Martha Washington's Virginia Cake Recipe: Another Version

The cake recipe presented as belonging to Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, the first First Lady of the United States of America, is originally the type of cake that was traditionally served on the Twelfth Night festival marking the Epiphany*. The cake -- perhaps large enough to feed an entire high school -- contains 40 eggs, 4 pounds of butter, 5 pounds of flour, 5 pounds of (dried) fruits, and more than half a pint of wine and brandy combined (source)

Different versions of Martha Washington's so-called Virginia Cake recipe float about on the interwebs and, apparently, people have taken the liberty of playing around with the original butter:flour:egg ratio resulting in recipes that perhaps bear little resemblance to what Mrs. Washington made. I decided to go with the version adapted by Jeff "The Frugal Gourmet" Smith.

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Thai Grilled Chicken Southern-Style - Gai Yang Pak Tai (ไก่ย่างปักษ์ใต้)

All traceable records show that both sides of my family, with the exception of a few ancestors who were assigned to remote posts, have lived in Bangkok since the city was established 228 years ago. Everybody in my immediate family is from Bangkok and our lives have revolved around this city, small in area but dense in population, since -- I don't know -- forever.

Our affection for southern things, in light of all this, is quite perplexing.

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Corn-Coconut Dessert -Khao Pod Khluk (ข้าวโพดคลุก)

As we drove by a large, bare field outside of Chicago, my mother's gaze transfixed on the little green plants that had barely emerged from the ground. She had just arrived on her last visit to the US. It was early May and, of course, there were no signs that summer would come to Chicago any time soon.

"What are those?" she asked. "Corn, Mom," I said, adding that at harvest time they would set up a stand here where I would come and buy an ungodly amount of corn. A city girl through and through, my mother found the idea of buying fresh corn right from the source just about as exotic as cruising down the Amazon. "When is it going to be ripe for harvest?" Mom's face lit up. "August," I told her.

Silence ensued. Suddenly, I could feel a vague sense of gloom fill the car. And I didn't understand why.

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Pickled Cherries with Five-Spice Blend

Cherries, like most fruits, are best eaten right out of hand. There's no doubt about that. The next best thing to fresh cherries, as I have recently discovered, would be pickled cherries. I used to reserve that runner-up spot for cherry jam and brandy-preserved cherries. That is no longer the case.

So if you, like me, always find yourself buying more fresh cherries than you can eat in a few days, try pickling them.

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Easy Thai Green Curry, an Interview with Kasma Loha-unchit, and Musings on Thai Curry Pastes

Late last year, I got an email from a reader who, in a very kind and polite manner, expressed her "disappointment" with the fact that all of the curry recipes on my blog call for commercial curry pastes as opposed to ones made from scratch. She also included in her note a recipe for green curry paste ("... in case you don't know how to make your own ..."). Shortly after, a gentleman wrote me saying that he followed the instructions for my pork and kabocha squash panang curry and ended up with, "a curry that has orange fat floating on the surface." All the Thai curries he'd had at his favorite Thai restaurant on the East Coast, said he, never came with that, "disgusting fatty film on top."

To my amusement, both of them were also deeply puzzled by the fact that, at the time they were composing their email messages, there had not yet been a post on Pad Thai on this blog (update: my Pad Thai recipe was published on November 26th, 2011).

Years ago, I would have responded in juvenile petulance. These days, I just sit in front of my computer, smiling to the screen and blinking a lot.

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Yellow Tomato Custard with Saffron and Myzithra Cheese

In Happy in the Kitchen, the book of which I think so very highly, Michel Richard turns ripe yellow tomatoes into a simple, yet lovely tart of golden hue. The tart is served with a garnish of heirloom tomatoes of different shapes, sizes, and colors. It looks so beautiful in the photograph that someone like me, who isn't particularly fond of tomatoes or the idea of turning tomatoes into something custardy, became completely enticed.

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Som Tam Recipe (ส้มตำ): Thai Green Papaya Salad With or Without a Mortar

Some of the requests I've been getting in the past several months include, "How do you make X without Y (Y = a cooking apparatus with which X is traditionally prepared)?" Ranked number one among such requests is, "How do you make Thai green papaya salad without a mortar and a pestle?"

On a bad day, I would cringe and wonder, in this day and age when even the most exotic of cooking tools can be purchased online, what would be the excuses for not investing in such tools if the success in creating one's favorite dishes depends on them? But on a good day, I tell my sometimes impatient, self-righteous self to shut the heck up. True, the tools may be more readily available these days, but there are issues of shipping costs (would anyone care to calculate how much it costs to ship a granite mortar across the country?), storage space, etc. Besides, I am a trouble-shooter by nature. The process of figuring out creative solutions to a problem thrills me to no end. Macgyver is my kitchen patron saint.

Well, guess what. Today's one of those good days.

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Homemade Cherry Vinegar Recipe

Sometimes I have in my head a scene where I put a cherry in front of a duck and tell that duck* that it and the cherry are meant for each other. The imagined scene often ends with the duck giving me an indignant stare, holding up the middle pointy end of one of its webbed feet. Yet, I figure, with or without an approving quack from our feathered friend, this is definitely a case of anyone of us knowing better than the duck: duck and cherries go together.

And the reason I mentioned duck is because the making of this cherry vinegar was undeniably duck-induced.

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Pad See-Ew (ผัดซีอิ๊ว) - How to Make It Like They Do in Thai Restaurants

To bring you this post, I had to use the little charm I had not only to gain access to the kitchen of a Thai restaurant after they had closed for the night, but also to get them to make a plate of Pad See-Ew* when the people were cleaning up and getting ready to leave.

Did I know no shame? Perhaps not. I did it all for the sake of my readers, you see. Besides, I wanted to make a very important point.

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