Name: Ganda Suthivarakom
Occupation: Online monkey; master and slave of eatdrinkonewoman.com
Borough: Brooks
What did you eat today?
From Grey Dog's Coffee:
1 iced coffee with whole milk
1 banana blueberry bran muffin
From Blue Ribbon Bakery:
1 portion rillettes with melba toasts
1 beets vinaigrette
From Deb's:
1/4 of an iced coffee with whole milk
1 lemon bar
From Chef Boyardee:
1 can beef ravioli
It was a rough day.
What do you never eat?
I'll try anything once. I don't really want to eat raw salmon (which my friend Dottie says is full of parasites) unless I know that it's been superfrozen previously. But I've eaten lots of raw salmon. I don't really like periwinkles. Or cockles. And I'm not that interested in conch. Raw geoduck clam weirds me out. Steamer clams look like sexual organs and weird me out too. But I'll eat them. And sometimes I'll like them.
I don't eat durian. Chicken sashimi scares me, but I'd probably eat it. At least once. I don't really like frog legs, which to me seem like fishy gelatinous chicken wings. But I'd eat them if someone told me to.
I've eaten worms, crickets, ant eggs, pig intestine soup, fermented crab, live baby octopus and canned vienna sausages. Those sausages were GROSS.
I used to hate white vegetables -- cauliflower, daikon, etc. But I got over that.
Ooh, I got it! I don't eat romanesco. That is THE DEVIL'S VEGETABLE with the EVIL SPIRALS FROM HELL. Oh, I'd probably eat it if someone did something nice with it.
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
An array of Asian sauces for cooking
butter
A bottle of orange flower water which I used only once for Prune-style Oranges A L'Arabe and haven't figured out what else to use it with
eggs
mustard
many, many flavors of jam
in the freezer:
nearly finished cartons of Haagen Dazs
frozen peas
What is your favorite kitchen item?
My cherry red Le Creuset 7 qt. Dutch Oven. Her name is Louise. She's GORGEOUS.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
The pizza place on the corner, Grey Dog's since I got this new job, Tacos Matamoros. My favorite place to spend a little is probably Pearl Oyster Bar.
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
Som tam with salted black crab and no sugar
Sticky rice
Fried beef jerky
Fried pork jerky
Cut pineapple fresh from a field
Roasted coconut juice
Orange flower water is wonderful stuff...you could use it to make baklava, add a bit of it to hot water for Lebanese "white coffee" (great as an after dinner digestive drink), or use it in cocktails such as the Ramos Fizz. I stock up on the stuff...it's great! :)
I love that you named your Dutch Oven Louise.
I only called Louise what she told me to. She's the only thing I can think of that I've anthropomorphized because she has a personality of her own. My co-worker now has a 9 qt. in blue which he thinks of as a spiritual cousin, and has named Louie. Or Louis en francais.
You've eaten worms? Wow. So have I - out of a cup, using a toothpick, in Seoul, Korea. Great streetfood scene. Little buggers looked like troglodytes, something ancient, symmetrical, like something out of Alien, yet curiously more inviting. Where did you eat your worms? I've also had live octopus, also in Korea, on a cold night in the dead of winter, some hole in the wall in a vast closed-in labyrinthian market. It was actually delicious. Washed it down with some strong Korean vodka. The topper was dog, which actually tastes pretty good, but is also quite fatty. My wife's uncle took me to a hut on the side of a mountain, where half the walls were made out of torn paper. You had two choices at this joint: fish or dog. Yes, they also had vodka, strong stuff. My wife, who is a Korean who grew up in Japan, along with her family, claim that eating dog in winter is tantamount to getting three flu shots. Boosts your immune system. As a matter of fact, I didn't get sick at all that winter.
Love your site.
So how were the crickets?
I think you can also do wonderful things with custard and rosewater. I'm home right now with my mom whose baked custard is just legendary, and her pot de creme is also quite worthwhile.