volunteer to cook for such a large group again anytime in the near future!

The preparation was spread over three days leading up to Tuesday’s dinner. Most of the prep work involved careful planning – extrapolating my recipes into larger batches, creating shopping lists, and checking prices to ensure I would stay within my budget of 80 baht (US$ 2.63) per head. When it came time to do most of the shopping on Tuesday morning, I had to go to three stores, managing to clean out two stores of their supplies of cilantro, radishes, and cherry tomatoes.

Tuesday morning I also baked more than 80 buttermilk shortcakes, which would be part of the dessert.

The grains for the mixed grain salad were cooked in batches and then sealed in bags. Note the carefully-written labels. Four parts (each serving about 20-24 people) with bags A, B, and C providing the different mixtures of grains. Bag A contains brown rice, GABA rice, and Job’s tears. Bag B contains brown rice, black beans, and small red beans. Bag C contains pearl barley and corn.

I used large plastic storage containers to divide the ingredients by dish. Some dishes took several containers, which completely filled our car.

The River Space is located on the second floor of a building in a local market on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, next to the Millennium Hilton hotel. Since the street is some distance away from the building entrance, we temporarily parked (during rush hour!) and Tawn hired a porter from the market to help us move everything into the space. That cost 200 baht (less than $7) and was the best 200 baht I’ve ever spent.

While I thought I had prepared a pretty simple recipe, one that required only one dish to actually be cooked on-site, there was still a lot of peeling, slicing, chopping, and dicing that needed to be done. Thankfully, a half-dozen friends came early and rolled up their sleeves. Little did they realize they would spend the next four hours in the kitchen! From left to right, Bee, Ken, me, Sophie, and Linda.

At moments like this, I imagine that a Cuisinart food processor might be a worthwhile investment! Except they would have decimated the tomatoes.

Very organized, I had instructions for pulling together each dish, including plating diagrams, prepared and taped to the kitchen walls. These aren’t exactly a recipe, but helped everyone keep track of what steps we needed to complete and what the finished items were to look like. This is for the dessert, a buttermilk shortcake topped with macerated mango and ginger whipped cream.

We had two burners to work with, although a second-hand stove was recently acquired that has three burners, significantly expanding the capacity. Here, I start frying batches of the green curry marinated chicken while organizer Yvan prepares his signature garlic bread recipe.

Done with the mixed grain salad, my volunteers (now joined by Tammy and Tawn) slice mangoes for dessert while Doug, the friend who roped me into this event, supervises.

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Doug also wandered around with my camera, documenting the action.

By 8:30 the crowd was ravenous, the best way to have them! People started pouring into the kitchen and my friends expertly plated the meal, controlling portion size and garnishing with chopped cilantro and sliced almonds. Unfortunately, in the chaos, nobody snapped a picture of the finished product!

After everyone ate, the guest speaker took the microphone for about 20 minutes. Since this is an art space, they try to have someone at each dinner who can talk about a project they have worked on, usually with some relevance to Thailand or the local scene.

In this case, it was Thai photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat and German writer Tom Vater, the photographer and author, respectively, of Sacred Skin, a book about the history and contemporary practice of Sak Yant, Thailand’s spirit tattoos.

These tattoos, written in ancient Khmer, are said to provide powers of protection from accidents, misfortune, and crime. You see these tattoos peeking out from under monks’ robes, the shirt collars of young men, and even on Angelina Jolie.

The crowd seemed very interested in what Tom and Aroon had to say and enlargements of Aroon’s photos had been placed on the wall, startling images that sparked many discussions throughout the night.

As the talk concluded, we served our dessert, complete with a mint garnish. Again, in the rush we managed to not get a picture of the finished product! Next time, I need to bring my own media people, right?

We received a lot of compliments and had no troubles convincing people to take zip-loc bags of the extra mixed grains salad home, which is perhaps the best compliment of all. We ended up with about 70 people and a final cost of 7,400 baht. Based on the 90 people we prepared for, this was just ever-so-slightly over budget, coming in at 82.2 baht per person, or US$2.70.

To say I was exhausted when we returned home at about 11:00 is an understatement. I’ve rarely been so tired, ever. Working in a space that is not well-equiped for group cooking, I gained a new appreciation for the work of caterers and restaurateurs. Thanks again to all my friends (and my husband) for helping me pull it off!

