December 2006 Archives

Went to the December 30 re-opening of Ruen Pair on Hollywood Blvd. and I'm happy to report that the place has expanded and cleaned up real good, the servers are still sweet as pie, the "kitchenmothers" (Thai for cooks) are all the same, and the food is still TO DIE FOR. It's still my favorite Thai restaurant anywhere. Punchy tom yum goong with flecks of roasted chili and barely cooked shrimp; dry-cured and fried moo daed diew that manages to be sweet, salty, crisp, moist, and tender all at once; red fire morning glory, crisp and green, with whole yellow beans and whole thai chilies; and of course, my favorite som tam anywhere, spicy as sin, made with salted crab, not sweet, with hand sliced papaya bruised by the deftest pestle hand on this side of the Pacific. And it's so cheap -- $90 with tax and tip for 10 dishes, 4 servings of sticky rice and regular rice -- I could sit there and eat all day long if my Mae would let me. If I lived in L.A., I'd eat there once a week. At least.

Saw the owner while we were there, who extended friendly greetings to my Mae and Pau, who are regulars. "Closed for six months -- the customers have been so mad at us." Well, get back in there, people. The kitchen wants to prove that they've still got it, and believe me, they've still got it in spades. And they've got it in spades from 11am-4am EVERY SINGLE DAY. You people are so lucky.

Ruen Pair
5257 Hollywood Blvd. at Hobart Blvd. (close to Western)
Los Angeles, CA
(323) 466-0153
Cash only

In this week's Times, you can read about how human interference in breeding creates hideously deformed puppies.

You can also read about how the FDA has recently "tentatively concluded" that milk and meat from certain cloned animals is safe to eat.

Now guess which story is the most e-mailed story.

Don't get me wrong, I love puppies as much as the next person. People connect to the puppy story because they have empathy for dogs. Dogs are pets, dogs have eyes you can make contact with, hearts you can feel pounding when you hug them.

But where's the outpouring of emotion for the cloned animal? Remember Dolly, the cloned sheep who prematurely aged? How many test animals suffer and die before a clone is successfully grown? Aside from the empathy factor, what about the effects of eating cloned meat on the human body?

Just as Japan doesn't really NEED cuter, smaller animals, ultimately, I don't really see how this country needs MORE milk and meat. Livestock production for the most part isn't very humane or sustainable as is.

Part of the problem is this inconsistency in feeling towards food animals and pet animals. It really bothers me when people can't eat meat on the bone. It's not just picky eating, it's more of a refusal to acknowledge that the meat we eat was the flesh of a living animal. That hypocritical disconnect is a luxury the rest of the world can't afford. Of course I don't go and wring the necks of all the chickens I eat before plucking them and cleaning out their entrails, but at least I don't deny that my meat came from a body.

The American diet is supposed to be safe. While it doesn't kill, could it be altering our bodies? I am about 5 inches taller than my Mae, and I probably weigh 50 pounds more than she did at my age. My Mae likes to attribute my size to American chicken hormones. It's hard to say which contributing factors account for our size disparity -- convenience foods, large portions, high fructose corn syrup, bovine growth hormones, a white-collar sedentary lifestyle, etc. But it seems clear to me now that it has to do with American food.

When I went to visit my family in Thailand a few years ago, my aunt was clucking at me in disbelief. "How does a person get to be so fat?" she asked.

My 14 year old wisp of a cousin (most of my cousins are XS, and not at all malnourished), came to my rescue, exclaiming, "MAE, she's not fat! She's just American! Right? You're normal in America, right?"

And I said, "Yeah, pretty much." And it's true. My cousins don't belong to gyms. They hate being in the sun so much that they ride a scooter the 1/4 mile to the bus stop. Why are their bodies so different from mine?

I don't mean to get all preachy. Ultimately, I'm a hedonist before I'm a moralist, so while my politics dictate a local, vegetarian diet, I still love a good steak or roast chicken and don't ask often enough where that meat has come from. I just wish people would be less outraged about inbred puppies and more outraged about our increasingly suspicious food chain.

I lost at our annual poker tournament again. Not that I'm complaining -- I won once, and it wouldn't be very friendly to win more than that as house resident. Still, if I may point a finger, I blame the glögg, the Swedish mulled red wine we served in lieu of cocktails. It's Doug's Swedish mom's recipe. When we made it, we had 4 cups of sugar for 2 1/2 gallons of wine, which was plenty sweet. I've reduced the sugar by half here -- you can adjust to taste. Also, we used cheap jugs of Carlo Rossi, which was recommended by the wine snobs at the wine store as good enough for glögg.

