Labels: recipes, the savory and salty

1. Combine the spice paste ingredients in a granite mortar and pestle, or food processor and combine until it's nearly a paste texture.
2. Heat oil over medium heat in a large saucepan and fry the spice paste, being careful not to burn it. Add the beef and cook, stirring until it is coated in the spice paste. Pour in the coconut milk, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer.
3. After 20 or 30 minutes, add the potato. Cover and continue to simmer.
4. Meanwhile, fry the eggplant in a teaspoon of oil over high heat, until it has some charred spots. Set aside.
5. The meat should be tender after 2 hours, and the coconut sauce thickened. Add the eggplant and stir to keep the sauce from burning. Let the eggplant heat through and remove from heat.

This is delicioso garnished with scallions and served with white rice (jasmine, of course, for you Filipinos out there!)


Grubbin!

Labels: recipes, the savory and salty

• He is not opposed to electric ranges. Most enthusiastic home cooks are screaming in their minds at the thought of an electric range (including myself). He made some really good points, having cooked on one, he said, for nearly eight years at home: they get really hot, and you don't really need adjustable heat (in restaurant kitchens, usually the gas range has one setting-- high).
• His latest favorite shopping setting is the cheap market. Chinatown in New York, for example, or the Armenian markets in L.A. I agree with him wholeheartedly on this-- one of my favorite markets was the Muslim market in The Hague-- it was a great source for cheap, fresh produce; as Bittman said, "nothing outstanding, just uniformly cheap."
• Norresa and I asked him if he likes Filipino food. He said "I don't know much about it, but what I've had of it, I've liked." We found out later that there is a recipe in How to Cook Everything for Chicken Adobo!
• His favorite cookbook of last year was a Balkan cookbook, a cuisine he didn't know that much but about which he wanted to learn more. What do you think of that, Sonja? :)
• I like that his background is as a journalist and writer rather than as a food industry guy. There's something really refreshing about a guy who truly is a passionate home cook (Kind of like Jeffrey Steingarten, my all-time favorite food writer and of course... moi!)

All in all, a good talk. Afterward, I got him to sign my copy of The Minimalist Cooks at Home, and Norresa bought a copy of How to Cook Everything, since she's had a history of doing things like, oh, making crunchy rice in a rice cooker (just teasing, Norresa!) I told Mark Bittman that Norresa "finally decided to learn how to cook" so he said "not a bad idea" and signed her book "Good luck Norresa!" Hee!