It is a new year, after all. While most people lean towards something new, I’m looking back while moving forward.
First, a note about where I’m going with my food blogging.
If you’re a long time reader, you’d know that I closed a very old blog last year. For two reasons.
I needed to rebrand.
But the more pressing reason is that I could no longer find the energy to clean up the database of the old blog and update the old recipes.
As a result, I deleted half of the more than 2000 recipes there and reproduced in the new blog only the ones that were “performing well” (meaning the ones that were still getting a decent amount of web traffic).
Then, a curious thing happened over the holidays. Not just a few readers emailed me directly asking for recipes that they could not find in my new blog. Tres leches cake, lasagna with meat sauce, chicken with white wine and a few other dishes, plus a lot of cocktail drinks. And I ended up sending them the recipes (yes, I have kept all the recipes in my hard drive) when I replied to their emails.
And I wondered if I had been too hasty in deleting all those old recipes. The truth is, I did not want to delete anything. I wanted to cook / make them all again and take new photos before republishing. But the process was taking too long, and the work involved often left me in a bad mood.
So, now, I’m rethinking. Not that I have any intention of reproducing ALL those old recipes. But, perhaps, some of them deserve to see the light of day again. And I began the process of rebooting.
In that context, I present to you a list of recipes and cooking tips, some of which are new while most have been rewritten and updated with better and more illustrative photos.
Recipes
Shrimp, mushroom and spinach soup. Subtly sweet, spicy and citrusy, the base of the soup is a combination of shallots, garlic, ginger and lemongrass. Tomatoes add a light tartness for balance.
Lotus root tempura. Thin slices of fresh lotus root are dipped in a light batter, deep fried, arranged on a plate and sprinkled with kizami nori, aonori and furikake.
Fried chicken fillets with sticky chili sauce. Ten minutes to prep and ten minutes to cook, the lovely sauce that coats the fried chicken fillets will make you reach out for a second (or even a third) helping.
Crispy stuffed lotus root (renkon hasami-age). A mixture of seasoned ground pork and vegetables is sandwiched between thin slices of fresh lotus root, dredged in starch and fried until golden and crisp.
Crispy tofu skin fingers with spicy honey lemon ginger sauce. Cakes of fresh tofu skin is cut into fingers and fried over low heat until golden and crisp. Make a no-cook sauce for dipping and you have a lovely snack or appetizer.
Thai chicken curry. You need shallots, lemongrass, galangal, ginger, cilantro, garlic and lime zest in addition to chilies and turmeric to make authentic Thai chicken curry. This is how we did it at a cooking class in Chiang Mai.
Non-recipes
Sichuan (Szechuan) pepper. Sichuan pepper is either red (Zanthoxylum simulans) or green (Zanthoxylum schinifolium), it is not hot, but it leaves a numbing and tingling sensation in the mouth.
Are century eggs preserved for 100 years? You’ll find them cut into wedges and served alongside cold meat and pickled jellyfish in Chinese restaurants. They’re called century eggs, a popular Chinese delicacy.
Anise (aniseed) and star anise are different spices. Anise / aniseed is Pimpinella anisum. Star anise is Illicium verum. Their flavor and aroma are similar to licorice. Can they be used interchangeably in cooking?
Are laurel and bay leaf the same? Yes. They are common names for Laurus nobilis, a plant that grows profusely in the Mediterranean region. The leaves are used in cooking for its herbal and slightly floral aroma.
Best way to remove catfish slime. Scrub with salt? Rinse in vinegar? Soak in food-grade calcium hydroxide? They all work but nothing works better than baking soda. Ten minutes is all it takes.
Fermented fish sauce: how it is made and used in cooking. We call it patis in the Philippines. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is nam pla in Thailand, nuoc mam in Vietnam, nam pa in Laos, tuk trey in Cambodia, ngan-pya-ye in Myanmar (Burma), and ketjap ikan in Indonesia.
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