There are certain food items/food categories that in my mind always existed outside of the “make-at-home” realm, that is to say it never even occurred to me to look up recipes for them. Years ago, following a tasty Indian buffet lunch at some Berkeley restaurant or another, JB and I did some research into home naan cookery. My favorite disgraced TV chef The Frugal Gourmet had a recipe in one of his books. It was very complicated and involved multiple risings and yogurt and the caveat that it would be hard to do it right without an appropriate oven (i.e. not with the marginally functional electric oven of our USCA apartment). Before we got around to taking the plunge, Naan ‘n’ Curry, home of $1.00 naan, opened a few blocks away and the NaanQuest 2001 was aborted.
That incident somewhat illogically placed all Indian food on the Leave It To The Professionals list, which also, for no good reason other than their general air of complexity included Thai food, non-stirfry Chinese food and anything else readily available in the vicinity of the Durant Food Court.
In the past couple years, I’ve been attacking the LITTP list with a suprising degree of success. The non-tandoori-based cuisine of India has been vanquished. Wonton soup and potstickers? Done. Pumpkin curry? Please. A couple weeks ago I acquired Real Vegetarian Thai and took a stab at Pad Thai and a somewhat elaborate sweet potato wonton soup with excellent results, if the enthusiastic reviews from The Yankee Fan, my test diner, are to be trusted. I don’t know why I had assumed that Thai food at home would be unachievable.
In any case, the freezer here at the Durant Food Court Lake Merritt Auxiliary Branch is now overflowing with extra wontons, there’s rice noodles and a kabocha squash in the pantry and I’m running out of room in the secondary spice drawer (the rack hit capacity long ago). Maybe after we finish clearing all the broken bikes and mattresses out of the basement there’ll be room to install a tandoor oven…
Archive for November, 2006
After months of occasional consideration and general laziness I have decided there is no particular reason not to have a blog. That it is an excuse to employ a pseudonym (The American Coot) is a fantastic argument in favor of the project. Other talking points to myself in making the less-than-weighty decision include
1) A convenient venue for posting recipes that have been requested by dinner/brunch/etc. guests, saving me the trouble of writing things like “pumpbreadrecip” on the back of my hand in ballpoint pen and still forgetting to bring the cookbook to work to make a copy.
2) A means of keeping ye olde writinge muscles from atrophying completely. Go English Minor! Go Bears! Pump it up! heh.
That’s plenty of reasons for a coot.
