Category: Recipes

Fall is in the air.  Can't you feel it?  I've been bitching and moaning all summer long about the heat, and now that it's leaving...well, I continue to bitch and moan.  As a friend of mine likes to say, as a New Yorker, it's my God-given right to complain.  One thing I can't complain about, however, is the Edenesque abundance at the Greenmarket right now.  The markets are up to their ears in some of my favorite produce, and now that it's cooled down a tiny bit, it's time to make soup with those veggies.  It's a great way to put those end-of-day dollar bags of produce to use.  Here's a mix-and-match summer soup that makes the perfect light dinner on these lovely late summer evenings, maybe with a baked sweet potato or just on its own.

Easy mix-and-match end of summer tomato vegetable soup

Base:
2 chopped onions*
1 chopped carrots*
1 chopped celery stalks*
5 chopped garlic cloves*
6-8 peeled, seeded, chopped large tomatoes*
Lots of Chicken broth
A couple of bay leaves
2 tbsp. fresh thyme*

Roughage:
1 bunch of chopped greens -- Black Tuscan kale*, green kale*, swiss chard*, spinach*, beet tops*, whatever you've got

Add-ins:
4 cups of any mix of the following:
Cooked fresh cranberry beans*  (20 minutes in separate pot of boiling unsalted water til tender)
Raw corn* kernels cut off the cob
Zucchini* or other summer squash* cut into 1/3" cubes
1 cup uncooked Pasta like rotini, penne, elbow macaroni, whatever you've got in the cupboard

Toppings:
Grated cheese of choice -- Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino, Gruyere, whatever bits and bobs you've got hiding on your refrigerator shelf.  If you have rinds that are too hard to grate, chuck them in the soup for flavor.
and/or
Pistou -- throw 1 cup packed basil* leaves, 2 cloves garlic*, and a couple glugs of olive oil into the mortar and pestle and crush til saucy

* starred items are available at the Greenmarket now for pretty cheap

To make:

Saute your mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) in olive oil in a big-ass pot until onion is translucent.  Add the garlic and cook a minute.  Add your greens of choice and cook until the greens have reduced in volume a bit.  Add tomatoes and cook a minute more. 

Pour lots of chicken broth in -- two of those boxes or more.  You can substitute veggie broth, beef broth, whatever.  Add the bay leaves and the cheese rinds if you've got them.  Cook on medium heat until the greens are tender, maybe 15 minutes. 

Add the 4 cups of add-ins and cook about 10 minutes more or until the add-ins are done.   Make sure there's always enough liquid to cover everything.  Throw in the chopped thyme before you take the soup off the heat, add salt and pepper to taste. 

Serve topped with grated cheese and a dollop of the pistou.  Serves 1 person for many, many days.  If the veggies soak up all the liquid over the course of the next few days, reheat with more broth and adjust seasoning.

As we've discussed earlier, haricots verts is French for green beans.  What it usually refers to stateside are the smaller, more tender baby green beans--and a doubled price tag.  Haricots verts go for about $6/lb. usually.

I was heading home today after yoga and there were still a couple of Greenmarket vendors making their last sales of the day.  When it comes to the Union Square Greenmarket, I am like a kid with ADD trying to walk through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.  I lose my homeward trajectory and always have to buy something for myself.  As far as sicknesses go, it's not a bad one to have, I think.

Today, the farmer on the northwest corner in front of Starbucks (sadly I didn't get his name or his region of origin) had the most gorgeous, verdant green beans.  The little, tender emerald beauties would most certainly qualify as haricots verts; lucky for me, they had the $3/lb. price tag of regular old green beans.  And they didn't have to travel all the way from Guatemala, land of mini-veggies, to get to my plate. 

So how do you pick good green beans?  I like the ones that are, at their longest, the length of index finger up to your thumb webbing, and no thicker than a Papermate pen.  The really young ones are tender and flexible, with a soft, velvety feel.  The stems should look fresh and not too dry or dark, and the pod color should be a nice grassy green, not pale pistachio green, and free of blemishes.  The beans at this stand were so uniformly gorgeous, I bought nearly two pounds and brought them home to make one of my favorite dishes, dry fried green beans. 

