Paht Thai and Green Curry Over Rice

How much does a granite, 2 inch mortar and pestle weigh? Well, I had no clue when I purchased it online, but it turns out to be about 30 pounds. I bought it with the wild hope of making my own Thai and Indian curries, which I had seen my sister-in-law make dozens of times when I first moved to Philly. Curries are some of the most flavorful, fresh, and relatively inexpensive additions I can think of to kick up chicken, seafood, vegetables, or simply to toss with rice or noodles. Cheap, flavorful...that's my thing.

Running late, I lugged my new toy boulder from my office where I have packages delivered, through the Reading Terminal Market, and back to West Philly. At RTM, I picked up some more of that stuffed Brie that they do so well--this time Fig and Almond stuffed. I also got a Young Minolette cheese--tastes like a richer cheddar.

Back home, the power was on the fritz. Luckily the lights were still working and I started prepping the ingredients for the Green Curry. About half-way, however, the power went completely out and I had to chop green chiles by candle light. I got a new Forschner chef's knife--highly recommended--and I'm lucky I didn't lose a digit in the dim light. Ten minutes later the power was back. Overall, the prep took a fair amount of time (~30-45 minutes) dry frying coriander seeds, mincing 3 tablespoons of garlic, slicing and peeling lemongrass, de-stemming and chopping 1/2 cup of green chiles (yeah, that's some heat).

My first experience with the mortar and pestle was a strong first attempt and everything was mixing/mashing well, but still a little fibrous and not completely pasty. So, with the good recommendation of my sous chef Sarah-Jane, I dumped it all in the blender with a little water and finished the job. Word to the wise: don't open a jar of shrimp paste, stick your nose right over the jar and inhale. I know what you are thinking. "Jeff, why on earth would you do that?" I recognize your confusion and I have no explanation. Nor can I explain why I did it again after blending the green curry. Nasal passage burn.

Next I put a few teaspons of the curry into a saucepan with coconut milk, chicken broth, brown sugar and a tablespoon of fish sauce. I let that reduce while prepping the Paht Thai. This dish, the staple of most Thai meals, involves very high heat and quick action with a wok or deep pan. Garnish with cilantro (did I mention my love affair with cilantro in a previous post?) and roasted, chopped peanuts. The meal turned out great, with the exception that the noodles were a bit al dente and could have soaked a little longer.

I poured the green curry coconut sauce over jasmine rice--garnished with cilantro and lime--and voila! This was the winner by knock-out. A great balance of flavors and intensity.

Now, why didn't I just buy green curry paste instead of making my own? Could have done that...but what else am I going to do with the mortar and pestle? And now I can start tweaking the recipe to get my preferred level of heat.

The meal was cheap, of course. Here's the break down:

1/2 lb peeled and deveined shrimp: $7.00
1/4 lb thai rice stick noodles: $.50
1/2 C roasted peanuts: $1.00
1 C bean sprouts: $0.75
1 bunch Cilantro: $0.40
fish sauce: $0.20
shrimp paste: $0.15
coriander seed: negligible
cumin: negligible
green chiles: $0.85
lemon grass: $1.00
shallots: $0.55
garlic: $1.00
ginger: $0.79
limes: $1.00

SubTotal: $16.19*
Total per person: $8.10

*This is an inflated number because I had enough curry paste to use for 3-4 more meals. The Paht Thai cost for the night were ~$4.00 per person.

These two recipes come from Real Thai: The Best of Thailand's Regional Cooking by Nancie McDermott. I would also like to go through some of the recipes posted here.

Also, Bryan and I are so proud of ourselves. We want to share with everybody our most recent handiwork. Where once there was unused, vacant, boring wall space, we created a spice and liquor shelf.

They haven't fallen down yet...pray for us.

Now this is the part in Sprockets where we dance:

Accidentally vegan

Tonight's Sunday night dinner was something of a bean convention. Our dueling main dishes were a "Bevy of Beans" and ginger garlic green beans. Our third dish was a cranberry spinach salad, which was also quite good. It's hard to call any of the dishes our "main course" tonight; instead we had a group of three dishes, all using some similar ingredients, that produced our first B&H vegan meal.

Mmm. There's the ginger garlic green beans, topped with a bit of an Asian-inspiried sauce that included soy sauce, Asian sesame oil, rice vinegar and sesame seeds.

The "bevy of beans" dish (below) was a mix of fresh fava and green beans (from Iovine's at RTM) done up with chopped basil, garlic, lemon zest and finished with lemon juice. Quite a nice combination, and more in a Mediterranean style. I credit Jeff's creative direction in selecting two bean dishes that shared a few ingredients but yet took on entirely different flavors and textures.

Jeff also put together a cranberry spinach salad with toasted almonds and sesame seeds (picture below). For me, the salad was the winning dish of the night. I enjoyed the sweetness of the vinaigrette dressing, but Jeff felt it was a bit much.

Overall, it was another quality dinner, and we were vegan for the evening without even trying. Nice simple, cheap but fresh and wholesome ingredients tonight. We made enough that we'll each get another meal of leftovers out of it, which definitely helps keep our costs down, as you'll see in the breakdown below.

Let's see how it shakes out on the money side (money per person is amount spent for what we actually ate tonight):

Ginger Garlic Green Beans: $0.80 per person (seriously!)

Bevy of Beans: $0.98 per person (again, seriously)

Cranberry Spinach Salad: $1.18 per person

Total per person for this meal: $2.96

A new record for Broke and Hungry!

The triumphant return!

Hi everybody,

Sorry we haven't been able to keep up recently. It turns out that Jeff and I were both busy traveling (I miss you, too, Chicago), and Jeff was also busy getting hired while I was busy starting my second year of graduate school.

Anyway, now we're back. We actually didn't stop cooking in the past month, and you'll see a post from Jeff later that will cover a meal he made on his trip. For my part, I didn't have any major cooking endeavors in Chicago, but I did get a chance to get a feel for the Windy City and visit with some great friends. I'll blog about the meal Jeff and I just made in a separate post, but here I'll just offer you all a look at some of my favorite pictures from Chicago. Hope you enjoy, and if you want to check out more of my pictures, you can visit my gallery.