Haw mok and Thai cooking fun

Today as part of our dinner at home, I made haw mok, also known as Thai red curry custard with fish. I’d never heard of it until I saw a video that Pailin posted on her YouTube channel, Hot Thai Kitchen, but it sounded easy enough with ingredients I either already had or could easily source, so I decided to make it. It came out tasty and had a nice presentation, as it was steamed in a cake pan on top of banana leaves, which added additional fragrance to the curry custard.

While steaming the haw mok, I realized I had come a long way with my comfort with Thai cooking. I remember when I first moved to New York and how intimidated I was by Thai cooking in general. I lived in Elmhurst at the time and was surrounded by endless delicious and fiery Thai restaurants with lots of chilies and spices. I didn’t realize then how straightforward Thai cooking could be. Now, it seems like I’m always tinkering with some Thai recipe at least once a month. My comfort with Thai cooking and ingredients has grown to a point where we almost regularly eat something Thai or Thai inspired at home. And after Chris got me a bunch of Burmese ingredients, I’ve been learning more about Burmese cooking and techniques, as well. In the last week, I’ve been reading Burma Superstar’s cookbook, which has gotten me acquainted with different ingredients I’m not used to as well as ways of cooking that are most definitely a fusion of Chinese/Southeast Asian/Indian cuisines. This makes sense given Myanmar’s geographic location. Who knows – maybe I’ll get super comfortable with Burmese ingredients, and they’ll also be regularly on rotation at home, as well.

A friend I made recently who is also really into cooking said that people like me aren’t very common — people who not only are adventurous eaters, but also actively learn about different cultures’ food and cooking techniques. To be honest, I don’t even know what I would do with a lot of my spare time if I didn’t spend it reading and learning about this stuff. Food is an important part of our lives to live (duh, you have to eat), it’s a key part of our health and well being; it’s an integral part of our cultures and identity. What else would I do with all my time outside of family, travel, and work, if I didn’t spend it thinking about food?

Cooking mistakes happen in twos – the hot cross buns without crosses

Since as long as I have known Chris, he has talked about how much he loves hot cross buns at Easter. He’s not a religious person at all, but he did grow up in a Christian family and with Easter traditions. And one of those traditions that exists in both Australia and the U.K. is having hot cross buns on Good Friday. These are lightly spiced, lightly sweetened fluffy bread buns that are usually filled with raisins and dried currants. They always have their unmistakable white crosses on the top. I originally always thought they were like a frosting, but I subsequently learned after reading recipes for hot cross buns that they are actually a flour-water paste that are piped on just for the appearance of a cross. Once the buns are baked, they are then slathered with a light sugar/honey/citrus glaze so that the outside has a faint sweetness.

I researched a few recipes to attempt to make this, but I wasn’t quite sure which one to go with. Chris found a recipe that claimed to be “the best” in Gourmet Traveller. It combined the famous recipes of three different well known chefs, and so I figured it would be a good one to use. Unfortunately, the explanations weren’t very clear as to “why” things had to happen, so I ended up going astray. For one, it uses instant yeast; I only had dry active yeast at home. But I’ve successfully subbed in dry active yeast on many other bread recipes, and I figured this wouldn’t be any different. That is, until I noticed that while the dough was rising, it wasn’t rising as much as I had anticipated. And I started going down a Google/ChatGPT rabbit hole, trying to figure out what I did wrong. And then I found it: milk has enzymes that tend to prevent dry active yeast from fully allowing doughs to bloom, and so it’s best to either avoid using the two together, OR to scald the milk and allow it to cool to a lukewarm temperature. The scalding would deactivate those competing enzymes.

This recipe suggested warming the milk until “lukewarm.” Nowhere did it say to heat it until scalding or why. Other hot cross bun recipes discussed this, but this one did not. I was beyond pissed.