Preparing to Cook for 80

Posted on 25 June 2011 by christao408

This weekend I’ve been scrambling to prepare for a dinner on Tuesday night, at which I will cook for up to 80 people. This will be the largest group I’ve ever cooked for by a factor of three, and I’m excited to take on the challenge. Oh, and an added challenge: I’m working on a budget of 80 baht (US$2.63) per head. How did I get roped into this?

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Two months ago, my friend Doug, an expat American to whom I was introduced by a friend from the San Francisco Int’l Asian American Film Festival, invited me to an event called the “River Space Dinner Party and Talk”.

The dinners are inspired by Jim Haynes and his famous Paris dinners which have lasted for more than 30 years. Jim’s son, Jesper, helped launch the Bangkok dinners at the River Space a few months ago. Jim described his dinners during a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered:

Every week for the past 30 years, I’ve hosted a Sunday dinner in my home in Paris. People, including total strangers, call or e-mail to book a spot. I hold the salon in my atelier, which used to be a sculpture studio. The first 50 or 60 people who call may come, and twice that many when the weather is nice and we can overflow into the garden.

Every Sunday a different friend prepares a feast. Last week it was a philosophy student from Lisbon, and next week a dear friend from London will cook.

People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn’t be better. I love the randomness.

I believe in introducing people to people.

Here in Bangkok, the dinners are held twice a month in a second floor flat on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, immediately next to the Millenium Hilton hotel. The space is used for various arts events and is mostly just a large, open space.

The space is spectacularly situated, though, just above a small market and adjacent to the local ferry pier. The reflection of the setting sun bathes the banks of the river in shades of purple and pink as residents who live on the west side of the river commute home.

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The dinners are cooked by volunteers in a kitchen that is, to be generous, under-equipped. But there are plenty of hands willing to pitch in, which is the important thing. As I’m preparing to cook on Tuesday, most of my thoughts are about the strategy of how I’m going to do this in the most organized manner. What tools will I need, what equipment, what supplies?

The meal served when I attended in April. Potato salad, green salad, quiches (made at home by the head chef), and a wonderful strawberry triffle. One of the things I’ve realized is that to cook effectively in this space requires a lot of advance cooking at home.

When I say “under-equipped”, you get the idea when you watch Doug contorting himself as he tries to make garlic bread for what was about 50 people using only a tiny toaster oven. Needless to say, I was dragooned into the kitchen, willingly, and helped prepare the garlic bread.

So that’s the challenge I’m facing. Having given a lot of thought to the meal, I’ve adapted, updated, and revised my proposed menu several times. Finally, Friday night I cooked a “proof of concept” meal, to make sure the recipes worked (at a small scale) and would be on-budget.

The menu as it stands today: Mixed grains and vegetable salad with a sherry vinaigrette; stir-fried chicken marinated in green curry; and a yogurt relish with cucumbers and tomatoes. The homemade bread and hummus will not make the cut. Instead, the garlic bread and a green salad will be provided by another person. And for dessert? Saturday night I did another “proof of concept” and served homemade buttermilk shortcake with mangoes and ginger whipped cream.

Stay tuned to heard how it all turns out!

Vacation in a Beach House

Posted on 22 June 2011 by christao408

For our vacation with my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces, we opted to rent a three-bedroom house in Hermosa Beach, just two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Not only did this work out quite reasonably financially – roughly $400 a night – but it gave us a lot more room than a hotel would have, plus the ability to easily cook our own food and do our own laundry.

Tawn leads a junior yoga class, which was surprisingly effective at helping the girls calm down, focus, and not get into squabbles with each other. Maybe we should sign them up for daily classes?

Actually, we didn’t rent one house, but two. The initial house was booked for our final three nights but the property manager had another similar house just three blocks away, so we moved into that one. I have to really credit this lady, she was super friendly and very helpful. If you are ever looking to rent a vacation home in Los Angeles, I’d be happy to recommend either of her two properties. (This is the first house, a 3br/3 ba and this is the second house, a 3 br/1ba.)

We did a little less cooking at home than I had anticipated, but we did eat at least breakfast at home each day, allowing for some cost savings. As soon as we moved in I made a big (2 pound) batch of pizza dough and kept it in the refrigerator for use in a couple of meals. Who doesn’t like pizza? Here’s the girls shape their own pizzas.

And there’s the finished but not-yet-cooked product, ready to go into the oven. Their dough ended up kind of triangle shaped, huh?

And of course there was room for everybody to pitch in with cleaning up and loading the dishwasher.

