Food, Wine and Travel ... With Recipes: TableConversation.com

A Slight Pause

TableConversation.com is going on vacation, or rather, to work, prospecting for new restaurants, wines and recipes. Keep posted until I post again, toward the end of May.

Microwaving by the Book

I tend to scorn microwave cookbooks. They seem practical and dull, oriented toward machines rather than food. The frequency with which they turn up in thrift shops indicates that others feel the same way.

Nevertheless, I bought a microwave cookbook recently. Of course this one is different, exotic and fun. I picked it up at Higginbothams in Chennai (Madras), a grand, high-ceilinged place that that is India's oldest book shop.

The book is “Cook and See. Part 5,” published by S. Meenakshi Ammal Publications in Chennai. The recipes cover north and south Indian dishes and continental food, a legacy of the British.  All are vegetarian.

Author Priya Ramkumar writes in her introduction: “This book is an attempt to prove that microwave ovens can dish out a variety of yummy recipes at the touch of a button.”

I have to admit that she is right, judging by her book at least, and my long-standing prejudice is wrong.

The recipes work, with minor changes that may reflect the difference between microwave ovens in India and the United States. And they are delicious, like this cream of tomato soup, which I have  adjusted slightly for American cooks. 

CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
From “Cook and See, Part V” by Priya Ramkumar

1 pound tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
1 potato (I used a small russet potato), peeled and quartered
1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1½  to 2 cups water
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons milk
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon white pepper
Heavy cream
Cilantro

Combine the tomatoes, onion, potato and carrot in a microwave proof deep bowl. Sprinkle with ½ cup water. Cover and microwave on high 8 to 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. (In my oven, this took 15 minutes).

Blend the mixture in a blender (or with a hand blender). Put through a sieve to remove seeds and peel.

Stir the cornstarch into the milk until smooth. Add this to the soup along with the sugar, salt and pepper. Add 1 cup water, or more if needed to thin the soup. Cover and microwave on high 3 to 4 minutes (8 minutes in my oven) until heated through.

Stir well. Ladle into heated bowls and garnish with a swirl of cream and cilantro.

Variations:  Season with ½ to 1 teaspoon garam masala. Add canned sweet corn. Garnish with croutons.

Makes 4 servings.

The Wine and Food of Puglia

The red wine that I am drinking tastes like a bowlful of gorgeous fruit—raspberries, cherries, jewel-like pomegranate seeds.

It is Cacc’e Mmitte di Lucera DOC (Albert Longo) 2005 from the region of Puglia (Apulia in English) in Italy. But it tastes like a sunny summer day in California.

The reason I am tasting this wine is that a trade mission from the province of Foggia in the northern part of Puglia has come to Los Angeles to show off the region, its wine and food.

Puglia’s most important product is olive oil. Green gold, they call it. And this wine is red gold.

It is made from Uva de Troia grapes combined with other grapes such as Sangiovese, Malvasia and Trebbiano.

We drink it with appetizers—deep fried artichoke hearts, marinated mozzarella, tiny meatballs and sandwich-like canapés filled with eggplant and ricotta.

And we drink it with lunch, along with  a golden white wine, Le Fossette, made from the  Falanghina grape, which dates back a couple of thousand years.

A bottle of  Sciroppo extra virgin olive oil, produced in Foggia, is also on the table, and we pour green-gold pools of it onto plates for dipping bread.

Lunch, at Valentino in Santa Monica, is composed of Puglia specialties. A baby octopus and clam soup reflects the region’s involvement with the sea. Located in what is the heel of Italy’s boot, it has the longest coastline of any mainland region and faces two seas, the Ionian and Adriatic.

Durum wheat and tomatoes are important products in Puglia, and these are combined in the next course, orecchiette pasta with ricotta cheese and fresh tomato sauce.

Then come the main dishes-- red mullet topped with organic spinach that has so much body it seems more like chard and beef roulades filled with a creamy puree of broccoli rabe, a vegetable that is cultivated in Puglia.

Dessert is a Puglia style doughnut that looks like a small, round, puffy churro, flanked by pistachio and chocolate gelati, berries, cookies and a tiny golden circle of passion fruit sauce.

Puglia cuisine is a rich blend of historic influences—Greek, Roman, Macedonian, Turkish and more. The region is proud of its artisanal foods, prepared by small family operations in accordance with generations of gastronomic tradition, and we look at displays of olives, roasted tomatoes, vegetable preserves and pasta.

But olive oil is the star, because Puglia is the largest producer not only in Italy, where it outdoes Tuscany, but in the entire Mediterranean basin—possibly even the world, as its enthusiastic representatives let us know.

(Thanks to photographer Johanna Erin Jacobson for brightening my food photos, which were taken in a very dark setting at Valentino.)