It's so delicious, but it'll make you foggy, so no operating heavy machinery or anything afterwards, okay guys?

And in case you were wondering, it rhymes with Moog synthesizers, not banana slug or food blog.

Kristina's Glögg

1 gallon red burgundy
1 cup sugar
15 whole cardamom pods
10 whole cloves
4 slices fresh ginger
peel from one orange
3-4 cinnamon sticks
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup blanched almonds, slivered or whole

Simmer above ingredients in a covered pot over low heat for at least an hour. Do NOT bring to boil.

Add vodka or other liquors, if desired. (My Danish friend Sarah added a bottle of port to her glug -- also delicious.)

Serve in small cups with blanched almonds.

Cathy has inspired me to write the latkes recipe down. Also, I've been sick with a cold for a few days, so the question of what to do while in La Puente is moot. I suppose there's no better place to be sick than in my Mae's house, though. I can make my own jook rice porridge and watch the entire season of Ugly Betty online. Then, when my Mae comes home from work, she can put the back of her cool, small hand on my forehead and arm and fuss over me. It's kind of nice. I just finished Wicked which was quite enjoyable and much more philosophical than I had expected -- I can't imagine how a musical could properly capture the story, just as it's hard to imagine how a movie could capture Running With Scissors.

So, back to the latkes -- I started with an Epicurious recipe but tweaked it according to tips I've heard. I also hate following recipes to the letter and encourage you to riff at will.

3 lbs. russet/baking/Idaho potatoes
1 1/2 yellow onions
2 tsp. salt
A few heaping tablespoons of flour
3 eggs
Black pepper
Corn oil, peanut oil, canola oil or other frying oil
More salt

1. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate a potato. Then grate a little onion. Toss together. Alternate like that until all the potatoes and onions have been grated. (This keeps the potato from oxidizing and turning rusty or black. Neat, huh?)
2. Add salt and toss around.
3. Working a handful at a time, squeeze all the moisture you can out of your potato onion mixture.
4. Beat the three eggs and pour into the potato onion mixture. Toss.
5. Add flour and pepper and toss some more.
6. Heat up your oil. It's ready when you stick a chopstick in and tiny air bubbles start fizzing up like champagne.
7. Make 3-4 inch patties about 1/4 inch thick and slide into the oil. (Resist the temptation to make your patties too thick or wide.) Flip after you can see the edges turning golden brown, about 3-4 minutes on each side.
8. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle more salt on them and serve immediately with sour cream, applesauce, or condiment of choice.

I like serving straight out of the frying pan. I suppose you can keep them warm on a rack in a hot oven if you want to serve them all at once, but that's not as good as serving fresh from the oil and eating them while standing over the pan. My cousin's husband's family has a tradition of shrimp cocktail on Christmas; so so far, we've got two appetizers down for our Christmas traditions. Another five years and maybe we'll get a whole meal together.

A few years ago, I spent $110 on a bottle of Krug. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but by the time midnight rolled around that year, I'd already put back quite a bit of champagne and I have to admit that I didn't enjoy the Krug ten times more than I enjoyed the $12 Korbel. And I was at a big party and feeling kind of stingy with my champagne, thinking that I'd spent $110 and I certainly wasn't going to share it with all of these random people who couldn't appreciate that it was a $110 bottle of champagne. But that doesn't smack of holiday spirit, does it? In the end, I figured out that a fancy bottle of champs is good for a fancy occasion with your honey or a few delicate-palated friends -- it's not for swilling red-faced while you're trying to get your mack on with party acquaintances.

Again, I'm no wine expert -- I can either drink something or I can't. I like 'em dry, cold and fizzy, which is probably not the most high class way to enjoy champagne but I don't care. With that in mind, here's a roundup of cheap sparklers I've talked about (and a few I haven't talked about yet) that taste good enough to drink alone and are cheap enough to share with your New Year's one night stand.

Phillipe Foreau Sparkling Vouvray NV, France -- $25 Berry scented and really delicious. Plus, will always be associated in my mind with the cute man who sold it to me.

Prosecco Sorelle Bronca, Italy -- $13 -- Extra Dry, which means it's a little sweeter than Brut, but not headache sweet. Lighter color, lots of pear scent, so drinkable. Also has very classy label.

Monasteriolo Cava Brut, Spain -- Trader Joe's, $6.99. Dude, it's $6.99. That is, like, 1/4 the price you're going to pay for the renegade car service you're going to flag down at 11:35pm because you can't get across town in your stilettos and mini skirt, you hussy. It's crisp and just minerally enough.