Dry Fried Green Beans


1.  Wash the green beans and dry them enthusiastically in a colander.  Trim the stem ends of your little green beans.  You don't have to cut off the tails, unless you're a wanker baby who also needs to cut the crusts off sandwiches.  Set them aside.

2.  Peel a three or four inch piece of ginger.  TIP: Don't bother with a vegetable peeler, which wastes a lot of ginger root.  Just scrape the very thin ginger skin off with the edge of a paring knife.

3.  Cut the ginger into 1/4" thick slices.  Throw two big ass cloves of garlic (preferably Keith's Organic's complex Rocambole or other local hardneck garlic) with the ginger into a mortar and pestle.

4.  Smash the garlic and ginger together til you have a rough mash.  If you don't have a mortar and pestle, go get one.  Seriously.  A 9" granite mortar with pestle is $40 at Bangkok Grocery Center, or about $30 at Pacific Supermarket in Woodside, Queens and it's totally useful.  If you buy yours in Queens, you can use the money you saved towards a cab ride home because that shit is HEAVY.   

5.  Heat up your large pan on high heat.  When it's hot, add a Lidia Bastianich amount of oil to the pan -- enough to coat the bottom of the pan generously, but not so much that it rises up the sides.  We're pan frying, not deep frying.  (I used extra virgin olive oil, because I'm trying to stave off heart disease, but you could use tasty peanut oil if you don't have cholesterol problems.  You lucky beeyotch.)

6.  Throw your green beans into the hot pan.  Don't just tip your colander into the pan though -- excess water from the bottom of your colander will just splash back up at you.  Better to drop the green beans in by the handful.  I have overcrowded the pan a bit, but I am a lazy cook.  Do as I say, not as I do!

7.  Fry those green beans until they are tender and get a little blistery and browned, maybe 7-10 minutes on high heat, depending on whether or not you overcrowded the pan.  When they look yummy and softened, add your garlic ginger mash and toss it into the green beans vigorously.  Don't let the garlic burn.

8.  Once you can really smell the garlic and ginger, add a couple of glugs of soy sauce and a teaspoon of sugar.  Add a little mirin or cooking wine if you have it -- I didn't have any, so my beans didn't get any. 

9.  Anoint with a smidge of sesame oil and toss the green beans one more time.  Remove from heat.

10.  Serve with fresh jasmine rice and a little protein.  I've got baked chicken with garlic chili fish sauce lime juice dipping sauce.

11.  This meal is best served with a helping of bad TV, like Rock Star: INXS, where unshowered scruffians sell their souls to Mark Burnett for a chance to fill the sexy shoes of a self-asphyxiator.  Poor Michael Hutchence is rolling in his grave, bless...

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When I was in college, I tried to cook with my roommates.  I was a bit of a control freak at the stove, so I told my dear Brazilian friend to take care of the rice while I manned the stir-fry.  I gasped in shock as I watched her sprinkle a generous amount of SALT into the rice cooker in slow motion.  Salt?!!  In RICE?!!?!  I'd never IMAGINED such HORRORS.  Jasmine rice is a perfect canvas upon which to paint your masterful dishes.  It tastes clean, it smells incredible, and salting it ruins the balance of the meal -- for Asian food, at least.  So if you come over to my house, you'll keep the salt away from the rice cooker if you know what's good for you.

Pork used to taste different, didn't it?  When my dad made pork chops, he'd fry them up with a little fish sauce and pepper -- no brine, just fat and the pungent salt of fish sauce, the savory richness of the bone marrow, and meat that pulled apart easily, loosely held together in the corners along the bone by the gossamer webs of fat between the grain. 

