Flying to SFO

This blog is always a bit delayed. We're actually already in Maui and have been in San Francisco for the last week - and yet I am still writing about things that happened last month in Bangkok! Anyhow, our flight over on EVA Airways, a Taiwanese airline, was smooth.

Our airplane in San Francisco after our arrival. Temperatures were cold and breezy, as only a San Francisco summer can be!

Flight over - "Elite" class, which is EVA's premium economy cabin. Airfare is higher this summer than when I traveled over this past December. Nonetheless, I'm at an age (and height) where a little extra space makes the trip much more enjoyable.

While EVA's food is generally good, this flight's food was exceptional. Out of Bangkok, I had a Penang curry beef dinner with a duck pate over salad, fruit, and ice cream for dessert.

Closer look at the beef curry - instead of small pieces it was a petite steak. Very flavorful.

Strawberry ice cream, complete with little strawberry seeds. Of course, it arrived frozen so solid that I had to wait ten minutes to be able to make even the slightest dent in it!

Tawn on the air train to the car rental facility in SFO. Because we arrived in the early evening, there was no wait at immigration and customs. We breezed through immigration in less than three minutes and the bags started arriving within fifteen minutes of getting off the plane. In fact, we were in the rental car driving away from the airport within an hour of landing. Pretty impressive!

Cold Jasmine Rice in Hot Weather

Thailand's hot season, which felt hotter than normal this year but according to the weather service was not, is just winding up. One of the few positives to the hot season is that many restaurants serve a seasonal specialty known as khao chae (ข้าวแช่). Tawn and I joined a few friends to sample this delicacy.

We dined at Lai Rote, a old-timey restaurant located on Sukhumvit Soi 39 across from Samitivej Hospital. It is a traditional Central Thai restaurant and its name means "many flavors."

Making khao chae is a three-day process. The rice is parboiled, which leaves it with a "toothier" texture than is typical for jasmine rice. It is then soaked with jasmine petals in a container that has lit jasmine candles floating in it. The delicate floral flavor permeates the rice. Finally, the rice is served in ice water, a cool treat during hot season.

The side dishses are the real attraction, though. They vary depending on the house's specialties but what you see above is pretty typical. It includes (working clockwise) elaborately carved green mangoes, cucumbers, grachai (fingerroot), hua hom yat sai (fried stuffed red onion), prik yuan sod sai (young banana peppers stuffed with pork and wrapped in a crispy, eggy shroud), muu wan (sweet dried shredded beef), plaa wan (sweet dried shredded fish), pad hua chai po (thin strands of dried pickled radishes stir-fried with egg), and luk kapi pad (fried fermented shrimp paste balls).

Unlike most Thai food, the khao chae side dishes are quite bland and not spicy at all. It derives from so-called "palace cuisine," the types of elaborate food traditionally served in the Thai royal palace. In addition to the khao chae, we ordered some other dishes:

khao tang na tang - Fried rice cracker with a minced pork and peanut topping.

khanom pang na gung - little toasts with shrimp pate and sesame seeds served with plum sauce.

yam tua pluu - a spicy salad of wing beans and toasted shallots with a peanut and roasted chili dressing.

For dessert, I had a less-common dish called khao maow grob. It features grains known as meang lak (hydrated lemon basil seeds) served with syrup and crushed ice, topped with toasted rice grains coated with palm sugar.

Here's a close up of the palm sugar coated toasted rice grains. Just like very crunch Rice Krispies. One of the more interesting Thai desserts I've had.

The meal was a refreshing break from our hot weather. Thankfully, by the time I've gotten around to writing this, rainy season has started to arrive and the heat is breaking.

On the Ice in Bangkok

Near the end of school break (which runs from March to mid-May in Thailand), Tawn's cousin Pheung got it into her mind that I would be a good person to teach her son Mark to ice skate. I guess the logic was that since I come from a country that has snow and ice, I must be well-suited for such instruction. Of course, I come from sunny California, but that didn't stop me from agreeing to a skating date.

There are several ice rinks in Bangkok, the newest of which is a regulation size rink called Sub Zero at Central Plaza Rama 9. We showed up for the mid-afternoon session, which runs for two hours. While I've probably skated no more than a half-dozen times in my life, I knew enough to explain to Mark and Tawn that you need to keep your legs close together and your feet parallel to the floor. Sadly, that was the sum total of my ice skating knowledge.

Mark was pretty insistent on getting up without any help each time he fell. It took him a while to learn that you can't get up from your butt without turning over onto your knees first. Otherwise, your feet just keep sliding out from under you!

We had a fun few hours going in circles, although by the end my feet hurt. I guess if I do this only once every half-dozen years or so, that's okay.