Once you do that, we can bundle up (it was chilly by the beach in the evenings) and head to Pinkberry for some dessert.

The second house we were in had TVs in each room, something I wouldn’t approve of at home but certainly fine for a vacation home. That provided everyone with the opportunity to lounge in bed in the morning and watch cartoons. As you can tell from this picture, we had already gone to Disneyland and everybody (including Tawn) had their stuffed animal.

A view of Tawn walking along the Strand, the 22-mile class 1 paved pedestrian/skater/bicycle path that stretches along pretty much all of Los Angeles County’s western coast from Pacific Palisades to Torrance. This grey overcast was a fixture of our vacation, at least when we were near the beach.

Malaysian Roasted Root Vegetables with WORLDFOODS Chilli Coconut Marinade

Posted on 26 May 2011 by christao408

Recently, I was invited to attend a dinner sponsored by WORLDFOODS, a Malaysian based maker of high quality Asian-inspired sauces, marinades, chutneys, and pastes. I walked away with a bag of several of their 51 different products and a challenge: come up with and blog about new and creative ways to cook with their products.

The first product I used was their Malaysian Chilli Coconut Marinade. It was a weeknight and I needed to prepare a quick meal. One chicken breast and thirty minutes later, I had a tasty protein ready to cook and add to a salad. There were two things that caught my attention about the marinade:

First, one reason I cook a lot is that I want to know what I’m putting in my body. Looking at the ingredient list, I was pleased to see familiar, pronounceable words. No artificial colors, preservatives, flavorings, MSG, or gluten.

Second, the flavor was remarkably good and remarkably authentic. Unlike a lot of “Asian” products that are watered down versions of popular sauces, the WORLDFOODS products have the same ingredients (and the same amount of chilies!) that you find when eating these foods in their home country. While available worldwide, you won’t find any “Americanization” of the flavors.

Wanting to find ways to use the marinade differently than its traditional use, I put the right side of my brain to work. The idea I settled on was to do roasted root vegetables, something I associate more with olive oil and rosemary, and use the Chilli Coconut Marinade as a glaze.

I decided on a combination of yams and beets (about 1.5 pounds or 750 grams total), with two yellow onions and a handful of garlic cloves. These were scrubbed and, except for the yams, peeled. Then I sliced them into approximately 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces.

When I cut open the yams I was surprised to discover that they did not have the orange-colored interiors I am familiar with. Instead, they are purple. In the end, the flavor wasn’t that different, although it did lead to a slightly more monochromatic dish than I had anticipated.

Once the root vegetables, onion, and garlic were combined, I coated them with about 1 cup (200 ml) of WORLDFOODS Malaysian Chilli Coconut Marinade and 1/2 cup (100 ml) of chicken broth. You can substitute water or vegetable broth, if you wish to keep the dish vegetarian.

The vegetables were poured in an ovenproof dish and then placed in a preheated 350 F (180 C) oven for about 25 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes to keep the vegetables coated with marinade. There is enough marinade that it forms a bit of a pool at the bottom of the dish, helping cook the vegetables by steam as well as direct heat.

Once the yams and beets were getting soft but not yet fully cooked through, I stirred in about 4 cups (90 dl) of kale, washed and cut into wide strips. The dish returned to the oven for about ten more minutes, enough time to finish cooking the root vegetables while still leaving the kale a little crunchy. You can cook the dish for longer if you prefer your vegetables softer.

Uncommitted to the idea of this being a fully vegetarian meal, I also pan fried a plate of Northeastern Thai style sausage called Sai Oua, sliced it, and served it on the side.

The end result was very nice. The marinade had thickened into a nice glaze, coating the vegetables with a sweet, tangy, and spicy sauce which countered the natural sugars in the yams and beets. The kale provided a fresh contrast that made for a very satisfying meal.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the WORLDFOODS Malaysian Chilli Coconut Marinade and look forward to trying it in other dishes, as well as to trying their other products.

While WORLDFOODS is based in Malaysia, its products are available in major countries across the world including Australia, the UK, the United States, and Canada, as well as most Southeast Asian countries. To locate a store which carriers their products near you, use this store locator. In the United States, you can also order WORLDFOODS products for home delivery through MyBrands.com.

Full disclosure: While I am not being paid or otherwise compensated to write this entry, I did receive the products for free and dinner that night was paid for by WORLDFOODS. It’s important to me that you know that the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and are not bought or paid for by others.