These days, when I try to fry up a pork chop that way, I get tight white meat, dense and difficult to cut through, and dry as a bone.  I can appreciate the juiciness of brined chops, but that ham-like quality is not what I remember, what I crave, when I think of a good pork chop. 

But this Saturday, I spent some cash at the Violet Hill Farms stand at the Greenmarket.  I'd been ecstatically surprised by the savory oomph of their ground pork in the past, despite the fact that it was always frozen when I bought it.  Was I crazy?  I mean, it's just ground pork.  But I sent my friend Winnie there and she had the same reaction.  I've enjoyed their meaty, rich and smoky bacon many mornings, the crisp, thick chunks dipped in New York maple syrup.  I decided to give their chops a try, with high hopes.

Don't be scared of the vacuum pack, because this is what a chop should look like.  Not pale pink like the distant supermarket cousin, but gorgeous rosy-beige in the loin, 1 1/2 inches thick, with exposed rib marrow and a snowy 1 inch "fat cap", as Alice Waters calls it in the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook.  I followed her simple-cure recipe, which required some crushed bay leaf, a little allspice, salt and pepper, and I rubbed the beautiful chops before letting them sit covered overnight in the fridge.

The next day, I let them sit out for an hour to get them closer to room temperature.  I heated a little bit of olive oil my new All-Clad 4 qt. saute pan and gently laid those chops down in the smoking oil.  The fat cap melted down a bit and hugged the loin a little tighter.  5 minutes on each side without any movement disturbances gave the loin a rich goldenrod browning I haven't seen on a chop in a long time.  Then 5 minutes in a 350 degree oven to help the insides cook through.  When they were finished, I set them aside to rest.

I heated up some butter and tossed my pre-blanched white turnips, baby carrots, and peas (frozen, alas).  Let me tell you something, a pork chop like this is the KING of meats.  It was sticky-fatty, not watery, seasoned all the way through; crisp along the edges and tender through the grain; salty and savory set off by the sweetness of the buttered early summer veg.  In my mind, a chop like this can stand up proudly against any ritzy beer-fed, massaged beef filet.

If you've forgotten what pork should taste like (because, contrary to the marketing campaign, pork was never meant to be the Other White Meat), you MUST try these chops.  The Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook says these are best grilled, 7 minutes per side, but these pan-frieds were just right for me. 

Violet Hill Farms
Union Square Greenmarket
Saturdays
Southwest corner of the square, on the dog run side

About $10 for two chops

Lunch can be so savage in New York.  We have thirty minutes to an hour to run out and claw our way through the long lunch lines for pre-packaged sandwiches and styrofoam-bound steam table foods.  We barely have time to wolf everything down before clocking back in, much less to digest and savor our food.  I've always thought that life would be wonderful if I could just take two hours off in the middle of the day everyday to prepare something fresh and hot, eat on real plates with real silverware, finish with a cup of tea, and slowly ease my way back into work.

If you're like me, those five places within walking distance of the office get pretty monotonous pretty quickly.  And I refuse to support work cafeterias and pour my paycheck back into the company in return for heat lamp-warmed institutional wares.

Even if you've only got 15 minutes to eat lunch while working at your desk, you should eat something that makes you happy.  That sustenance is going to have to carry you through the rest of your work day.  And treating yourself doesn't have to mean taking two hours for the prix-fixe at Jean Georges.  For me, it means freshly cut fruits or crisp veggies, and foods that don't scream, "I died of radiation poisoning in the microwave."

I love the variety you get from upscale salad bars at places like City Bakery and my local work eatery, Deb's.  But I'm always the loser that piles on way too much potato salad and winds up paying more for my lunch than I've earned working through the morning.  Now that summer is here, it's time to start packing my own lunches with fresh veggies. 

My problem with making lunch is that:
A.) I don't want to wake up early for any reason, so it better be easy to prepare and pack the night before;
B.) It better still taste good after being refrigerated for 20 hours; and
C.) Even though it's easiest to bring leftovers from the night before, I don't want to eat the exact same meal I did the night before.