It wasn’t a complete failure, as the yeast did not get killed and was clearly active. The buns were rising, just not as much. So I proceeded with the recipe. The second mistake I made was thinning out the flour-water paste too much for the crosses; it needs to be really thick to hold not just its shape, but also the white look of the crosses through baking at a high temperature. My crosses after piping looked fine. But once I put them in the oven, I could see immediately that the crosses were thinning out… and they eventually faded so that you could barely see them at all!

When the buns came out, they looked like what my friend called “a cross between wanting to be a cookie or a scone.” Chris looked at them and said, “What happened to the crosses? Wow, you really are godless.” But then, we both ate one each tonight, and I happily yet reluctantly admitted that the flavor was still spot on, and while the bun wasn’t as fluffy as I had hoped it would be, it was still pretty fluffy and light. It even had crispy edges and bottoms.

“Good hot cross scones!” Chris declared.

This was even more frustrating that this happened tonight after my garlic chips debacle yesterday. Mistakes in the kitchen happen in twos…

Garlic chips go awry

About a month ago, I made garlic chips (and its delicious residual oil) for the second time ever, and without intending to sound arrogant, the chips and the oil came out perfectly. The first time I attempted this about three years ago, I burned a lot of my garlic chips and they tasted bitter; I had waited too long and let the garlic brown in the oil, at which point they will get overcooked and thus bitter. This time, I did a proportion of one bulb’s worth of garlic cloves to one-third cup of neutral oil. I heated the oil on medium heat until it got hot enough so that when a garlic piece was dropped in, it would lightly bubble. Then, I dropped all the garlic slices into the oil and let it fry for about 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally until the garlic pieces turned a faint golden color. I shut off the heat, strained the garlic chips with a fine sieve, drained the garlic oil into a mason jar. And voila, I had garlic chips and oil to add to a Thai soup called gaeng jued that I made! It was really the perfect topping and flavor accent to this soup.

Today, I figured I would double this, so I used two bulbs of garlic to two thirds cup oil. Not thinking straight and trying to save time on de-skinning the garlic cloves individually, I nuked them in the microwave for 30 seconds before adding them to the oil. And well, the extra moisture from the microwaving prevented them from ever crisping up. The rule of dropping things into hot oil and hoping they will get crispy is that you need to make sure whatever you are frying is as dry as possible. And well, I did the opposite since I was clearly not of sound mind at the time and just trying to multitask. So while the oil turned out delicious and fragrant, the garlic “chips” ended up being a huge mass of garlic mush, having absorbed too much of the oil and thus never crisping up at all.

I was really upset with myself. That took a lot of my time and energy, and I ended up with a result I was not happy with. In the end, I’ll likely throw the garlic from this mini disaster into a stir-fry, but it still upset me because I really hate it when I don’t get the result I want in the kitchen; this is when my perfectionist tendencies really come out… So I decided to try it again. And this time, I got distracted by having Kaia around, and the garlic chips got too brown and turned out bitter once again. I think the multitasking didn’t help, but I also think that scaling is just hard. As much as I’d want to double the recipe, maybe I just don’t know my stovetop well enough to scale this up, even if it’s only twice as much. I failed to get the oil temperature right — it was clearly too hot. So next time, I’m just going to stick with one bulb of garlic to one-third cup of oil, and make sure to do this when I do not have my toddler around to distract me. Hot oil needs 100 percent of my attention — sorry, Pookster.

The world of chicken soup

Every culture on earth likely has their version of the restorative, soothing, and homey chicken soup. In the U.S., it’s oftentimes made with a mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onion), lots of shredded chicken, and egg noodles; this is what you picture when you think of a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. A Jewish version may basically be this, but instead of egg noodles, it would have large, fat, airy, fluffy matzo balls (which I love and even craved while pregnant with Kaia). In China, chicken soup has endless variations, but the most basic ones just simply have some ginger or garlic added; the version made for postpartum confinement is made with rice wine, Chinese red dates, lots of ginger, and plenty of chicken and collagen from the bones. In Vietnam, pho ga is extremely popular, flavored with charred onions, ginger, and whole cilantro stems, spiced with delicate fennel seeds.

