DC Culinarian

June Thai -- Pork Satay

Pork and peanuts. Pork and peanuts. Pork and peanuts.

Do you really need anything else?

In this instance, yes: you also need some coconut milk, a little red curry paste, and fish sauce. Mix all those together and you wind up with a wildly delicious, shockingly simple sauce to complement your skewers of grilled pork. The peanuts and the coconut milk help to cut the heat of the curry paste a little, but if you make your curry paste from scratch, you can kick up the spiciness to whatever suits your palate.

For those who don't want to whip up their own, red curry paste can be found in any Asian market and usually in the international aisle of most supermarkets.

This is an ideal dish for a first course: it's simple, light fingerfood that's absolutely fantastic.

Pictures and recipe (via Jody Vassallo) after the jump.

June Thai -- Samla' Daung

My brother lives in Cambodia. He worked there as a journalist for a while, then came back to the U.S., then went back to Cambodia to save elephants, and now he's -- well, I'm not sure what the hell he's doing.

But he's there, and he's had some remarkable adventures, like the time he visited what was reported to be Pol Pot's burial mound and came back with a souvenir. The guard on duty was impressed with my brother the Western journalist and, as a show of good hospitality, fished around in the ash-strewn cairn and pulled out a piece of skull which he presented as a gift. My brother, not wishing to be uncivil, gratefully accepted the offering of human remains.

It's a wild story, to be sure, and it's an awful set-up to an entry on Cambodian cuisine, but I'm rolling with it.

I know absolutely nothing about Cambodian food. I don't think I've ever seen a Cambodian restaurant. No one has ever said to me: "Did you like it? It's an old Khmer recipe."

So I was curious to see what they're all about food-wise in Thailand's southern neighbor. Turns out the answer is lemongrass. Lots and lots of lemongrass. Whereas Thai food tends toward the sweet-hot, Cambodian cuisine is all about sour and citrus.

And this chicken and coconut curry recipe features a whole lot of lemongrass, as well as a couple of decidedly exotic ingredients. The first is galangal root, a relative of ginger that has an earthier taste and spicier bite. The second is shrimp paste, which, much like fish sauce, has a pungent aroma that belies its delectable savoriness. You're unlikely to find either item at the local supermarket; I picked up both at the straightforwardly named Thai Market in Silver Spring.

Photos and recipe (courtesy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid) after the jump.

A Peek At The Summit

This, I think, represents the pinnacle of the food blogger's craft:

Graffiato: Small Plates and Big Flavors in Penn Quarter

A confession: I have never seen an episode of Top Chef. It's a big demerit to my food blogger cred (such as it is), but what can I say? I don't have cable.

As such, until a few months ago I'd not heard of Mike Isabella, the chef behind Graffiato, DC's newest Italian eatery in Penn Quarter. Nor had I heard of Isabella's much-heralded pepperoni sauce. Now that I've been to Graffiato and sampled said sauce, I might have to give Comcast a call to see what else I'm missing out on.

More on the sauce in a minute. Let's talk decor. Graffiato's insides are raw. The tables are made of reclaimed wood and were built by Isabella and his father-in-law. Rafters poke out from the ceiling and are criss-crossed with pipes and cables. The brick is exposed and the light fixtures are straight out of the workshop. Sit at the bar and you'll see pizzas slide in and out of the wood-fired oven. Sit at the right table and you'll see (and hear) the chefs prepare dishes, bark orders, and carefully plate your meal. It's all about immersion. And even amidst the chaos of the kitchen, the noise of the diners, and the hard rock soundtrack, you feel welcome, like you're a part of it all.

After a round of smokey, fruity mezcal cocktails, my dining companions and I set to work on Graffiato's selection of cheeses (some local, some distant) served with a sweet, garlicky mustard jam that is absolutely sensational. Their sliced smoked and cured hams are piled on top of minature herb-and-cheese frittatas, a wry twist on the traditional ham, egg, and cheese.

Now let's talk pepperoni sauce, which I'm told was quite the hit among the Top Chef judges, and it's easy to see why. Served with crisped chicken thighs and blistered tomatoes, it's mellow, slightly sweet, and tastes exactly -- really, uncannily -- of pepperoni. Working our way through the menu of small plates and pizzas, we had oregano-crusted pork ribs slathered with a refreshing coriander yogurt, and playfully spicy meatballs served over polenta with a softly cooked egg -- solidly good plates that put interesting twists on traditional Italian comfort food. We ordered a cheddar, leek, and bacon pizza for the table which was delicious on its own, but demonstrated true worth by furnishing scraps of yeasty crust with which to scoop up the leftover sauces.