Chow Down at Chai Toong

The eye-popping red and yellow sign outside announces that Chai Toong  serves E-San (northeastern Thai) food. The regular menu shows little of that but sounds pretty much like what you get at Yai, a long-established Thai restaurant in Hollywood. 

This isn’t a coincidence. Yai’s head chef left to take over Chai Toong, which is on Vermont Avenue just north of Los Angeles City College. What they still share is location:  Yai has a second branch farther north on the same street.

Chai Toong now serves Yai‘s lard na (meat and Chinese broccoli over rice noodles), which Thais say is one of the best in town, its crispy catfish salad and produces a better version of roast pork and Chinese broccoli than I had at Yai on Hollywood Boulevard.

The combination of fatty pork belly cubes and crisp vegetable was unpleasantly greasy there. At Chai Toong it is crisp, dry and almost fat-free.

Not everything is the same.  One friend got up and left when a dish that he dotes on at Yai wasn’t on the menu.  I’m sure he’ll be back once he hears that Chai Toong puts out excellent food.

Just one example:  crisp, fried fish, pla lui saun, handled in an innovative way that made a Thai chef friend sit up and take notice. After the backbone is removed, the fish is turned inside out, fried and covered with sliced lemon grass, red onion and spicy sauce.

The sweetened red curry sauce for deep-fried catfish slices is based on curry paste made at the restaurant, not taken from a can.

The eggplant salad is the best I’ve had—smoky, fire-roasted eggplant covered with ground pork and decorated with shrimp.

A wall menu in Thai offers jungle curry,  a standard but very good version of papaya salad and delicious, glistening dark pork ribs that are sour and slightly fermented. 

Or you can stick to popular standards such as pad Thai, red curry, chicken-coconut soup and beef salad. Or try a $4.95 lunch combination.

The restaurant name is spelled two ways—Chai Thung and Chai Toong, the latter closer to the Thai spelling.  Oddly, it opens into Betsy’s Filipino bakery next door so that the aroma of freshly baked bread occasionally adds a new note to the intricate seasonings that make Thai food so compelling.

Chai Toong Thai restaurant, 1001 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 667-3432. Open daily 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch special 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Yum, Yummy Panang Curry

It’s not nice to miss out on something really good.  But that was the plight of hundreds (was it thousands?) of people who attended the Thai New Year Festival in Hollywood.

What they missed was a taste of Chef Jet Tila’s silky, sumptuous chicken panang curry. Tila prepared a massive amount in a giant pan, but it still wasn’t enough to provide samples for more than a handful of those who watched his cooking demonstration.

Tila’s panang combines the key elements (sweet, salty, sour and spicy) involved in the taste sensation that Thais call yum and we call yummy, plus the  fresh herbal flavors of kaffir lime leaves and Thai basil.

Luckily, there is still a way to taste Tila’s panang, and that is to make it yourself, with his recipe. It’s an easy dish, once you’ve accumulated the ingredients. Shop for them at Asian or Thai markets (I found everything at the Bangkok Market, 4757 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029).

The photo shows the panang dished up at the festival. Instead of chicken, you can make it with shrimp or tofu, Tila says. The outcome will be the same—yummy.

JET TILA'S PANANG CHICKEN CURRY

2 (13.5-ounce) cans coconut milk
4 whole kaffir lime leaves
2 to 3 tablespoons panang curry paste (depending upon how spicy you like it)
1½ teaspoons tamarind paste
1 teaspoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
1 pound boneless chicken breast, thinly sliced
¾ pound kabocha squash, cut into 1-inch pieces (the squash does not have to be peeled)
½ cup sliced bamboo shoots
¼ cup thinly sliced onion
¼ cup Thai basil, including stems
Sliced red bell pepper for garnish

Open one of the cans of coconut milk without shaking. Spoon out 1 1/2 tablespoons of the thick milk at the top and set aside. Measure enough additional milk  from the cans to make 3 cups. Reserve the remaining milk.

Stack the lime leaves and roll them up tightly, then cut the roll crosswise into very fine shreds. Set aside.

Heat the  1 1/2 tablespoons thick coconut milk in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Stir in the curry paste and shredded lime leaves. Cook and stir for 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until the paste starts to brown.

Stir in the remaining measured coconut milk and bring to a boil. Boil gently, uncovered, until slightly reduced and thickened, 8 to 10 minutes.

Reduce the heat and stir in the tamarind paste, fish sauce and sugar. Add the chicken, kabocha squash, bamboo shoots and onion. Tear the basil into the pan.

Simmer, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and the squash is slightly tender, about 15 minutes.  The sauce should be thick but still fuid. If it has thickened too much, thin with some of the reserved coconut milk.

To serve, garnish with sliced bell pepper and accompany with steamed jasmine rice.

Makes 4 servings.

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