And then there is Thailand, where, when westerners think of Thai soup, they immediately think of tom yum goong, with its red tinged broth and big prawns. What’s actually more common in Thai home cooking, though, is the favored and beloved tom kha gai, or Thai chicken coconut galangal soup. I’ve been trying to make more soups this year, and this soup naturally seemed to fit on the list of things we’d like to enjoy at home. Other than having a strong chicken stock base and coconut, the soup primarily relies on fresh herb infusions, primarily thinly sliced galangal (of course, given the “kha” in the name), pounded lemongrass, bruised makrut lime leaves, and sliced chilies.

I had all of these items except for the galangal stored in my freezer. So I went down to Chinatown to look for galangal, knowing this would be harder to find. I popped into Hong Kong Supermarket, where very occasionally I had seen galangal before, but it was usually a rare item. When I couldn’t find it, I asked one of the workers in Chinese if they had galangal (in Chinese, it’s pronounced “gao liang jiang”). He responded, “Galangal? We’ve had it before. But I don’t think we have it today. Why don’t you use ginger instead?” and then pointed over to the massive ginger pieces on the shelf.

This guy was clearly Chinese and not southeast Asian at all. No Southeast Asian would ever, ever say that galangal could be replaced by ginger. It’s a totally different world of flavor!! I ended up going to a small Thai shop on Mosco Street to source my galangal instead. And that trek was worth it.

I made the tom kha gai soup today, which came together really quickly, and it was even more delicious than I had envisioned. It tasted soothing, comforting, creamy, and very fresh because of all those fresh herbs. This soup was like the embodiment of everything I love about Thai cooking. As I was sipping it and picking out pieces of woody galangal, I thought about how my Thai cooking journey started, and it was all because of Hot Thai Kitchen. When I first moved to New York and lived in Elmhurst, I was surrounded by endless authentic and delicious Thai restaurants. I marveled at all the different herbs and spices and thought it would be too complicated to make at home. And now 17 years later, with Hot Thai Kitchen’s guidance and expert explanations, I’m making Thai food semi regularly now, and it’s not daunting at all! It’s the evolution of my cooking knowledge and skills thanks to some amazing sources like Hot Thai Kitchen’s Pailin that make their cuisines so approachable and easy to understand.

King Arthur flour on sale at Whole Foods

Before my love of cooking was my love for baking. As a young child, I baked lots of breads, cakes, and cookies with my aunt in her warm upstairs kitchen. When we made bread, it was oftentimes “healthy” quick breads like zucchini bread or carrot bread. At some point during my childhood, my dad got a bread maker, and he’d occasionally make a rounded loaf and have it be part of our dinner. It was always a similar flavor and texture, and while I liked it, I always preferred homemade bread that was a bit more free form. When I got to my teen and college years, I started experimenting with commercial yeast and would make a number of different breads, ranging from sweet Portuguese bread, fougasse and focaccia, challah, brioche a tete, cinnamon rolls, and even sticky buns. I always felt very enthralled and stimulated during this process. There is something very magical that happens when you can see your yeast bloom, and then watch as your bread dough grows and rises and bubbles. It’s almost like your little yeast baby that you made from a bunch of flour, water, and yeast. It feels as though you are giving “life” to something.

Although my pandemic era fascination with sourdough starters was very short lived, as I didn’t have the patience to nurse a starter (and had even less patience to deal with the starter discard, as I didn’t want to throw food away, nor did I want to eat as many bread products as using up starter discard would warrant), I realized that for me, homemade bread would always require commercial yeast. I love the freshness and flavor of naturally leavened bread, but I’d have to leave that to the pros. After making my last two loaves of challah in the last couple weeks, I realized my all purpose flour supplies were dwindling, and they needed to be restocked. And then this week, Whole Foods had a King Arthur flour sale; I hadn’t bought King Arthur flour since the pandemic! They are known for having some of the highest quality, unbleached flour in the country, and for having consistent and higher protein levels, which produce greater gluten development, which results in higher quality bakes. I picked up their organic bread flour and organic all-purpose flour today — five pounds of each. As I walked home, I felt excited and alive knowing that more delicious bread and baked goods would come as a result of this ten-pound haul.

