Original, seasonal recipes by Susan S. Bradley
Tender, chewy flatbread wrapped around crunchy cabbage slaw, succulent prawn and mushroom filling, and spicy peanut sauce. Add a squeeze of lime and it doesn’t’ get much better than this. The only words coming from MauiJim’s lips between bites were WOW, WOW, WOW. And then finally, after eating three without coming up for air, “Are there MORE?”
There are a million and one recipes for Thai Peanut Sauce, and I’ve never tasted one that I didn’t like. That said, I worked diligently to get a good depth of flavor and an intriguing balance of flavors in my rendition of this popular sauce. It’s a fabulous sauce to have on hand and keeps for a week or more in the fridge.
Also called Beijing Pancakes, Mandarin Pancakes, or Moo Shu Pancakes, these tasty wrappers are not actually pancakes at all. At least not what we think of as pancakes in the United States. They’re not made with a pancake batter, but with a simple, unyeasted flour and water dough that is cut into golf ball-size pieces and then rolled as thinly as possible to form transparent disks.
You’re first bite of Vietnamese Crispy Crepes, served lettuce-wrap style with fresh mint, Thai basil, fresh or pickled vegetables, prawn and barbecued pork filling, and sweet-sour-spicy-hot Nuoc Cham sauce is going to push all your gustatory senses into overdrive. The aromas, the flavors, the textures. It is one amazing taste sensation, and you aren’t going to forget it anytime soon.
Korean soup (Jjambbong) is a spicy, red-hued, infinitely variable, magically comforting noodle soup. Jjambbong is one of the most popular Korean dishes. It’s great with prawns and other seafood, but also delicious with vegetables only. The soup broth is clean and bright and only moderately spicy as prepared here.
Many moons ago, as director of the Yankee Kitchen Cooking Schools, I had the opportunity to work with the inestimable Barbra Tropp of the China Moon Café in San Francisco. She came to Seattle to teach a series of classes for the school and the first thing she wanted when she arrived was a whirlwind shopping tour of Chinatown.
You know the flavor contrast you get when you bite into a perfect caramel apple—first rich, creamy, sweet caramel, and then bracingly tart, juicy apple? Add half a dozen spices and that’s what this caramel sauce tastes like. At first, you think, “Oh yeah, luxuriously rich, wonderfully spiced caramel,” and then POW, the acidity of the reduced apple cider kicks in and your mouth goes, “Hey, whoa, what’s happening here?” I love this double-punch effect.
If mayonnaise has a season, it is definitely summer. I use more mayonnaise in summer than in the other three seasons combined. Where would pasta and potato salads be without mayonnaise? Or a grilled hamburger? Or grilled vegetables?
I can’t imagine these and a host of other dishes without mayonnaise or one of its endless variations. Imagine summer without garlicky Aioli and dill pickle-laden Tartar Sauce. Not possible. And where would our Northwest seafood soups be without the requisite swirl of roasted red bell pepper and garlic mayonnaise, otherwise known as Rouille?
True confession: Until two weeks ago, I had never heard of an arepa. And I certainly couldn’t pronounce it. Now this is weird, because entire shelves of my cookbook library are dedicated to the cuisines of Mexico, South America, the Caribbean, Cuba, and the American Southwest. (This girl can make a mean tortilla and even meaner tamale–yes, she can.) You would think that somewhere in all that reading and cooking, I would have encountered the crusty little Venezuelan or Columbian cornmeal cake called an arepa. But no, didn’t happen.
I know it is officially spring, but the weather is still stubbornly variable–bone-chilling rainy days alternating with spirit-lifting balmy days two to one. Thus, until the local field rhubarb and early strawberries arrive at the Portland Farmers Market, I will continue to rely on winter ingredients and hearty, comforting dishes.
This post began as a response to repeated requests from a tenacious reader for The Best Ever Butterscotch Pudding (her words). She was impressed with Ultimate Vanilla Pudding (Perfect Stovetop Custard) and Ultimate Chocolate Pudding and wanted the same perfect results with a butterscotch flavor. She had tried a few recipes on the web but was disappointed in the results.
I know, I know! Molten Chocolate Cake, or Lava Cake, as it is sometimes called, is so YESTERDAY. I am almost perturbed today when I see one on a dessert menu.
I mean, really, can’t the pastry chef think of SOMETHING ELSE? Haven’t we moved beyond warm, fragrant, oozing, fudgy chocolate soufflé cakes and their requisite ice cream accompaniments?
It’s All Chocolate! All Month! in the LunaCafe OtherWorldly Kitchen. As usual during the Month of Love, I am covered in chocolate: milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, white chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder. All in an effort to come up with the most delectable, memorable Valentine’s Day dessert ever.
