Peel 3 or 4 medium size potatoes and cut into bite size pieces and microwave until mostly done. Set aside.

Heat 2T vegetable oil and fry about 1T Penang curry paste (I used Mae Ploy brand) for a couple of minutes.

Add:
1 onion (cut in small chunks) and fry for a few minutes til soft.

Then add:
2 scallions thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic thinly sliced
1 inch of ginger finely sliced
1 red or yellow pepper cut into bite size
2 carrots thinly sliced
2 chicken breasts, skinless boneless and cut into bite size
Fry until chicken has changed color

Then add:
4 C chicken stock
4 C water
2T lemon juice
2T fish sauce
2T chunky peanut butter
2 kaffir lime leaves
the potatoes
2 tomatoes cut into bite size chunks

Bring to a boil and then add 1 can of coconut milk.

Simmer for about one hour and serve with cilantro on top.

Note: this was partly created to match a soup served in a local restaurant and also to remove the noodles from the arrangement.

Chicken pieces (I used boneless breasts and thighs)
2 T vegetable oil
1 T Cajun Spice Mix (see below)
¼ tsp cayenne
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp salt
1 recipe Sauce Piquante (see below)

Rub the chicken pieces with oil.
Blend the spice mix, cayenne, marjoram, sage and salt and rub all over the meat.
Barbecue for about ½ an hour @350F.

Place in a baking tray and cover with Piquante Sauce.
Bake in oven or bar-b-que for ½ hour or more at 350F.

Cajun Spice Mix

½ C paprika
¼ C black pepper
I ½ T or more cayenne
2 T garlic powder
2 T onion powder

Combine the spices thoroughly and store in a closed jar in a cool, dry place. Add more cayenne if you want a hotter mix. Use within a month.

SAUCE PIQUANTE

¼ C olive oil
I medium onion, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ green pepper, finely chopped
½ red pepper, finely chopped
1-2 hot fresh chilies, seeded and finely chopped
3 C chopped tomatoes or canned Italian style tomatoes, with juice
1 tsp dried thyme or 2 tsp fresh
1 tsp dried marjoram or 2 tsp fresh
2 bay leaves
2 T Cajun Spice Mix
1 T Worcestershire sauce
¼ tsp cayenne
1 T red wine vinegar
¼ tsp or more Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
1 tsp or more of salt
¼ tsp black pepper

Heat the oil in saucepan over medium heat and sauté the onion, garlic, and peppers, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and translucent.
Stir in the tomatoes and their juice along with the herbs and spices, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, salt and pepper and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally for about 10 -15 minutes or until slightly thickened. Taste for salt and pepper and add more Tabasco if you like it hotter.

From FOODS of the WORLD: Creole and Cajun Cooking

Heat 1T oil in large pan.

Add:
1 chopped yellow onion
3 diced celery stalks
Cook for 2 minutes.

Add:
2 cloves minced garlic
Cook for 1 minute.

Add:
3 roasted then seeded, cored and chopped Anaheim (or New Mexico) peppers
4 C thawed corn kernels
2 peeled and diced potatoes
5 C of chicken or vegetable stock
1 C cream
1.5 tsp salt
plenty of ground pepper
Cook for around 45 minutes on simmer.

Puree and serve.

Adapted from Southwest Flavours put out by the Santa Fe School of Cooking.. (note: if you go to the book they serve this together with the Black Bean Soup and call it Sunset. You pour the soups into the bowl at the same time so you have a two tone soup. Then you add a drizzle made of red pepper, hot sauce and oil. DO NOT MAKE THE DRIZZLE! It was an oily mess…looked nice but had little real taste. If I was going to do it again, I would still use roasted red peppers but would keep the oil down to a coupld or tablespoons at the very most instead of the full cup. The only other drawback of this generally not bad cookbook is the use of some proprietary mixtures which they sell…sin number one for any cookbook I would say.) Great soup though!!!

In a large pan, heat 2T oil.

Add:
1 chopped red onion
2 peeled and diced carrots
3 diced celery stalks
And cook for around 5 minutes.

