Quick, simple, and delicious, mango sticky rice (khao niew ma muang) is one of the finest desserts not only in Thailand, but the world over. It is as simple as cooking rice, whipping up a quick sauce of sugar and coconut cream, and topping it …
Panang curry is my go-to whenever we order Thai food. It is spicy, rich, and slightly sweet, which really does it for me. For me, panang cannot be beat. But for years whenever I tried to make panang (or any other) Thai curry at home, which we often do, I was disappointed in the results. It was just never as flavorful as what I got from the restaurant. It took many rounds of pretty-good-but-not-great curry until I finally figured out the missing pieces. With a few simple additions, you can take your homemade Thai curry up to restaurant quality. But before we get into that secret flourish, let’s focus in a bit on panang curry. Continue reading Thai Panang Fish Curry
Thai beef salad is, in many ways, a perfect appetizer. It has thin slices of grilled beef resting on a bed of tomatoes, cucumbers, and fresh herbs, all rounded out with a spicy, tangy, salty, sweet, and explosively flavorful dressing. Padded out with a bit …
When you think of horchata, you probably think of a cold glass of sweetened rice milk spiced with cinnamon. This is the most prevalent variety in the US, available at many taquerias and Mexican restaurants. It is a delicious and refreshing drink, and perfect to …
Growing up, chicken nachos were my absolute favorite food. There was a Mexican restaurant about a fifteen minute walk from my house, and my friend and I would head over there after school to gorge on those glorious plates of chips, chicken, and cheese. The trick to their nachos, which puts them on a tier above every other nacho plate I’ve had, is the use of a queso sauce. Melted cheese is wonderful, but pouring queso over the chips first ensures that cheese reaches every part of that magnificent pile of chips, eliminating the dreaded under-topped nacho. Continue reading Stovetop Chicken Nachos
This recipe came to me after I fell into an obsession with arroz con leche. Arroz con leche is, essentially, Mexican rice pudding. There are some variants where it is made with sweetened condensed milk, but I prefer the simpler and less sweet version of …
This sauce might strike some of you as a bit strange. In fact, it will likely strike almost all of you as a bit strange. When I first discovered what was actually in it, even I, a lifelong consumer of this sauce, found it quite …
When we were planning our build, for whatever reason, we could not find any good information about ovens for vans or RVs. We found a few vanlife articles, but in every case, the person was installing a propane-fired oven that was explicitly intended only for outdoor use. The installations involved tons of work, tons of space, and still didn’t seem particularly safe to us. So we opted for a 3-burner propane cooktop, and I vowed to learn to bake on the stove. Continue reading How To Bake Without An Oven (plus a stovetop pizza recipe)
Poke (pronounced poh-kay) literally means to slice crosswise into pieces. Effectively, to cube. And its origins are every bit as humble as that name implies (at least compared to the profusion of variations now available). The first poke was eaten simply as a means of …