Mostarda has been showing up with some frequency on restaurant menus of late and after tasting it for the first time with a succulent grilled pork chop at Nel Centro a couple of years ago, I was smitten. It was LOVE at first bite.
Imagine fresh or dried fruit glazed in a sweet, spicy syrup with a subtle or not so subtle mustard kick. As good as that pork chop was, I could have eaten an entire plate of the mostarda.
Over the years, I have eaten this much-lauded soup in every restaurant and café I could find it. I love the concept—toasted chiles, tomatoes, garlic, corn tortillas, and cumin soup base with fried tortillas, avocado, and sour cream embellishments—but not always the execution. Restaurant renditions vary considerably, as do recipes in American Southwest and Mexican cookbooks.
With New Year’s parties coming up, it’s time to corral all your favorite appetizer recipes and decide which ones will make the cut this year. If you’re planning a standing-room-only cocktail party, tasty tidbits that can be finished off in one or two bites are de riqueur. Since there are only 1-2 bites to each tidbit, those bites must SING. Which means big, bold, memorable flavors that keep all of your senses awake and wanting more.
A “tian” refers to a large number of French layered vegetable dishes, some of which include rice and a binder of some sort (as typified by Julia Child’s Tian de Courgettes au Riz, featured in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2).
I enjoy both styles but admit a particular fondness for the rich creaminess of the latter. It’s simple home cooking at its delicious best, and it lends itself to endless seasonal variation.
We explored the umami (oo-MA-mee) phenomenon in the previous post, Umami: The Fifth Taste. Now it’s time to make a little umami magic of our own. But, as I mentioned in the earlier post, an umami paste with the predominant taste of anchovies (Taste #5 Umami Paste) is not as useful as it might otherwise be. You can always add a squeeze of anchovy paste if the need arises.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the discovery of the fifth taste, umami (oo-MA-mee), also described as savory, meaty, or deliciousness. The elusive taste is created on the tongue when carboxylate anion of glutamic acid, a naturally occurring amino acid common in meat, cheese, stock, and other protein-rich foods, is detected.
Have you ever had a dish haunt you for years and years? Or perhaps one particular component of a dish? Have you tried repeatedly to reproduce that dish and failed miserably every time? Have you feigned innocence with one after another server to see if you could wheedle out the EXACT instructions for making that elusive something? “This is delicious. What type of bread is it?” “Really? But it’s SO crisp. How long does it bake?” “Parmesan too, eh?”
To my palate, this is the perfect Panna Cotta. It is lightly set and lightly sweetened with a good balance between fat and lean dairy ingredients.
To develop this master recipe for panna cotta, I created a recipe grid that compares key ingredients across examples from 20+ respected cooks. As you might imagine, the key proportion of gelatin to total amount of liquid is all over the place in these examples. You should not be overtly aware that there is gelatin in this dessert when you are eating it. That aspect should be quite subtle.
This article includes tips & tricks for creating the most wonderul Panna Cotta imaginable, plus six inspired variations.
When I happened upon the inspiration for this cake (Gourmet Traveler Magazine, Yoghurt & Almond Cake with Orange-Caramel Peaches & Vanilla Yoghurt), I puzzled over the ingredient proportions and procedure. Was there enough fat to produce a moist cake? Was there enough flour to produce a cake that could carry its own weight? Was the egg proportion too high?
There are few dishes in the world more deeply satisfying than a perfectly made Potato Gratin. And by perfectly made, I mean the potatoes are cooked just until tender (not falling apart), are enveloped in a creamy (not curdled) sauce, and are well-seasoned, (not bland). Of course, it goes without saying that you should use a copious quantity of cheese and it should be excellent quality and aged to boot. In a dish this simple, each ingredient counts.
I was flipping through my well-worn copy of The Great Book of Chocolate by David Lebovitz, flagging the pages of interest, when I saw a recipe for something called a Congo Bar and realized that I didn’t know what a Congo Bar was.
Then, as I read through the recipe, it started to coalesce in my head as a Blondie loaded with chocolate chips and chopped nuts. And as good as I’m sure David’s recipe is (which came to him courtesy of the Goddess of Baked Goodness, Flo Braker), I couldn’t help remembering that I created the Best Blondie in the Universe last year around this time and even suggested loading it with chocolate chips, chopped nuts, coconut, chopped peanut butter cups and anything else you can think of. For the post, I made a Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce and dolloped that throughout the batter. So was that creation actually a Congo Bar?
Croque Monsieur is the ultimate ham and cheese sandwich. It’s just the kind of indulgent, comfort food you start yearning for when spring is on hiatus somewhere else and you suspect summer may never come.
And yet, for all it’s decadence, it’s a simple sandwich really—bread, ham, cheese, and the kicker—a creamy, dreamy Gruyere cheese sauce. How could it get any better?
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