Here are some hassle-free Sunday night recipes for lots of midday nosh choices that will keep well in your work fridge but won't break the bank.

Oven-roasted Tomatoes

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Halve lengthwise and remove the stem end of 4 plum tomatoes.  Pour 1 tbsp. olive oil into the bottom of a baking dish.  Place tomato halves in the dish, cut side up.  Dribble one teaspoon of honey, 1 tbsp. olive oil and sprinkle 2 cloves of chopped garlic, plenty of salt and pepper over the tomatoes.  Bake for 25 minutes.

Cucumber salad

Halve two Persian cucumbers lengthwise.  Thinly slice the cucumbers on a diagonal.  Thinly slice 1/4 of a red onion.  Toss together with 2 tbsp. chopped fresh dill, 1 tbsp. good quality rice vinegar, 1 tsp. honey, salt and pepper.  Refrigerate before serving.

Chickpeas with olive mash

Drain and rinse one can of chickpeas.  Mash 6-7 good quality (not canned California) black olives with a mortar and pestle.  Toss 1/2 chickpeas and olive mash with 1 tbsp. chopped parsley and a squirt of fresh lemon.  Save the other half of the chickpeas for later use.

No mayo tuna salad

Drain one can of tuna.  Add 1 tbsp. chopped dill, 8 chopped capers, 1 tsp. olive oil, 1 tbsp. minced red onion.

* Here's a tip -- keep a bottle of olive oil, a bottle of vinegar, and some dijon mustard at work to make fresh vinaigrettes.  It's easy, and I'm sure there's room in that little kitchenette for a couple of bottles.  That way, you can just pick up triple washed greens, radishes, carrots, and maybe a piece of smoked chicken or smoked trout at the Greenmarket on your way to work and have delicious, envy-inducing salads for lunch.  I'm bringing my Laguiole knife to work, which I plan on using on everything from paring fruit to slicing up cheese.  I'm even bringing my pepper mill.  My little desk larder's starting to fill out nicely. 

This past Tuesday was the final Contender fight between Petah Manfredo, Jr. and Sergio Mora.  I can't go into the details because I'm still a little heartbroken that my beloved Petah lost.  I know Sergio was deserving.  I know little mijo can buy his loving mama a house now.

Anyway, I coulda been watching American Idol instead.  We need TiVo, dammit!  I just spent the last half hour downloading the Carrie Underwood Wins American Idol clip about fifty times, watching her sway in her diaphanous dress as the sparks shower down behind her.  I cry every time her little country voice breaks with emotion and the confetti starts to rain down.  It's right up there with Kelly Clarkson freaking out while singing, "Oh, I can't believe it's happening to meeeee."  I know it's not a perfect performance, so I just squint and mentally pitch-correct when she goes for the modulation.  Cut her a little slack.  She's choking back the tears.  She used to live on a FARM, people!  She had never left OKLAHOMA before! 

So what does this have to do with food?  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  But Doug's not home and I wanted to share that moment with SOMEONE. 

So, right, back to the food.  Here's the elegant and simple appetizer I served on Contender night:

Asparagus with white truffle oil, parmesan, and fried egg

Trim and peel asparagus bottoms (5-7 spears per person).  Steam til tender.  In the last minute of steaming, fry 1 egg per person in butter.  Plate asparagus.  Generously shave parmesan on asparagus.  Salt & pepper the asparagus.  Top with fried egg.  Dribble a little truffle oil over the whole thing.  Salt and pepper the fried egg.  Shut up and eat so I can listen to Carrie again.

*P.S.  Isn't this picture hot?  Doesn't it look like A-Fed is whispering sweet nothings into Carrie's ear? 