The “right” way to make stock/bone broth

If you do a quick search online for how to make chicken stock/broth/bone broth, you”ll see that there are endless tips and tricks, recipes, and recipes that claim to be the “best.” What very few of them will do is share that, well, there’s really no “best” bone broth recipe. Is it really necessary to add vinegar to your bone broth process to further “pull” out the nutrients from the bone marrow into your stock? Do you need to do a mirepoix (combination of chopped carrots, onions, and celery) to make the most flavorful stock base? Are onions a “must” in any chicken stock? The answer to all the above is “no,” and “it depends.” All global cultures have their version of bone broth/stock, and every version brings a different type of “delicious” to their culture’s food. When I was recently reading about the popular Thai soup tom kha gai or Thai chicken galangal coconut soup, Hot Thai Kitchen warned to absolutely NOT use chicken stock from a can/carton from your average Western grocery store because it would not have the right flavors for a Thai soup. Instead, she suggests making your own very simply with a few ingredients. A lot of people would be confused by what she means. What she’s saying is that the mirepoix mentioned above, which is usually considered key in ideal western chicken stocks, would not work here, nor would flavorings like oregano, thyme, rosemary, or the related that are oftentimes added to western stocks. Typical Asian-based stocks would be nothing more than the chicken itself, occasionally garlic and ginger, sometimes some onion, daikon, cilantro and scallion stems, and that’s it!

I made my Asian-based stock just like this today, with chicken bones, some chicken drumsticks, slices of ginger, a few smashed cloves of garlic, some frozen cilantro and scallion stems, daikon, onion, and peppercorns. And it turned out the way it always turns out: rich, golden, full of collagen, and fragrant. I’m planning to use it for tom kha gai, maybe some future tom yum goong, and likely a third Chinese or Thai soup. Stock is the basis of all good cooking, and in this house, we definitely lean Asian with our flavors.

Persian Adasi (lentil) stew

While still on my Persian cooking kick, I decided to also make some Persian style lentils, also known as adasi (lentils) stew. I soaked some brown lentils overnight, chopped up onions and garlic, and then simply used turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon to spice the lentils and simmered them for about 45 minutes. And when I seasoned and did a taste test, I just thought… wow. This is so warm and hearty tasting, and there’s no animal product in it at all. And though turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon are all spices that cross both Persian and Indian cultures, the resulting flavor is so, so different than any Indian dal you would ever eat, home cooked or at a restaurant. I was texting this with my Persian friend, who also agreed how interesting it was, while also nothing that at one time, they are all one empire. Then, they broke off and developed their own techniques and ways of cooking that are slightly the same, yet different.

I occasionally still meet people who are anti beans, who think beans are gross, give you gas, and should be avoided. I really think that if they had a lentil stew like this Persian version that they would be hard pressed to say it was revolting.

Persian cooking

Given that we are now officially in spring, the Persian New Year, aka, Nowruz, has also come. At my last company, I made a Persian friend who was on my team, who also loved food. We spent a lot of time talking about food, different cultural traditions, and the first time we met, the two of us were actually charged with preparing food for two days for my team’s offsite at a semi-remote house in Northern California. The more she talked about Persian food, the more I started reading about it and got into it. And so I started experimenting more with Persian dishes like Persian lentils, rice, chicken and fish. I was amazed at how much saffron can be used in Persian cooking, as I’d never really known what to do with saffron before Persian or Indian cooking. I’d bought a number of small bottles of it from Costco, during travels in India, and had been gifted them by Chris’s mom. But given that saffron is actually more expensive by weight than diamonds, I always used it sparingly.

