Tonight’s dinner was at Lotus of Siam, away from the Strip. Julian made reservations before we left Washington. The restaurant was less noisy than those on the Strip. Service was excellent.
We had hot and sour catfish soup as the appetizer. This soup elevates the lowly bottom-feeder fish to legendary status. I’ve made several versions of this soup before.
Hot and sour catfish soup.
We got spicy jackfruit curry with pork and crispy duck khao soi with noodles for the main dishes. Both were very tasty. Even though we’re unlikely to return to Las Vegas, this restaurant was worth the trip.
Duck khao soi and garnish (top) and jackfruit curry with pork (left).
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/29/more-thai-food-in-vegas/
The first leg of our trip to the desert Southwest was at the Valley of Fire State Park, about an hour northeast of Las Vegas. The terrain is spectacular – a mix of red and white sandstone, sometimes layered. In addition, Valley of Fire contains several sites of petroglyphs, which are drawings by ancient residents of the valley.
Red and white sandstone rock, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
Petroglyphs on Atlatl Rock.
The petroglyphs are at the top of the stairway. How did they get up there?
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/29/valley-of-fire/
Las Vegas was not my first choice for a destination on this vacation. Nor was it my second, third, or twelfth choice. I’ve always had an aversion to places that only exist to separate people from their money. Many years ago we went to the Trump Taj Mahal with Julian’s aunt and uncle. It was an interesting sociological field study, nothing more. I’m approaching our two days in Las Vegas the same way.
Here are a few of the contradictions I’ve seen so far:
- The hotel encourages us to reuse our towels, yet they probably spend plenty of water on the fountains and plantings on the property. Las Vegas is in a desert.
- The dining situation is supposedly one of a kind, but the Strip is chockablock with chain restaurants that we could find in Seattle or Sheboygan. Chili’s? Check. P.F. Chang’s? Got it. Denny’s? No problem.
- Vegas is attempting to appeal to a more family-friendly demographic. So why is there an “adult intimacy package” in our minibar? Try explaining that to your ten-year-old.
- Last night we watched the fountain show in front of the Bellagio. The music selection was Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which is a variation on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts. Somehow I can’t see the stolid, thrifty Shakers roaming the Strip.
Luckily, tomorrow we head off to the Grand Canyon, where the natural world provides the glitz.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/29/the-many-contradictions-of-las-vegas/
Las Vegas has a plethora of restaurants associated with the casinos on the Strip. Many of them are branded by famous chefs: Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Emeril Lagasse, to name a few. Others are chains that you can find in Seattle or Chicago. Many of these restaurants are designed to separate you from more of your money. And the noise level in some of these restaurants borders on the painful. (See my earlier post, Turn It Down.)
After we picked up the rental car, we went in search of lunch before heading to Valley of Fire State Park. We wound up at a Salvadoran restaurant near an outlet mall, Las Pupusas. We got two pupusas and carne deshebrada. It wasn’t quite what we used to get at Gloria’s in Dallas, but tasty and much less expensive than restaurants on the Strip.
Salvadoran food in Las Vegas.
We were walking along the Strip tonight in search of dinner. On the Cosmopolitan billboard was an ad for an outpost of Pok Pok, our favorite Thai restaurant in Portland. It was in a food court with a limited menu. It had the famous chicken wings, papaya salad, and pad thai.
Pok Pok in Vegas
Tomorrow night we have reservation at Lotus of Siam, supposedly one of the best Thai restaurants in the country, Julian observed that we’re probably the only people who go to Vegas to eat Thai food.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/28/vacation-chow/
Cabin fever has descended on Casa Sammamish. I’d given Julian a weekend trip for Christmas. It has morphed into a week in Nevada and Arizona to see Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. What happens in Vegas will (mostly) wind up on the blog. Julian will bring his camera on this jaunt, so expect a few of his photos to appear.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/23/another-edible-thoughts-road-trip/
Tamarind is a common ingredient in Asian and Latin American cuisines. It’s also a main component of Worcestershire and A-1 sauces. It gives food a tart edge that’s not as volatile as vinegar. We used tamarind in two different recipes last week with vastly different results.
The first recipe was out of the New York Times. Julian adapted it in an attempt to reproduce a pork tamarindo recipe we used to order at a Cuban restaurant in Miami. He’s been trying to reproduce that recipe for years. Last week’s iteration was as close as he’s come. He had to add more chicken broth and tomato paste to the sauce to amp up the umami. He served it alongside rice and fried plantains.