Last night was my cousin Lynda's last night in town, so my other cousin Sirion and I went over to her hotel room to hang.  We were flipping channels when we landed in the middle of Eat Drink Man Woman, one of my favorite movies and, of course, the inspiration for the title of this blog.  That movie speaks to me on a gazillion levels, but one of my favorite bits of dialogue happens during one of the Chu family's many nonchalant, elaborate home dinners.  The elder sister Jia-Jen complains about the next door neighbors' relentless karaoke-ing, to which younger sister Jia-Chien shrugs, "We communicate by eating.  They do it by singing."

My family is definitely of the communication by stomach school.  This visit had been especially food-filled, even by our gluttonous standards.  It seemed like all of the out-of-towner activities we had lined up were meal related.  We had hardly finished digesting one meal before we threw ourselves into the next.  When we weren't eating food, we were discussing our next meal.  Between the eight of us over eight days, we put back steak, several dozen oysters (raw and fried), sweetbreads, lamb's brain, anchovies, lobster, foie gras, chicken liver, many street vendor hot dogs, Brazilian skewered meats, lots of chocolates, whole fried fish, soft shell crabs, and much, much more. 

But the best meal, by far, was the one my aunt prepared at my house last Saturday.  It's a rare treat when this many members of my family are in the same town at the same time, so my aunt decided that she was up to the task of cooking for us all.  Doug's Swedish cousins were also in town, so we invited the three of them to join us, making it a feast for 11 -- ten omnivores and one pregnant vegetarian, Swedes and Thais and Americans in various intersecting circles.  This was our menu:

Stir-fried Chinese broccoli with garlic (vegetarian)
Tom Kha Gai -- Chicken coconut soup made with lemongrass and galangal from my aunt's garden
Tom Kha Het (vegetarian) -- Mushroom coconut soup, vegetarian variation of Tom Kha Gai
Broiled sirloin with my dad's special spicy garlic-serrano-lime dressing
Moo Kaprow -- Pork with Thai basil
Baked salmon with tomatoes and soy sauce
Som Tam style carrot salad
Shrimp with Satoh -- Satoh are sometimes called Chinese olives.  They're stinky before you eat them and apparently even stinkier when they exit.  (My aunt says think asparagus, but 10x worse)
Oyster mushrooms with ramps (vegetarian)

As usual, my aunt was worried that we wouldn't have enough food and made sure we had eggs handy in case she had to whip up an omelet filler.  And as usual, her fears were misplaced as we gorged til we collectively had to undo the top buttons on our pants.  We filled our plates from the buffet in the dining room and sat in a circle, balancing our plates in our laps in the living room.  My uncharacteristically sassy aunt kept cracking zingers -- when Doug said, "Wow, that's spicy," she said, "Wait til tomorrow!"

Doug's family fit right in.  They embraced our ragtag crew as much as we embraced them because we all spoke the language of family through our stomachs.  We traded respective foreign language phrases (Lee luak -- an important Thai term for the digestion/relaxation time after a gutbusting meal; "You look like a bag of ice skates" is a Swedish idiom for "You look like shit.")  We playfully fought over who would get to wash the dishes.  We understood each other.  We were full.

My Aunt's Moo Kraprow -- Pork with Thai Basil*

6-8 cloves of garlic
3-5 serrano or jalapeno chilies, sliced
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 lb. ground pork
1 bunch Thai basil (can be found in Thai markets.  If unavailable, substitute regular basil)
3 tbsp. oyster sauce
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 tsp. sugar

Roughly smash the garlic and chilies together with a mortar and pestle.  If you don't have a mortar and pestle, mince and smash them with your knife as best you can.  Heat a wok or deep frying pan over high heat.  When the pan is hot, add the oil and swirl around. Throw in your smashed garlic and chilies and stir.  Add ground pork and brown, stirring well.  Add oyster sauce, fish sauce, and sugar.  Adjust seasoning to taste.  Strip the basil leaves from their stems.  Fold the whole basil leaves into the pork.  Serve immediately with rice.  Serves two or three or six, depending on how many other dishes you've got.

*For my brother Danny and Miho -- wish you guys could have come out for this one!  We missed you.