Taltarni Brut Taché, Australia -- I loved this Australian pink bubbly, which seems to be retailing here for about $20. I liked it better than the $65 Billecart-Salmon rosé. It's not overly berry-y or astringent. I bet you can order a case of it at Astor Wines. Way better than that awful Sofia Coppola hipster canned gak.

Raventos i Blanc Cava, Spain -- About $12, widely available, mineral and clean, extra points for having a classy label that makes the bottle look more expensive than it actually is. Dan Barber's not ashamed to put it on the Blue Hill list. And I'm not ashamed of enjoying it immensely.

My flight gets into LGA at 7pm on the 31st, so I may miss the festivities this year, but at least you all will be saving your alcohol money for 2007. Think of me, drink up, and get laid, not necessarily simultaneously.

I'm bored. Not channel surfing bored. Like what isn't nailed down in the kitchen is going into my mouth bored. My Mae made a massive pot of green curry with chicken and fish cakes. Like cauldron big. Like big enough to feed every resident of my Mae's home village in Thailand, plus all of their children and grandchildren. She used these huge Costco sized industrial cans of coconut milk and bamboo shoots. Except I don't think Costco has a Thai aisle. But I could be wrong.

The trouble with being bored in my house is that we only have Thai satellite TV. I can't really cook either. Despite the fact that my Mae made a huge cauldron of coconut curry, she serves it peppered with guilt-ridden commentary like, "Lots of cholesterol, so don't eat too much of the sauce" or "Only once in a while, I guess it's okay". So I can't make any of the things that seem so appealing at Christmas -- cookies, pies and the like. Also, it's 70 degrees outside, and it really doesn't feel like Christmas now that I've been spending Christmas in the colder climes. I only brought one book (Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors) and I already finished it. And I'm here til the 31st. Seriously, what am I going to do til then?

Last night's latkes were perfection -- russet potatoes, squeeze all the moisture out, and in a latke-experienced friend's words, "Don't be chintzy with the oil." Also perfection was the Jim Lahey no-knead bread -- if you haven't tried it, you must. Luisa the Wednesday Chef has the recipe up so you don't have to pay the Times for the archived article. My personal notes: up the salt to 1 3/4 tsp., lower the water to 1 1/2 cups, if you're going to use the well-floured towel, let it be a tightly woven 1 ply, not the double layer cheesecloth that wound up stuck with 1/4 of my first attempt, a smaller casserole dish makes for a better shaped loaf. I want to experiment with flavorings next -- golden raisins and fennel, cheese bits and bobs, yuzu pepper, etc. I also want to try a silpat instead of the well-floured towel or tricky plastic wrap I used on the second attempt.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Got any suggestions on what to do? I've run out of people to text message.

Name: Kim Ku!

Occupation: Design robot by day, Art slave by night

Borough: Queens

Relationship status: Single

What did you eat today?

For breakfast, I had a ham and egg sandwich on the run (literally), a clementine, and a banana. We went out for a department lunch at Isle, a Thai place, so I had chicken massaman curry and vegetable spring rolls. Then for dinner, I had homemade char-siu, or roast pork, with a helping of fried eggs, string beans and sticky jasmine rice. There was also some soup involved with mushrooms and lotus roots.

What do you never eat?

American cheese and/or peanuts.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Frozen squid (to dump into ramen), sliced pork and beef (to dump into ramen), eggs (to dump into ramen), and oyster sauce (to flavor veggies…which can then be dumped into ramen).

What is your favorite kitchen item?
I like the Zojirushi rice cooker the best because not only does it make tasty rice but it also has great ergonomic design. I haven’t met many rice cookers that have digital clocks on them. [I'm surprised -- you're the first person in YAWYE to ever go for rice cooker for fave kitchen item, I think. --Ed.]

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Milk and Cookies. Their chocolate mint cookies, especially when they’ve just come out of the oven, is the best breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack I could ask for.

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

I’d have to go to Philadelphia to eat my last combo breakfunchinner meal(s).

For my breakfast part of the meal: Depending on my mood, eggs benedict at either White Dog (the founder of this place is also the founder of Urban Outfitters- she lives on the 2nd floor of the restaurant) or Rx. White Dog serves their eggs with smoked salmon while Rx does it with ham.

For my lunch part of the meal: Morimoto’s Omakase in Philadelphia. They have the best Yellowtail Tartare I’ve ever tasted. And if it’s not too much to ask, I would prefer Masaharu Morimoto to cook it for me and also give me a signed photograph of himself (the waiters actually come back with one if you ask them when he’s there, I swear!)