The real stars of the evening, though, were the bone marrow and the gnocchi. For the enthusiastic carnivore, having your food served to you in a hollowed-out bone is deeply satisfying. Piled into the ossified platter were soft hunks of intensely rich marrow offset texturally by crisped bacon, pistachio, and bread crumbs. A squeeze from the accompanying cured lemon brought balance to the whole affair. I methodically scraped out every last morsel and admit that it took remarkable self-restraint to keep from gnawing on the femur.

And then there's the gnocchi. One member of my dining party, betraying a propensity for the lyrical, described the little potato dumplings as having been "plucked from a cloud." Tucked in between them were soft mounds of burrata and a ragù of braised pork. Everything on the plate existed in a fragile state of semi-solidity until the moment it reached your mouth, when it all melted, disintegrated, and made us happy. 

For dessert, we ordered everything. Every single item on the dessert menu. And while none of them disappointed, the gelatos were the best of the bunch. The sea salt gelato that accompanied the chocolate tart was perfectly balanced and could easily have been enjoyed on its own. The raspberry was bright and intense and a perfect partner for the chocolate gelato, which we were all convinced -- absolutely, 100-percent sure -- had some sort of smokey secret ingredient. However, a quick post-dinner chat with Chef Isabella revealed that the chocolate gelato was untouched by smoke, leaving us all confused and less confident in the sharpness of our collective palate, but too full and happy to care.

And for all we ate (and it was an obscene amount) we only touched on a small portion of the full menu. A friend in the restaurant last night described the scallop crudo special as a revelatory experience. In our gusto for Graffiato's meat and pasta offerings, we neglected the vegetable menu entirely, which was a mistake. (I can hear the blistered peppers with smoked paprika and the escarole salad with guanciale calling to me as I write.)

The good news is that this can all be rectified with a return visit. The bad news is that with all the buzz surrounding Graffiato's opening, they appear to be booked solid through the next election. I exaggerate, of course, but even if that were the case it'd be worth the wait. Hell, if a restaurant can make me reconsider selling my soul to Comcast, then waiting on line until November doesn't seem so ridiculous.

June Thai -- Clay Pot Chicken

"Oooh! It smells wonderful!"

[Five seconds pass]

"Gah! It smells like feet!"

Those were The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian's reactions as she looked over my shoulder while I prepared this Vietnamese-style chicken dish. The initial aroma was produced by softly bubbling brown sugar caramel, and the succeeding one by the sizzling of fish sauce.

I've already discussed the unique aroma of fish sauce (nam pla), which could be described as a sort of "savory low tide." When fish sauce hits a hot pan and is aerosolized (some might say weaponized), it tends to fill the kitchen with the overpowering essence of... well, TSTBMC's reaction speaks for itself. But its flavor is at the core of southeast Asian cookery.

And yes, this is a Vietnamese dish, even though it's Thai month. And no, I didn't use a clay pot, even though it's called clay pot chicken. And if you're willing to get past my blatant fibbery and the pungent aroma of hot fermented fish squeezings, then you'll come to know how fantastically good this salty, sweet, sour dish is.

In place of the clay pot I used my enameled Dutch oven to melt the brown sugar, making this my first savory dish that has incorporated caramel. The sweetness of the sugar is balanced by a sauce made from rice vinegar, lemon juice, and soy sauce, which seeps into the chicken as it slowly simmers. Add a gingery bite and a small amount of heat, and you've got a winner of a recipe.

So do make this dish. It'll be worth your while. And if you need me, I'll be airing out the kitchen and scraping caramel from my Dutch oven.

Photos and recipe (via Appetite For China) after the jump.

Recipes Revisited: Toriniku Yawata-Maki

When I set out on this little cooking adventure, one of my goals was to prepare dishes that featured ingredients and techniques that were unfamiliar to me. And this recipe from February Japanese was way outside the comfort zone.

First, the mystery ingredient: burdock root. Burdock isn't something you really ever encounter in Western cuisine. It's a type of thistle with slender, edible roots that can be well over three feet long. Burdock roots have a pleasantly earthy crunch but are very, very tough and need to be boiled for quite some time to soften them up.