Caramel Rice Flan

Posted on 4 May 2011 by christao408

One recipe that caught my eye a week or so ago while browsing the New York Times’s website was Caramel Rice Flan. This egg-enhanced rice pudding is made with risotto rice, giving it a nicer “toothy” feel when you eat it. The best part is the homemade caramel which lines the bottom of the souffle dish, subsequently becoming the sauce for the flan when it is flipped upside down and unmolded onto a serving dish. I decided to try the recipe for dinner last Friday at Ko and Per’s place, where Tawn and his girlfriends gathered to watch the royal wedding.

The recipe takes about an hour of active time to prepare and then around two hours to bake. After that, it needs at least six hours in the refrigerator so it really is a “make today for tomorrow” sort of dessert. Ingredients include arborio rice (one of the types you use for risotto), milk, cinnamon sticks, ground cardamom, lemon zest, cardamom pods, cream, eggs, egg yolks, salt, and sugar.

The recipe said it serves 8-10 but looking at it, it appeared to be a big recipe so I cut it in half.

The recipe is moderately complex, requiring several saucepans, a few bowls, and a strainer. Helpful to have everything prepared in advance and maybe even an extra pair of hands along the way. The first step is to simmer the rice in boiling water for about 15 minutes to start cooking it.

You then drain the rice, then add it to a medium saucepan with most of the milk, the cinnamon, and ground cardamom, bringing it to a boil and then lowering the temperature and simmering it for 30 minutes, cooking until the rice is very tender.

Any unabsorbed milk is poured off and then the rice is put in the bowl and lemon jest is stirred in.

You then make the custard, cooking the rest of the milk, the cream, and the cardamom pods. While that is coming to a simmer, in a separate bowl you whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, and part of the sugar.

When the milk comes to a simmer, you temper the eggs by adding the milk and cream mixture to it a little at a time, whisking constantly. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.

You then strain the mixture back into the pan, discarding the cardamom and any bits of egg that scrambled. Next, stir in the rice.

This was the point where I felt like too many things were going on at one time and the recipe would be easier if a second set of hands was helping. That way elements of the dish could come together simultaneously.

The next step was to make the caramel, heating the remaining sugar and a little water in a saucepan until it boils and starts to caramelize. I think I had the heat too high because it burned a bit, leaving the caramel with a slightly bitter taste. Must remember to be gentle when making caramel, something I have little experience doing.

The caramel is poured into the buttered souffle dish and quickly swirled around the sides before it starts to cool. This was easier said than done! Then, pour the rice and custard mixture on top.

The souffle dish is placed in the middle of a baking pan and boiling water is filled about halfway up the side of the pan. This water bath helps the custard cook more evenly, instead of the outsides cooking too fast and the inside still being uncooked. Cover the pan with foil, making some small slits in the corners of the foil for steam to escape.

Pop it into a 300-degree oven for about 2 hours, checking after 90 minutes. Try to use a better bending technique than I did as I was just begging for a strained back.

Since I had a half recipe I failed to anticipate that the cooking time would be less. When I checked at about 1 hour, 40 minutes the flan was a bit more solid than desired.

Remove and allow to cool. At this point when I shook the dish it didn’t jiggle very much. The idea would be just a little jiggling in the center when it comes out of the oven, as it will continue to cook for several more minutes. Once cool, cover the flan with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

The real moment of truth was how well it would unmold. You set the souffle dish in a larger pot with hot water in it for about 20 minutes, letting the caramel melt again and then loosening the edges of the flan. Invert it onto a serving dish. Expecting a potential disaster (after all, the recipe warns of this possibility), I decided to film it for posterity.

And the result is….

Quite pleasant to look at, actually. Not quite as beautiful as the picture illustrating the Times’ article, but they probably had a better set-up for photography.

The texture was like a pretty thick rice pudding, a little eggy but not overly so. The caramel was burned, there was no getting around the bitter flavor. I attribute it to making a half-recipe, which is so little that in even my smallest saucepan, overheating was a risk. Next time, maybe I’ll add a dollop of butter at the end to tame it a bit.

All in all, though, it was a nice dessert. I’m going to try it again soon at the full recipe and see how it turns out.

Cooking with Friends

Posted on 30 April 2011 by christao408

The past few weeks we’ve had the opportunity to cook at other people’s houses, which is always a fun change of pace. I find cooking outside my own kitchen to sometimes be a challenge – What do you mean you don’t have a potato ricer!? – but also fun because many friends have kitchens larger and more geared to socializing than mine.