After a very modest dinner of slices and root beer at Rosario's, we head over to Verlaine where I meet my maker.  Happy hour until 10 p.m.  The evening's hemlock?  The Lemongrass Mule:

Lemongrass infused vodka

Vanilla

Muddled fresh ginger, lime, & lemon

Ginger ale

So delicious and dangerously drinkable.  Totes hungover.  Thank god I got a window seat on the local train this morning.  I slept all the way to work til my mouth hung open and dried out.

But good to know that with pacing and dinner in my belly, I can hit the sauce without upchuck.  Have I been deluding myself into teetotalitarianism for the last two years? 

I usually get tea with my morning bun from my Chinese baker boyfriend by the train station.  On particularly rough mornings, I get the acidic rocket fuel coffee instead.  Now he likes to guess what I'm going to have, so I know I look like crap when he asks me, as he did this morning, "Cafe?"

Confession time -- roe foods kind of freak me out.  I never liked the tobiko or ikura, and bottarga I could probably live without.  I only recently had my first caviar which I adored, but I've only had caviar one other time since.  It's weird to me, the thousands of potential babies.  I know, I know, I eat chicken eggs.  And I'll chow foie gras and veal without batting an ethical eyelash.  Some spring I will get around to trying the shad roe.  And when I do, maybe I'll try this recipe from New York Magazine for Bacon-wrapped Shad Roe.  Anything wrapped in bacon has to be good.

What does it taste like?  Can anyone tell me?

I went to Prune recently with some friends, and one of my dining companions ordered the oatmeal with raisins and nuts.  I, the always mouthy skeptic, said, "Who goes out to brunch and orders the oatmeal?"  But when she switched plates for a bite of my eggs and merguez, I saw the light.  Plump, silky whole oat grains were bathed in warm milk, topped with brown sugar and sensually accentuated with bursting soaked raisins and toothsome nuts.  My companion had to wrest that plate back from my vice-like grip.

Old-fashioned, slow-cook oatmeal is completely different from its massacred quick-cook cousin.  It's like the difference between a nice steak and ground beef -- the whole grains have texture galore, so they feel less like baby food and more like barley pearls.  Both quick- and slow-cook oatmeal purportedly have cholesterol-fighting properties as well.  According the the Quaker Oats nutritionist, the oat fiber gels in your innards, trapping cholesterol-rich bile acids like fruit cocktail in an aspic.  That means one thing to me: more bacon, less guilt.

This past week I've been completely obsessed with oatmeal.  I've been buying it every morning in the basement cafeteria, but the quick-cook oats they use are not as satisfying as the whole grains.  Saturday night, my roommate and I decided to come up with something special to gussy up our morning porridge.  This is oatmeal at its sexiest (!) and most luxurious, and it will convert even the staunchest oatmeal agnostic.

Sexy Oatmeal with Caramelized Bananas and Toasted Hazelnuts

Preparation time: 30 minutes

2 cups old-fashioned slow cook oatmeal

4 cups water

1/4 tsp. salt

3 ripe bananas

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

Juice of 1/2 an orange

1/2 cup hazelnuts (or nut of your choice: macadamia, pecan, walnut, etc.)

Milk

Cinnamon

Bring water to a boil.  Add oats and salt and turn heat down to medium-low.  Cook 20-25 minutes (yes, 20-25 minutes, I don't care what the Quaker oats box says), stirring increasingly as the oatmeal thickens and the grains plump.

As oatmeal cooks, heat a dry small saute pan over medium heat.  Add hazelnuts and toast until fragrant and slightly golden, stirring or tossing in the pan constantly so they don't burn.  Set aside when done.

When the oatmeal is done, turn the heat down very low and cover to keep warm.  Slice the bananas in half, lengthwise.  Melt butter in a saute pan over medium heat.   Add the brown sugar and orange juice til sugar has melted and mixture begins to bubble.  Add sliced bananas.  Cook for one minute on one side, then flip slices and cook for one minute more on the other side.  Break slices into thirds or quarters with spatula.