As for the technique, it's pretty strange. This recipe is traditionally made with eel, whose long, thin fillets lend themselves to wrapping around skewers. Chicken, however, is less well adapted to such a preparation, so a little trickery is needed.

Basically, you bone a chicken thigh and then cut it into one long, slender ribbon with the skin still attached. (The technique is described below.) Then you arrange the vegetables -- in this case, marinated burdock and asparagus -- around a skewer, and wrap the chicken ribbon around the vegetables, making sure to keep the skin side out. Then the whole thing is grilled.

The learning curve is a bit high and the preparation may take a while, but it's a weird, wonderful way to prepare chicken. The marinade for the vegetables (made from dashi, sweetened rice wine, and soy sauce) imparts that distinct umami-ness so often associated with Japanese food, which is balanced nicely by the char on the meat.

Thousand-Year Eggs: Nightmare Fuel

This month's sojourn into Southeast Asia got me thinking about what quite possibly was the foulest foodstuff I have ever put in my mouth: the thousand-year egg.

The Brother-In-Law Of Future Past spent his a good deal of his youth in Indonesia, and a few years back he introduced me to Indonesian cuisine at a Bethesda eatery that specializes in foods from the Indonesian archipelago. Among the foods he recommended was the thousand-year egg, which he insisted -- hand to God, scout's honor, cross my heart, would I lie? -- was quite good.

Before I get into the flavor, let's discuss the appearance and the mode of preparation. Think of a hard-boiled egg, with a firm white and a soft yellow yolk. Now, take that white white and turn it a deep, shiny brown. Like volcanic glass. And that yellow yolk? Downgrade it a few shades to a greenish, blueish, gray. Basically, the least appetizing color combination you can imagine,

Thousand-year eggs are so called becaused they look as though they've been sitting around for a few centuries, perhaps at the bottom of a hamper in the gym laundry. This effect is produced by the many-weeks long curing process in which the egg is buried in a special mixture of ash, lime, salt, and clay. It's a controlled rot. Of an egg. Which you are expected to eat. Which I did.

How to describe the flavor... If you've ever lived in a house that had a basement -- not a furnished subterranean den, but a cement-floored utility space -- then you know that dank, musky aroma that is peculiar to basements. Imagine that smell, only it's in your mouth. Plus sulfur. And ammonia. With just a hint of lye. And the oozing textures of death and decay.

That, in so many words, is a thousand-year egg -- death in your mouth. It's a food from an era before refrigeration, when eating and survival were more closely linked and flavor was readily sacrificed to stave off spoilage. Today we call such foods "delicacies," and their continued existence owes greatly to the ubiquitous and sometimes counterintuitive human urge to uphold tradition.

June Thai -- Steamed Fish With Lemongrass And Chili

There's no substitute for lemongrass. And that can sometimes be irksome. Its wonderful herbally citrus twang notwithstanding, lemongrass can be a right bastard.

You know what I'm talking about. You sit down to your nice coconut curry or what have you, and sprinkled throughout your otherwise exemplary meal are hard little pieces of woody lemongrass stalk that didn't quite soften all the way as you cooked. But even when you encounter those unchewable bits, it's still worth it. Lemongrass is in a class by itself, and indispensable to southeast Asian cuisine.

Thankfully, this Thai fish recipe makes good use of copious amounts of steam, which quickly softens up the finely chopped lemongrass and ginger slices that are tucked into the scored flesh of a whole black sea bass. Dressed with a nam pla-lime sauce that's spiked with red and green Thai chilis, the steamed bass is colorful, flavorful, and spicy, and also quite healthy (no added fats or oils are used in this recipe).

A quick side note: this recipe came from Jody Vassallo's Basic Thai Cooking, which has some stunning photography, to include something I'd never seen in a cookbook before: photographs of the prepared food in tupperware and takeout containers. It's offbeat, but it works, and makes for an oddly grounding experience. 

And with that we're halfway done with June Thai. That's four solid, traditional, and simple recipes in the can. So from this point we'll be branching out a bit into more exotic realms and more unusual ingredients. Stay tuned...

Photos and recipe below the jump.

June Thai -- Mango Sticky Rice

For the longest time I disliked mangoes. At least, I thought I did. The reason for this imagined dislike was Mango Madness Snapple, which as a child I detested and wrongly came to view as an accurate representation of the fruit's true flavor.