Add:
4 slices bacon chopped up
4 cloves garlic minced
And cook for another 5 minutes.

Add:
1T roasted and ground coriander seeds
1T roasted and ground cumin seed
2 Cans of black beans, drained
8C of chicken and/or vegetable stock (I did 4 each)
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper flakes

Simmer for about an hour. Add some salt and plenty of ground pepper.
Puree and serve.

Adapted from Southwest Flavours. (Note: they added 1T of dried epazote (I didn’t have any on hand), used something called chipotle seasoning (which I’ve never heard of), and soaked their beans overnight (I do have a life). Also, pet peeve of mine, they turn carrots and celery into cup measurements which is just plain insane when vegetables come with their own units of measurement).

2 T olive oil
½ pound turkey sausage
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 cans kidney beans (we used mixed beans & navy beans)
1 14 oz.can undrained diced tomatoes
1 tsp (or more) Cajun or Creole seasoning

Fry onions, garlic and sausage in oil until brown. Mix in beans with their juices, tomatoes & seasoning. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 45minutes until thick and then add 3 cups of cooked rice.

From Bon Appetit, February 1996

Chocolate Sauce

Bring just to a boil:

¾ C heavy cream
1T honey
1 T brandy

Remove from heat and add 10 ounces of chocolate (semi or bitter sweet). Wait 30 seconds, then whisk until smooth. Cover and chill.

Beignets

Bring to a boil:

½ C dried apricots, chopped
3 T water
3T brandy
3 T sugar

Cover and steep for 30 minutes. Drain and reserve both apricots and syrup.

Bring to a boil:

½ C water
½ C whole milk
6 T butter, diced
½ tsp salt.

Remove from heat and add 1 cup of flour and stir until ball forms. Return to medium heat and cook until a film forms on the bottom,about 2 minutes. Remove from heat again and using electric mixer add 4 eggs, one at a time and then add apricots.

Bring 1 ½ inches of oil to 350 degrees and drop batter by teaspoonfuls into oil. Fry until golden brown, about 5 minutes.
Rewarm chocolate sauce by adding apricot syrup and heating over low. Either pour sauce over or use as a dip.

From Bon Appetit March 2008

2 ripe avocados, peeled, pitted & coarsely chopped
3 T red onion, chopped
Juice of 2 limes
2 T canola oil
¼ C chopped cilantro
kosher salt & ground pepper to taste
20 blue tortilla corn chips
Scallops

Combine avocados, onion, lime juice, oil, cilantro, salt & pepper in a food processor until smooth. Spread about 1 tablespoon puree on tortilla chip, top with a flash-fried scallop and top each scallop with the jalapeno pesto.

Jalapeno Pesto

1 ½ C cilantro
6 jalapenos, grilled, peeled & chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 T pine nuts
salt & pepper
½ C extra-virgin olive oil.
Process al but the oil and then add gradually until emulsified.

From Bobby Flay’s Grill It, PotterPublishing, 2008.

I take the title of Mary Eberstadt’s remarkable essay in Stanford University’s Policy Review.

An excerpt:

“Begin with a tour of Betty’s kitchen. Much of what she makes comes from jars and cans. Much of it is also heavy on substances that people of our time are told to minimize — dairy products, red meat, refined sugars and flours — because of compelling research about nutrition that occurred after Betty’s time. Betty’s freezer is filled with meat every four months by a visiting company that specializes in volume, and on most nights she thaws a piece of this and accompanies it with food from one or two jars. If there is anything “fresh” on the plate, it is likely a potato. Interestingly, and rudimentary to our contemporary eyes though it may be, Betty’s food is served with what for us would appear to be high ceremony, i.e., at a set table with family members present.

As it happens, there is little that Betty herself, who is adventurous by the standards of her day, will not eat; the going slogan she learned as a child is about cleaning your plate, and not doing so is still considered bad form. Aside from that notion though, which is a holdover to scarcer times, Betty is much like any other American home cook in 1958. She likes making some things and not others, even as she prefers eating some things to others — and there, in personal aesthetics, does the matter end for her. It’s not that Betty lacks opinions about food. It’s just that the ones she has are limited to what she does and does not personally like to make and eat.

