Mar 29
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/
Mar 29
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:
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/
Mar 28
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/
Mar 23
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/
Mar 18
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/
Mar 10
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):
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/
Mar 09
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/
Mar 03
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:
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/03/an-ecumenical-saturday/
Mar 02
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/
Feb 24
Over the years I’ve gone on jags of cooking in particular cuisines, usually accompanied by cookbook purchases. Many of these jags have related to access to ingredients and restaurants in the area. Others have been fostered by acquaintances or travels. Three examples:
Asian. Chinese was the first foreign cuisine I wanted to explore. One of the first pieces of cookware I bought was a wok. Never mind that it was a round-bottom pan and thus highly unstable on the electric burners of my first apartments. I got interested in Southeast Asian cuisines when I was in grad school and had access to the right ingredients. Most recently, I’ve been on Korean and Filipino kicks. Julian bought some gochujang (Korean fermented chile paste) for one recipe, and we had to figure out ways to use up the rest of the package. Indian cuisine peeks in from time to time, especially when I’m in a more meatless frame of mind.
“Mediterranean/Middle Eastern”. This covers even more territory than Asian. I dated an Iran-born Armenian man many years ago, and my interest returned when I went to the Republic of Georgia with a friend from college. I also had access to good Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants in Dallas, Ithaca, and Greensboro. I like Provençal cooking because it’s lighter than other regional French cuisines. Our paella experiments have been courtesy of our friends at the Paris-Madrid Grocery (formerly the Spanish Table) in Seattle.
Caribbean. Blame this on Julian. We’d go to Cuban and Caribbean restaurants when we’d visit his parents in Miami. Our friend Beverly is from Jamaica and has made all sorts of goodies when we’ve visited her.
The answer to what my favorite cuisine is depends on what mood I’m in or what’s available to cook. So, yes, I’m a cuisine hopper. My taste buds never get bored this way.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/02/24/cuisine-hopping/
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