This admittedly stupid prejudice stayed with me for quite some time, strong as ever, until just a couple of years ago when I happened across a New Yorker article on flavorists -- a select group of chemists who work in secret with the big food and drink manufacturers (Snapple included) to synthesize chemicals that impart nutrtionally vacant flavors to their products. Sometimes the flavors are meant to mimic the original, other times they're meant to convince the consumer that they are tasting what's on the label.

It was one of those "ah ha!" moments that after it arrives you feel embarrassed for not having realized it sooner.

I decided to mangoes another go, and I came to fully appreciate the wrong-headedness of my embargo of the fruit on my first trip to Mexico, when I was introduced to the Manila mango. Sweet, soft, spicy, juicy, and completely lacking the stringy, fibrous texture that can sometimes mar other varieties. They are an almost indescribable treat.

So I was more than excited to find a few good Manilas at my local Latin market (they are grown in Mexico, and the fruit is so soft that shipping them can be difficult). I snapped them up and sliced them thin for this wonderful Thai take on rice pudding. The rice, infused with sugar and coconut cream, would be almost too sweet on its own, but the mild tartness of the sliced mango cuts that sweetness just enough to leave you with a wonderful flavor combination.

Pictures and recipe (adapted from Saveur.com) after the jump.

Consider, the Manila mango

Sliced and ready to serve

RECIPE: Adapted from Saveur.com. Serves 4-6

1 cup Thai sticky rice
1 cup coconut cream (or 1  13.5-oz. can coconut milk)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 mangoes, peeled and sliced

Bring rice to a boil in a small pot with 1 1/2 cups of water. Reduce heat and cover, let simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat.

Put the coconut cream in a small saucepan with the sugar and salt. Bring to a boil and pour into the pot with the cooked rice. Mix well and set aside, allowing 30 minutes or so for the coconut mixture to fully infuse.

Spoon the rice into small bowls, top with the sliced mango, and serve.

Chicken A La Poison Of Kings

As if there weren't already enough problems with industrial-scale meat production.

The FDA announced a couple of days ago that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer would be pulling from the U.S. market a drug called roxarsone, which is used to control coccidiosis, a parasitic ailment common in chickens. The reason? Arsenic. Roxarsone is an arsenic-based drug, and recent tests have confirmed elevated levels of the poisonous element in chickens treated with the additive.

Inorganic arsenic, a potent carcinogen, has been renowned since antiquity for its toxicity and was so frequently employed for regicide that it came to be known as the "poison of kings." Very small amounts of it will disrupt enzyme pathways and mitochondrial function, causing organ failure and disfiguring skin conditions.

Roxarsone was deemed safe for use in chicken feed, however, because it employs organic arsenic, which is non-carcinogenic and significantly less toxic. The drug also has the added benefits -- from the chicken producers' point of view -- of increasing the growth rate of chickens and imbuing the meat with a pleasing pink hue.

The problem is that the organic arsenic is unstable, and "it shifts from organic to inorganic form under anaerobic conditions, and probably in the intestinal tracts of chickens." The conditions in most factory farms are such that chickens are continually exposed to their own waste and the waste of thousands of other birds. So it's not surprising, then, that the FDA recently discovered inorganic arsenic in factory-farmed chickens.

What's more, chicken waste is routinely recycled as fertilizer, a practice that could facilitate the wider distribution of inorganic arsenic.

It's tempting to view this unsettling news is a testament to the watchdog capabilities of the FDA. They had previously deemed organic arsenic-based drugs to be safe, but reversed that decision based on new scientific information and improved detection techniques. However, it also demonstrates the unacceptable inefficacy of the government agency tasked with guarding public health. As Mother Jones points out, scientists have been raising concerns about roxarsone for almost ten years, but the FDA did nothing until this year. And even when they discovered the elevated arsenic levels, they still left it up to Pfizer to voluntarily pull the drug.

More than anything, the discovery of wildly toxic metalloid poisons in chickens farmed for human consumption is the latest (of many) indictments against factory farming. Even if you're liable to dismiss the out-of-sight abuse of animals or the down-the-road threats of cardiovascular disease, it's difficult to ignore the presence of arsenic in your McNuggets, and hopefully this debacle will impel consumers to be a little more choosy when picking up their chicken at the supermarket.