My recipe was from The Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking, by Binh Duong and Marcia Kiesel. It was for a hot and sour fish soup. I’ve made iterations of this soup from other cookbooks with great success. This one, not so much. The recipe called for soaking 1/3 cup tamarind paste with 1/3 cup water, then straining the fluid. Other recipes use a much lower ratio of paste to water, which is what I should have done. The final result was almost black from the tamarind, and very astringent. I wonder if this was an error in editing. I should have trusted my gut and cut back the tamarind considerably.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/18/two-tamarind-recipes-two-results/
Despite the popularity of online recipe sites, publishers are still churning out cookbooks. Looking at cookbooks in a well-stocked bookstore or even on websites can be a daunting experience. I’ve developed a list of criteria to guide me in acquiring a new volume (or three):
- Am I likely to use it? Is this a cookbook that adds to my repertoire or knowledge base?
- Do the recipes look well-written and reality-based? Recipe testing and cookbook editing are lost arts.
- Do the number of recipes justify the cost? As an example: I searched amazon.com for cauliflower cookbooks for my post, The Cinderella Vegetable. One touted 25 recipes for $12.99. That comes to 52 cents per recipe. That flunked the value test. Twenty years ago I considered 10 cents per recipe a good value; however, one has to adjust for inflation. Nowadays if a cookbook costs more than 25 cents per recipe, the sidebars, photos, and how-to’s had better make up for the dearth of recipes.
A cookbook that fails the first two criteria are rejected outright. If the third criterion isn’t quite met, I just wait until the cookbook goes on the sale table.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/10/curating-the-collection/
Cauliflower is this year’s kale. It’s undergone a Cinderella-like transformation from the stinky vegetable your mother forced on you to the one everyone’s eating. It’s low carb! You can buy it chopped up so you can pretend it’s rice! (Save your money, use your food processor to chop the flowerets.) It’s even incorporated into frozen pizza crusts! You can even buy cauliflower cookbooks! I found a plethora of cauliflower cookbooks on Amazon.com.
Cauliflower and I have a checkered history. My doctoral project was on beta-carotene supplementation. My research subjects had to eat a fixed, low-carotenoid diet for ten weeks. No tomatoes, no broccoli, no greens. The only vegetable sufficiently low in carotenoids was cauliflower, so these poor guys were subjected to cauliflower every day for the duration of the study. Needless to say, the end of study party had every vegetable but cauliflower on the table.
As with many other vegetables, our preferred way to cook cauliflower is roasting. This post gives you basic instructions. You can either serve the cauliflower right out of the oven or in a salad the next day. This week I hit the leftovers with extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and seasoning for a lunch salad.
It probably won’t be long before midnight strikes and this Cinderella vegetable is replaced by some other Superfood. Maybe it’ll be okra’s turn to be the belle of the ball.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/09/the-cinderella-vegetable/
Seattle is one of the least religious cities in the country. This does not deter the faithful from trying to make converts. Yesterday on our coffee/tea run to downtown Seattle, we saw the following:
- The Christian Science reading room;
- The Scientology storefront around the corner;
- Two Jehovah’s Witnesses at a sandwich board;
- Black Hebrews farther down the block;
- And, for good measure, a group of Hare Krishnas.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/03/an-ecumenical-saturday/
Last year I posted on our restaurant pet peeves. Number one on the list was noise. I have some hearing loss, courtesy of too many fraternity parties back in the day. (I should have done a hearing aid inventory on my classmates at Reunion last year.) As a result, the cacophony of many restaurants drives me crazy.
Last night was a prime example. Julian, sweetie that he is, arranged a surprise birthday dinner for me with our friends at a nearby restaurant. Worst case scenario: It was Friday night and the joint was slammed with people. The lack of noise-deadening building materials and the presence of loud background music made it difficult for me to hear anyone, even those sitting next to me. What should have been a convivial evening with our closest friends was an uncomfortable experience. As we walked to the car after dinner, I remarked to Julian that my eardrums had finally stopped bleeding.
If one cannot enjoy the company of dining companions because of noise, the quality of the food doesn’t matter. My advice to restaurateurs who want my business: TURN THE *&^%$#@! VOLUME DOWN!!!
A postscript: I’m not alone. The Sunday Seattle Times had a feature article on restaurant noise and a sidebar of ten relatively quiet restaurants in the area. Needless to say, Friday night’s restaurant was not on the quiet list.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/02/turn-it-down/
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