Fold bananas and nuts into oatmeal or garnish oatmeal with bananas and nuts on top.  Dust lightly with cinnamon and serve with milk on the side.

Serves 2-4, depending on how much you like to eat in the morning

My mae grew up in the northeast region of Thailand, also known as the Isaan region.  It is home to the country's poorest population, without the cool mountain air of the north nor the white sand beaches of the south to lure tourist cash.  My mae's family grew up in a tiny red-dirt road village called Ban Ponesawang, where everyone has the same last name. She and her eight brothers and sisters worked knee deep in the waterlogged rice paddies as their cone hat topped cousins still do today.  When I went to visit in November 2003, those g-d roosters woke my ass up at the crack of dawn, so my mae and I slipped on our flip-flops and made our visiting rounds s-l-o-w-l-y.  (As I once told a friend, walking with my family is like being stuck in traffic.)  The smell of burnt plastic permeated the cool air (there's no trash pick-up in that neck of the woods), and though it was only 6:00 a.m., it seemed like everyone was awake and on their way to work in the fields.  My mom would point out her cousins, her cousins' children, my grandmother's sisters, middle-aged childhood friends, always stopping to open up her Costco-sized bottle of Advil, doling out the American over-the-counter remedies like a teacher distributing candy at school.

When we were kids, my uncle liked to say, "We were so poor, you know what I had to do when I was a kid?  I lick the meat and eat the sticky rice!"  But it wasn't all hunger and heartache.  My mom recounted fond memories of collecting the most tender bamboo shoots from the side of the road to bring home for spicy bamboo stew, or gathering fragrant wild herbs to add to soups.

When I was in Ban Ponesawang, I went shopping with my aunt at the open-air market, where locals buy all of their dinner ingredients on a daily basis.  We picked up huge river snails the size of golf balls, their nautilus shells woven together on a single clackety string.  We looked over a bloody beef stand where it looked as though the entire animal was on display, sans refrigeration, the slick organs and bright red flesh under constant prodding by some eager flies.  One old lady laid out her gatherings on dinner-plate sized, spade-shaped leaves -- the tender, tiny green bamboo shoots my mom always spoke of dreamily, which looked as promisingly different from their canned cousins as a dry-aged porterhouse would look to someone who'd only ever had beef jerky.  My aunt haggled with another woman, whose lime-tinted grains were displayed in palm leaf lined baskets.  "Khao mao," she said. 

"What's that?"

"Your mae's favorite.  It's young rice pounded until the bran slips off.  Taste it."

As my aunt purchased 1/2 kg for our dessert, I put some of the flattened green kernels in my mouth -- they were tender, sweet, and fragrant, and I couldn't wait to see how they'd cook up.

Despite the fact that the region is the poorest in the country, many people (myself included, naturally) consider Northeastern Thai cuisine the best Thailand has to offer.  Khao mao is the perfect example of the culinary ingenuity of the Isaan people.  Rice is the staple crop of the region, glutinous rice in particular (which, incidentally, is considered a lowbrow food in Thailand), so rice is utilized in imaginative ways.  Young green rice is pounded flat and cooked for dessert.  Translucent kernels of sticky rice help fill out the tart grilled pork sausages I love.  And larb, the classic tart-salty-spicy ground pork salad, swa, and plenty of other dishes would not be complete without a generous sprinkling of khao kua, ground toasted rice.

Ground toasted rice couldn't be easier -- take a couple of tablespoons of uncooked rice (preferably the sticky variety), toast in a dry pan over medium heat until they are a nice toasty brown, the color of almond skin.  Grind with a mortar and pestle. 

Rice as a seasoning?  You better believe it.  A tablespoon or two is an umami agent, adding a fragrant, toasty savoriness to soups and salads.  It's totally indispensable, and once you recognize its flavor, you'll never be able to live without it in your yams again. 

Try it in this Chez Pim recipe for shrimp fruit salad and beef salad.  Or in my recipe for swa.