For my part of the dinner meal: Buddakan to have some of their wasabi mashed potatoes. Other than that, the place is too stiff for me because all the waiters dress completely in white. I’d head over to Ms. Tootsie’s Bar and Lounge where there’s great soul food and endless homemade iced tea with watermelons in it!

To end my time in the world, I’ll have a lemon mint gelato at Capogiro and some of my mom’s banana bread.

I'm goin' back to Cali. (To Cali?) To Cali. Enjoy the holidays! I will be trying to start a tradition in my California Thai Buddhist/Atheist family of making latkes on Christmas. Woohoo! Happy New Year!

Name: Luisa Weiss

Occupation: Literary scout and Wednesday Chef

Borough: Manhattan

Relationship status: Yes, in one.

What did you eat today?

Breakfast: Hot apple cider and a whole-wheat roll from Bread Alone. Lunch: fennel taralli from Caputo Brothers, a plate of steamed broccoli with lemon juice and olive oil, a slice of Cacio di Roma and a Suncrisp apple. Dinner: half a calamari-citrus salad and half a plate of red-chile braised pork with mashed plantains and collard greens at Rocking Horse Café (a girlfriend and I shared).

What do you never eat?

Cilantro, dill, mayonnaise, raw spinach. [Interesting...it's hard for me to imagine a life without cilantro. I'm sure it must taste different to people who don't like it. --Ed.]

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

mustard, butter, cherry jam, maple syrup, multivitamins, light soymilk, carrots, orange juice, eggs, Parmigiano, peanut butter, tomato paste in a tube, Liberte plain yogurt and Sherry.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My All-Clad stainless steel pan. Oh, and the Wüsthof chef’s knife that my father gave me to in college and is still the best knife I own.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

At lunchtime, I usually vary between the soba noodles in broth at Ennju near Union Square and the Indian lentil soup at City Bakery (to make up for the occasional inside-out chocolate cookie I have for dessert). And if I’m at neither of those places, you can find me choking down leftovers at my desk from some newspaper recipe dish that’s STILL sitting in my fridge. As for dinner, I’m not really a creature of habit. If I’m not cooking (which, let’s face it, isn’t that often), we’ll head down to Moustache in the West Village or I’ll try to convince my boyfriend to go to Grand Sichuan on 52nd Street with me (I rarely succeed and we end up at Spice on 8th Avenue).

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

I don’t know that I’d have much of an appetite. I’d like my mother to make me spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce. And I’d like a bowlful of ripe apricots picked from the tree behind my aunt’s old summer house in Italy.

Luisa is the Wednesday Chef. At her web home, she tries out a staggering number of Wednesday food section recipe clippings. Her kitchen stamina is super impressive and her photography's delicious.

I can't wait to see what "the northeastern Thai tradition of barbecuing with spicy lemongrass marinades" means. Sounds to me like the Italian tradition of raw fish, or the Chinese tradition of General Tso's Chicken.

Name: Cathy Erway

Occupation: Copy Editor, occasional freelance writer

Borough: Brooklyn

Relationship status: In a relationship

What did you eat today?

Breakfast: instant oatmeal and a clementine. Lunch: tuna salad with diced red pepper and shredded carrot on multigrain toast and a romaine salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Then some yogurt. Dinner: my friend Lindsay made some angel hair with pesto, vegetarian chili and some sides like green beans and kale for a bunch of people at her place. I should explain that I recently moved apartments and my gas stove doesn’t work yet.

What do you never eat?

I don’t think I’d favor well with Stilton cheese. I recently tried to swallow a bit of goat cheese again and sort of gagged—it’s like my Achilles heel. Other than that, commonly domesticated animals and bushmeat.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Decaying herbs, leftovers, eggs, milk, carrots.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I just got a red Le Creuset dutch oven as a birthday gift and it may just be my favorite item period. [Me too! Me too! --Ed.] Definitely trumps the silicone muffin pan I’ve been toying with.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Well, that’s a funny question. I stopped eating out (albeit not when traveling out of the state of New York) in August of this year. So I would have to say at airports (not that I’m a jet-setter).

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Mom’s soy sauce chicken stew with lots of hard boiled eggs in it, black mushroom caps, chicken falling off the bone, rice wine, scallions, and a five-spice packet immersed in it, stewed forever, and served with rice. Then to be fair, my dad’s apple pie.

Cathy is Not Eating Out in New York, which can't be easy without gas.