Now imagine one possible counterpart to Betty today, her 30-year-old granddaughter Jennifer. Jennifer has almost no cans or jars in her cupboard. She has no children or husband or live-in boyfriend either, which is why her kitchen table on most nights features a laptop and goes unset. Yet interestingly enough, despite the lack of ceremony at the table, Jennifer pays far more attention to food, and feels far more strongly in her convictions about it, than anyone she knows from Betty’s time.

Wavering in and out of vegetarianism, Jennifer is adamantly opposed to eating red meat or endangered fish. She is also opposed to industrialized breeding, genetically enhanced fruits and vegetables, and to pesticides and other artificial agents. She tries to minimize her dairy intake, and cooks tofu as much as possible. She also buys “organic” in the belief that it is better both for her and for the animals raised in that way, even though the products are markedly more expensive than those from the local grocery store. Her diet is heavy in all the ways that Betty’s was light: with fresh vegetables and fruits in particular. Jennifer has nothing but ice in her freezer, soymilk and various other items her grandmother wouldn’t have recognized in the refrigerator, and on the counter stands a vegetable juicer she feels she “ought” to use more.

Most important of all, however, is the difference in moral attitude separating Betty and Jennifer on the matter of food. Jennifer feels that there is a right and wrong about these options that transcends her exercise of choice as a consumer. She does not exactly condemn those who believe otherwise, but she doesn’t understand why they do, either. And she certainly thinks the world would be a better place if more people evaluated their food choices as she does. She even proselytizes on occasion when she can.

In short, with regard to food, Jennifer falls within Immanuel Kant’s definition of the Categorical Imperative: She acts according to a set of maxims that she wills at the same time to be universal law.

Betty, on the other hand, would be baffled by the idea of dragooning such moral abstractions into the service of food. This is partly because, as a child of her time, she was impressed — as Jennifer is not — about what happens when food is scarce (Betty’s parents told her often about their memories of the Great Depression; and many of the older men of her time had vivid memories of deprivation in wartime). Even without such personal links to food scarcity, though, it makes no sense to Betty that people would feel as strongly as her granddaughter does about something as simple as deciding just what goes into one’s mouth. That is because Betty feels, as Jennifer obviously does not, that opinions about food are simply de gustibus, a matter of individual taste — and only that.

This clear difference in opinion leads to an intriguing juxtaposition. Just as Betty and Jennifer have radically different approaches to food, so do they to matters of sex. For Betty, the ground rules of her time — which she both participates in and substantially agrees with — are clear: Just about every exercise of sex outside marriage is subject to social (if not always private) opprobrium. Wavering in and out of established religion herself, Betty nevertheless clearly adheres to a traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. Thus, for example, Mr. Jones next door “ran off” with another woman, leaving his wife and children behind; Susie in the town nearby got pregnant and wasn’t allowed back in school; Uncle Bill is rumored to have contracted gonorrhea; and so on. None of these breaches of the going sexual ethic is considered by Betty to be a good thing, let alone a celebrated thing. They are not even considered to be neutral things. In fact, they are all considered by her to be wrong.

Most important of all, Betty feels that sex, unlike food, is not de gustibus. She believes to the contrary that there is a right and wrong about these choices that transcends any individual act. She further believes that the world would be a better place, and individual people better off, if others believed as she does. She even proselytizes such on occasion when given the chance.

In short, as Jennifer does with food, Betty in the matter of sex fulfills the requirements for Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Jennifer’s approach to sex is just about 180 degrees different. She too disapproves of the father next door who left his wife and children for a younger woman; she does not want to be cheated on herself, or to have those she cares about cheated on either. These ground-zero stipulations, aside, however, she is otherwise laissez-faire on just about every other aspect of nonmarital sex. She believes that living together before marriage is not only morally neutral, but actually better than not having such a “trial run.” Pregnant unwed Susie in the next town doesn’t elicit a thought one way or the other from her, and neither does Uncle Bill’s gonorrhea, which is of course a trivial medical matter between him and his doctor.