Over Songkran we went to Ko and Per’s house. Ko was Tawn’s university classmate and her husband, Per, is from Sweden and moved here late last year. We decided it would be fun to try and make Swedish meatballs although we didn’t have a specific recipe and I’m not sure any of us knew what we were doing.

Nonetheless, we intuited our way through it, and wound up with something that despite looking kind of gloppy, tasted good and seemed close to the real deal. At least that’s what Per said. Maybe he was just being polite.

Ko takes pictures of the meal: Swedish meatballs, roast potatoes, mixed green salad, and I think we made spaghetti with meat sauce, too. It was tasty and, more importantly, the company was wonderful.

Tawn and me after a dinner of Swedish meatballs. Compare that to our picture on the beach after the rough 30-minute ride on an unpaved road on Kauai!

The following week I went to cook at another friend’s house. Chow, who is the author of the must-buy and use guide Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, invited friends over to cook Mexican food in honor (kind of) of the upcoming Cinco de Mayo holiday. Never mind that we were a bit early. Unfortunately, Tawn was not able to make it. That didn’t stop us from having fun, though, and making too much good food.

Enchiladas stuffed with avocado and smothered in red sauce and cheese sauce. Tasty!

Chicken enchiladas baked in a homemade mole poblano sauce. Pronounced “mo-lay”, this sauce has cocoa powder in it, lending an unexpected flavor to its spiciness.

For my contribution, I resurrected a recipe for fish tacos from Michael’s blog, using his avocado cilantro lime sauce. This sauce just goes perfectly on fish tacos!

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And finally, a random picture not related to cooking with friends. We had a visit from Ty, someone who was a very active member of the Xanga community under the username Just2Tyght when I first started almost six years ago. We met in person several years back in SF and while Ty has gone AWOL from Xanga, we’ve stayed in touch through other channels. Glad we had the opportunity to meet here in Bangkok.

Coming up soon… caramel rice flan.

A Little Pre-Hawai’i Cooking

Posted on 23 March 2011 by christao408

The day I filmed the Almost No-Knead Bread video, I got some extra cooking done. It made sense to have just a little more home cooking before we head off to Kauai for my cousin’s wedding. The meal: Indian spice rub pork chops with raita (a yogurt sauce with cukes and tomatos) and Indian spice roasted potatoes. Dessert was Swedish brownies. And while I was at it, I whipped up a batch of meusli.

While the recipe was originally for chicken, I used pork chops in this Indian spice rub and raita combination from Joanne Choi’s Week of Menus blog. Being a mother with young children and still a foodie, she manages to balance creative, complex flavors with ease of preparation and wholesome ingredients. The only change I would make to the recipe is to add a little bit of brown sugar and a bit of salt. The rub could have used a touch of sweetness.

Tawn and I enjoy meusli for breakfast – although in truth I eat oatmeal most days – and I find it isn’t too difficult to roast a batch of meusli when I already have the oven heated for some other baking. Each batch is just a little different. Based on Alton Brown’s granola recipe from the Food Network, I cut back on the sugar and substitute a little orange juice instead. I sometimes substitute different types of nuts or seeds (flax, pumpkin, or sunflower) for the cashews and almonds in his recipe. And I add a bit of cinnamon or sometimes freshly-ground nutmeg while the meusli is still warm. After it has cooled, I add dried fruits. This one is a combination of cherries, dates, apricots, and raisins. Tasty and pretty healthy, too.

Now, you see why I had to bake some healthy meusli: to offset the caloric karma that came from these wonderfully sticky and chewy brownies. The recipe came my from friend Per’s mother. Since he’s from Sweden, I think I’m going to call these my Swedish brownies. Some brownies are too cake-like. These have an almost mochi-like chewiness (causing me to wonder what would happen if I added just a bit of rice flour to the recipe).

The big challenge was that the recipe was in metrics – and I don’t have any dry ingredient measuring cups marked in deciliters. Thankfully, the internet helped provide conversions and then I made note of the weight of the ingredients so I can measure by weight in the future.

Okay, enough food porn for one entry!

My Almost No-Knead Bread Recipe

Posted on 20 March 2011 by christao408

My cousin Jane recently asked me to share my recipe for almost no-knead bread, which I’ve adapted from a recipe in Nancy Baggett’s “Kneadlessly Simple” cookbook and techniques from Cooks Illustrated. This weekend I completed a video showing the recipe. For your enjoyment:

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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