morsels & sauces

I have posted about potato salad in the past.  I get it, I really do, this current moment you're having. Why, oh why, is she posting about potato salad?  Does potato salad deserve not one but two posts?   I am here to confirm that as we're now firmly ensconced in summer and summer barbecues and trips to the beach and picnics and backporch swing sitting, potato salad needs to be posted at least once a month. The first potato salad  was your basic potato salad, tweaked and gussied up to be satisfying for all palates--young, old, picky, and adventurous--for it strikes the right note of Americana backyard.  That one is a standard salad that promises to be a hit with just about everyone. But this more recent potato salad is more for your gourmand. For those who want something predictable (potato salad) with a surprising twist (roasted veggies) that strikes just the right balance. The simple change of roasting your potatoes before putt...

What a strange week this has already been.  On Monday night around 2 am, we felt a jolt to the whole house. Ever my father's daughter, I went downstairs in the dark to grab my iPad to figure out just how strong that short but solid temblor was. I checked earthquaketrack  and usgs . Neither showed our quake. I kept refreshing the webpages, but still nothing. First I convinced myself that it must have been a minor earthquake, like a 1.0 or 2.0 and the epicenter just so happened to be under our house. Then I convinced myself that I had dreamed it (hey, by then it was 3 am), but I was certain that the husband, who had fallen back to sleep, had felt it too. Confused, I fell back to sleep. At 7:30, I woke to find this in the backyard.   So I guess they aren't kidding when they say that earthquakes feel like a truck hitting your house.  Or a tree, in this case. Thankfully, no one was hurt (although a branch did go crashing through the neighbor's window, which co...

Part of the fun of summer is the pulling the grill into the middle of the patio and firing it up to make dinner. And, people, we're in full on summer now (even if the calendar says that's not official for another eight days), and I am finally feeling better after almost two and a half weeks of this cold.  So, I say, welcome summer, welcome.  To inaugurate the first official night of summer vacation, the husband and I grilled chicken, watched a Giants game, and then I shuffled off to bed to watch another two episodes of Orange is the New Black (I am trying to pace myself here with Season Three).  The chicken is a simple grilled one with a compound butter with tarragon. Reminiscent of a  healthier   Béarnaise sauce (which is butter with egg yolks, vinegar and herbs--usually tarragon and chervil), the butter makes a nice contrast to smoky chicken.   The chicken itself goes through two stages of cooking--20 minutes on the grill and 20 minutes i...

Adapted from Cookbook #49:  Thai Food   (2002) Recipe: Lon Pla Raa (Fermented Fish Relish) I am a little in awe of this cookbook.  David Thompson, an Australian chef and restaurateur, lived for several years in Bangkok, and his expertise in the food, city, and culture is abundantly clear in this tome.  There has been some bruhaha about Thompson, a foreigner, suggesting that he was reviving Thai cuisine; such a statement perhaps needs context.  He's certainly bringing it to Western kitchens, and well, Westerners for the most part like their ethnic cuisines digested by someone else--the French got Julia , the Moroccans got Claudia , the Mexicans got Diana .  Thompson is merely in a long line of chefs who are passionate about a cuisine that is not from their native homes.  And I cannot fault him for that. Instead, I will take advantage of it, and for a hefty 688 pages Thompson wants to ensure you learn a thing or two about the origins of th...