This week, in light of Nowruz, I made Persian sabzi polo, or Persian herbed rice with tahdig, or crispy bottomed rice, as well as slow-cooked salmon with herbs and spices. I had bought a massive amount of cilantro, parsley, dill, and scallions just for these two dishes. And as Chris watched me chop up a bunch of herbs, he looks at all the greens across the kitchen counter and goes, “We can’t eat herbs!” He meant we couldn’t *just* eat herbs for dinner, but because he said that sentence so slowly and didn’t say much after that, he made it sound like herbs were inedible. I reminded him how lucky he is to have such a varied diet with all my creative cooking even when he randomly forgets that yes, herbs actually are edible, to which he responded, “I give you a varied diet by taking you all over the freaking world!” Talk about men who don’t seem to take feedback well…

Gaeng Jued (“bland curry” soup in Thai) today

Last year, I wanted to get more into making soups more frequently. They’re nourishing and always satisfying, but I don’t think I got into a decent groove with it until this year. I sourced a place for pork ribs under my nose at the Chinese supermarket I usually go to, and since then, I’ve been looking at more recipes and tinkering with them. The latest soup I made today is Hot Thai Kitchen’s gaeng jued woon sen. In Thai, that literally means “bland curry with glass noodles,” but the only reason it’s called bland is that it’s not spicy at all. It’s meant to be a “wet” component of a Thai meal next to rice and other more spiced / hot dishes. It has a lot in common with Chinese soups I’ve grown up with: it uses pork bones, daikon for sweetness, and has really simple seasonings, such as fish sauce, soy sauce, and white pepper. It’s given more heft with rustic spoon-flicked pork meatballs that are quickly tossed together, different vegetables (I used napa cabbage and “seafood” mushrooms, almost like thicker enoki mushrooms), and even egg (I used egg tofu today). Then, it’s topped with garnishes like cilantro, scallions, and the true flavor bombs: fried crispy garlic chips with its residual garlic oil.

If anyone had this soup and actually thought it was bland, I probably wouldn’t want to associate with them. This is the epitome of Thai home cooking, and in many ways, very similar to comforting, homely Chinese soups I grew up eating, just with a garlicky twist. Variations of this soup will definitely be kept on rotation for us.

Opo squash soup – canh bau – a delicious home-style Vietnamese soup

Lately, I’ve been thinking more about traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai (because I love Thai 🙂 ) meals at home. I think about all the dishes I probably took for granted that my mom, aunt, and grandma would make when I was little, and I’ve gotten some nostalgia for them. A lot of not so glamorous dishes that are considered home-style or home cooking are really what make up the bulk of a traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai family’s meals, and so I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate those elements into my week to week cooking. Since Kaia was born, I will be honest and say that our at-home meals, unless I’m expecting guests, tend to be a bit disjointed. I will make one Vietnamese dish, then have some Chinese-style dishes made, and then randomly throw in some Instant Pot dal or other quick lentil soup. I haven’t had a lot of time to think through what I want to make, how I will make it, and then how they will all form a semi-cohesively themed meal.

Since I discovered that I can get decently priced and good quality meat at Hong Kong Supermarket in Manhattan Chinatown, I’ve been thinking about all the home-style soups I could make. And one of them was opo squash soup. Opo squash is a common green-colored squash that is used in East/Southeast Asian cooking, and it’s commonly used to flavor soups. When it’s paired with chicken, pork, or shrimp, it takes on a really nice savory, subtly sweet flavor in the broth it’s in. It is hard to describe it accurately, but it’s a very savory, warming, and nourishing flavor that in my mind, sums up Asian style home cooking. I hadn’t had a soup prepared with it for ages, as I know my mom used to make it for us when we were growing up. So when I prepared it on Saturday evening and tasted the finished broth, it took me back to the flavors of my mom’s home cooking back in the day.

So it made me really happy when I showed Kaia the soup, and she immediately loved it. She ended up having three servings of it. I picked out more chicken pieces for her to eat, and she totally devoured them. And surprisingly, she did not hesitate to eat the squash; she probably had just as much squash as she did chicken! Every time she embraces a dish I cook, especially if it’s something that’s more home-style like what I grew up with, I feel like my heart just sings. I’m so happy to give her flavors from her cultures to love and cherish.