Jennifer, unlike Betty, thinks that falling in love creates its own demands and generally trumps other considerations — unless perhaps children are involved (and sometimes, on a case-by-case basis, then too). A consistent thinker in this respect, she also accepts the consequences of her libertarian convictions about sex. She is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, indifferent to ethical questions about stem cell research and other technological manipulations of nature (as she is not, ironically, when it comes to food), and agnostic on the question of whether any particular parental arrangements seem best for children. She has even been known to watch pornography with her boyfriend, at his coaxing, in part to show just how very laissez-faire she is.
Betty thinks food is a matter of taste, whereas sex is governed by universal moral law; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse.

Most important, once again, is the difference in moral attitude between the two women on this subject of sex. Betty feels that there is a right and wrong about sexual choices that transcends any individual act, and Jennifer — exceptions noted — does not. It’s not that Jennifer lacks for opinions about sex, any more than Betty does about food. It’s just that, for the most part, they are limited to what she personally does and doesn’t like.

Thus far, what the imaginary examples of Betty and Jennifer have established is this: Their personal moral relationships toward food and toward sex are just about perfectly reversed. Betty does care about nutrition and food, but it doesn’t occur to her to extend her opinions to a moral judgment — i.e., to believe that other people ought to do as she does in the matter of food, and that they are wrong if they don’t. In fact, she thinks such an extension would be wrong in a different way; it would be impolite, needlessly judgmental, simply not done. Jennifer, similarly, does care to some limited degree about what other people do about sex; but it seldom occurs to her to extend her opinions to a moral judgment. In fact, she thinks such an extension would be wrong in a different way — because it would be impolite, needlessly judgmental, simply not done.

On the other hand, Jennifer is genuinely certain that her opinions about food are not only nutritionally correct, but also, in some deep, meaningful sense, morally correct — i.e., she feels that others ought to do something like what she does. And Betty, on the other hand, feels exactly the same way about what she calls sexual morality.

As noted, this desire to extend their personal opinions in two different areas to an “ought” that they think should be somehow binding — binding, that is, to the idea that others should do the same — is the definition of the Kantian imperative. Once again, note: Betty’s Kantian imperative concerns sex not food, and Jennifer’s concerns food not sex. In just over 50 years, in other words — not for everyone, of course, but for a great many people, and for an especially large portion of sophisticated people — the moral poles of sex and food have been reversed. Betty thinks food is a matter of taste, whereas sex is governed by universal moral law of some kind; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse.

What has happened here? “

Link here to the full article.

Love these sorts of articles. Years ago a friend of mine wrote a short one that I never quite agreed with but still found an interesting idea. He interpreted the stainless steel and all around industrial look of the modern kitchen (this was written ten years ago), as evocative of the workplace. Our life had become so ergo-centric that we could not help but bring the same efficiency and devotion to labour into the kitchen.

Ran across this great and disturbing little article in Macleans.

McDonalds has an exemplary hygiene policy as befits an institution serving millions. An employee developed a skin condition which was exacerbated by washing. After she made this known, McDonalds supported her through 2 1/2 years of disability pay as she looked for a solution. Unfortunately, on the restaurant level, everyone is involved at some level with food so there was no position that could get around that requirement. Finally, she was let go.

With her lawyer, and by appealing to the Human Rights Commission, she was able to secure another 50,000 dollars on the grounds that her human rights had been violated. McDonalds was charged with not having done enough and that the hand washing condition could be defined as discriminatory.

As outrageous as the settlement is considering how much the chain already delivered, as pointed out in the article, this could lead to a lawsuit against McDonalds from a customer contracting food poisoning emanating from an employee who did not wash their hands, and they would probably have a case despite being placed in the position of not being able to legally enforce their original policy.

This image comes from EatingAsia which I have been reading for some time. Check it out as an example of a great blog in every way.