Deep Fried Sous Vide Bacon Dinner

My friend Nat prepares the most fantastic dinners. A few weeks ago he bounced an idea off me: sous vide unsliced bacon and then deep fry it. Before I knew it, a date was set and a dozen guests invited.

The Preparation

Nat was at the market and they had a whole, uncut bacon - smoked pork belly. He bought it, certain that it would make an interesting sous vide main course. Sous vide cooking is a technique where the food is vacuum sealed in plastic bags which are then cooked in a water bath for long periods at a relatively low temperature.

Not certain how long would be ideal, he ran a test batch with three bags, pulling a bag out every 24 hours to check the texture. Seventy-two hours was perfect.

After pulling the bags from the water bath, they were plunged into an ice bath to halt the cooking. Once cooled, the slabs of bacon were removed from the bags and patted dry with towels.

The final step, to ensure a nice, crisp exterior, was to deep fry the pieces of bacon for a few minutes.

The end result, a soft, silk chunk of bacon with a crispy exterior. The day before dinner, Nat asked my suggestions for a sauce. I suggested a lychee sauce since it was lychee season and the astringency of lychee would cut through the richness of the bacon. What I received for my suggestion was the assignment to cook the sauce! 

Once I arrived, I started turning fresh, seeded lychees through a food mill in order to extract all the juice. This was cooked in a pot with chicken stock and chopped onions and allowed to cook for an hour before I seasoned and thickened the sauce.

A nice rocket and tomato salad was prepared to garnish the dish. Bitter greens in a vinaigrette would contrast with the rich bacon and sweet/tart lychee sauce.

One item was sitting on the counter, waiting to be turned into amuse bouche - appetizers. Do you recognize these?

Poaching on the stove is a dish of tiger prawn quenelles, made by taking a choux paste (same one you use for cream puffs) and mixing it with finely ground, raw prawn meat and seasonings.

The Dinner

As usual at Nat's house, dinner brought together a wide variety of guests, people with different backgrounds, occupations, and interests - all of whom share an appreciation for good food.

Charming salt and pepper shakers.

Amuse bouche: escargot in garlic crust. Very tasty!

Soup course: chilled leek and lemongrass soup. The lemongrass was very subtle, just sneaking up into your nose when each sip of soup was already swallowed.

The tiger prawn quenelles served with a prawn roe sauce and steamed asparagus. Very light texture with rich flavor.

Palate cleanser: mojito sherbet.

Main course: Deep fried sous vide bacon with lychee sauce served with a rocket salad with soy vinaigrette. Alas, the plate was a little cool and my sauce thickened a bit too much by the time I took this picture. Nonetheless, the meat was very tender and the sauce's flavors worked nicely with it. Of course, the serving could have been a third this size and we would have been fine!

Linda and I pose for a picture mid-dinner, only to discover a moment later that Cha had inserted himself into the shot!

For dessert, sticky toffee pudding with a toffee sauce and homemade yamazaki ice cream. Decadent!

Baking Pumpkin Bars for Eighty

Recently, a friend was cooking at a dinner for eighty people, one of these social events where everyone pitches in to help cover the costs of the food. Being from the panhandle of Florida, she was preparing a Cajun-inspired menu and asked if I would help with the dessert. While I was originally going to make sweet potato pie, plans morphed and we ended up with pumpkin bars, which turned out nicely nonetheless.

Sweet potato pie would have been much more authentic for a Cajun dessert but local sweet potatoes are very small and the larger imported sweet potatoes are ridiculously expensive. I opted instead for pumpkins, which are plentiful and much less expensive. Scaling up from a recipe that serves maybe 16 people, I wasn't sure just how much pumpkin I needed, so bought six.

After cutting them, steaming them, and peeling and mashing the flesh, I had a lot of pumpkin puree. In fact, it was about half again what I ended up needing. That's okay - you can freeze pumpkin puree.

Instead of a usual pie crust, I decided on a recipe that used shortbread. Shortbread is not only easier to make than pie crust, it also adds a different dimension to the texture - providing a crispier base versus a tender and flaky one.

Instead of pies, which would be more difficult to transport, I opted for four large aluminum trays that came with plastic covers. I spread the shortbread dough on the bottom and then baked it for about 15 minutes until it started firming up and tanning.

The filling was pumpkin puree, brown sugar, cream, egg yolks, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger powder, and cloves. I whipped egg whites in a separate bowl and folded them into the mixture, creating a lighter texture.

The filling baked in about thirty minutes. After cooling to room temperature, I put the four trays in my refrigerator and carried them to the event the next afternoon. A little chilling helps film up the pumpkin pie and makes it much easier to cut and serve.

The end product, shown from a smaller test batch I did two days before. This version didn't have the egg whites whipped separately, so the filling isn't as tall as in the final version. Still just as tasty, though!