Gluten-Free Flourless Almond Cookies

Not only do these flourless almond cookies bear such striking resemblance in appearance to the almond cookies which you can get from local Chinese bakeries*, they also take after their Chinese cousins' in terms of texture. The difference is that these cookies co

These cookies are crunchy, yet not dry or hard. Sweetened with brown sugar and honey as opposed to white sugar, the cookies are not cloyingly sweet. The brown sugar helps keep the cookies somewhat moist, and the honey, being an inverted sugar, also helps keep the cookies from being too hard and brittle.

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Russian "Korean" Salad (Корейская Морковь)

This "Korean" carrot salad is found all over the area that is the former Soviet Union. I certainly saw it popping up here and there during my travels in Ukraine and its environs; I just never paid attention to it or cared to find out what kind of carrot salad it was. Why would I dedicate the space in my digestive tract to a carrot salad, which I could have gotten anywhere, when I could gorge on local vareniki, Baltic sprat sandwiches, and golubtsi?

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Thai Fried Bananas (Kluay Khaek, Kluay Tod กล้วยแขก, กล้วยทอด)

There are some who insist that street foods can be replicated at home easily. I disagree. That may be true for some of the very rudimentary dishes. But for the majority of street foods masterfully made by skilled cooks, successful home cloning is an elusive endeavor. In a perfect world, our favorite street foods would be prepared at home easily and quickly, with home equipments, without specialized skills, in a cost-effective manner, and with equally great or greater results. I could be wrong, but I doubt we live in that world. I have more to say on this topic. But that’s for another occasion, another blog post.

People with no issues, I figured, would begin their post on these delicious Thai fried bananas (กล้วยแขก or กล้วยทอด) with something a lot more upbeat than the previous paragraph. After all, it's batter-fried fruit we're discussing here, not the state of US economy. Yet, haunted by the ghosts of fried bananas past, the writing of this post has not been easy for me.

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Strawberry Mascarpone Cream Cake (or Ice Cream Cake)

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've rarely made dishes that require multiple steps. The main reason is simply that I hate washing dishes. For this cake, however, I'd wash all the dishes and scrub the kitchen floor, because it's worth it.

A simple sponge cake is prepared in advance, split in half, then gets reassembled with a mixture of mascapone cheese and cream. Fresh strawberries are used here, because they're in season, but you can use any fresh firm-flesh fruit (say that five times fast).

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Recipe Remixes Vol. I

Raspberry Soufflé Cake
Occasionally, I'll be posting a set of recipes which I'd be remiss not to share yet don't really justify having their own separate posts. These dishes are based on old recipes in the archives and help demonstrate how one basic recipe can be built upon to create several other things. Remixes. Spin-offs. Mashups. Maybe all of the above.

Raspberry Soufflé Cake in the above photograph, for example, is made by taking the Lemon Pudding Cake recipe and replacing the lemon juice with the same amount of puréed raspberries (with seeds strained out). Fresh raspberries are best, but if you use frozen raspberries, make sure that they're completely thawed and drained very, very well. Any excess moisture will only dilute the raspberry flavor in the cake. If you use in-season raspberries which are sweeter, you may want to add one tablespoon of lime or lemon juice to it to increase the acidity. But this is completely optional. I do that, because I like the tang.

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Fried Sun-Dried Fish Thai-Style ปลาแดดเดียวทอด

Of all the Thai dishes I've blogged about, I have the most fun with the things that are not commonly found on the regular menus of Thai restaurants overseas. I have even more fun with the things that are rarely, if ever, found outside Grandma's or Mom's kitchens. Needless to say, blogging about (and eating) this Thai-style fried sun-dried fish -- a favorite of mine -- is bringing me immense joy.

There's a whole genre of dishes in the Thai cuisine featuring meats that have been dehydrated then fried. Excellent taste and texture aside, considering how the warm weather and moisture level in the tropical areas provide a perfect environment wherein microbes make merry and copulate, preserving fresh meats through dehydration in the pre-refrigeration era makes a lot of sense.

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The Use of Limestone Solution (น้ำปูนใส) in Thai Cooking

Limestone (more accurately slaked lime) solution is traditionally used in quite a few Thai recipes. The same limestone paste with a curiously pink hue was part of the betel chewing culture in the olden days and, therefore, a household ingredient. Tinted limestone paste (puun daeng or ปูนแดง) is mixed with water and left undisturbed to allow the limestone particles to settle at the bottom thereby creating a clear separation between the limestone itself and the translucent solution. It's the alkalinity of the clear limestone solution that Thai cooks have used to create enduring crispiness in fried batter or pastry/dough as well as firm, crunchy texture in pickled or candied fruits or vegetables.

Much of the information in this post has been contributed by my chemist aunt whose gentle spirit and generosity have been such a great example to me and to whom I owe greatly for enlightening me in matters of life and science.

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