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.

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.

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.

June Thai -- Pad Thai

A word on fish sauce.

The primary ingredient in fish sauce -- nam pla, in Thai -- is fermented fish extract. People who don't already appreciate its unique, savory smack might be turned off by the flavor and have difficulty determining whether it has gone bad or not. It's an acquired taste. To say nothing of the smell.

It also happens to be one of the key ingredients to classic Thai cuisine, including Pad Thai, which is likely what comes to mind for most people when they think Thai food. This particular Pad Thai recipe, while relatively simple in its preparation, boasts wild flavor complexity, owing to the sweetness of the shrimp, the mild heat from the chili powder, and the tartness of the tamarind.

And when I say "tart," I mean pucker-your-lips-and-wipe-your-eyes tart. The tamarind-based sauce mellows a bit in the cooking, but before it goes into the pan, hoo boy. Good stuff.

Note: a couple of the ingredients might be a little difficult to track down. The fish sauce and pickled turnip can usually be found at any Asian or specialty grocery market, and I picked up the tamarind pulp at the local Latin market.

Additional photos, and recipe (via Saveur.com) after the jump.

June Thai -- Lime Noodles With Vegetables

A few days ago Mark Bittman wrote with no small amount of exasperation about the over-availability of meat. As a culture (and a species) we've gone from consuming meat on a semi-rare basis to eating it at almost every meal, and the advent of factory farming combined with our hard-wired urge to eat meat when we can get it has resulted in an America that is overweight and artereosclerotic.

That got me thinking about this blog and something I had been meaning to change: pretty much every (non-dessert) recipe I've prepared has featured meat. There are a few exceptions -- the thunder soup, the chana dhal, and a couple of pre-blog recipes waiting to be revisited -- but for the most part it's been a flesh-fest.

Bittman's anti-meat missive was fortuitously timed to the start of June Thai, and in searching for the inaugural dish I kept an eye out for something meatless-yet-flavorful. And I found it.

Rice noodles flavored with lime, dressed with a sesame-basil-mint paste, and topped with a melange of sauteed vegetables. Fresh, light, and colorful, with that distinct southeast Asian flavor. The tart sweetness of the lime-infused noodles is balanced by the salty, herbaceous flavor of the basil-mint paste. It's a lesson in flavor combination.

It's also a lesson in kitchen economy. Follow the recipe exactly as it's laid out here you'll end up using six separate pots and pans. By wiping down the skillet and skipping an unnecessary step (blanching the herbs), I got the job done with one pot, one saucepan, and one skillet. Cooking is fun. Cleaning less so.

Final note: I think this dish can definitely benefit from a little heat, perhaps mixing a chopped habanero in with the herb paste or the veggies.

Recipe and additional photos below the jump.

June Will Be... Thai

As much as I hate to see May Mexican go, the inexorable march of time and the determinedly inflexible Gregorian calendar demand that a new cuisine rise to the fore. And after much anguished deliberation, the choice has been made: we're going Thai.

I should say, rather, that we're going Thai-centric. The one-time Kingdom of Siam will be home base, but we plan to take a side trip or two into Vietnam, Indonesia, and maybe even Laos or Cambodia. Seafood, coconut, lemongrass -- these are all wonderful things, and they will be consumed in abundance.

There should also be lots and lots of heat, and that's a good thing. DC has officially transitioned into summertime furnace mode, so a little capsaicin overload will help to deal with the swelter. Or kill us. Either way, consider the heat beaten.

So crack open a Singha and get ready for June Thai. I promise I'll keep the Bangkok jokes to a minimum. Honest.