You need unflavored Thai tea, instead of the kind that comes mixed with sugar and powdered cream, to make these tender, buttery sablés. You need to be mindful of the fact that most Thai tea brands include artificial colorings in their product (to give you the signature orange color) and not wear a white top when making these. You need good butter. You need to allow the dough to chill. That's it. The rest is easy.
Remember my Ukrainian "cooking coach," Valya, who taught me how to make vareniki (pierogi) the way her mother does? Whenever I get together with Valya and her entire family, it's always a huge varenik fest. There are always more than enough vareniki with 4-5 kinds of filling for everybody, and you get to sample different types. Making and eating vareniki with my Ukrainian friends has always been such a fun activity. The fact that Bubba's (Valya's mother) vareniki are the best I've ever had -- and I've had eaten lots throughout Eastern Europe -- makes the experience even more memorable.
But making vareniki for myself at home is a bit of a letdown sometimes even with Bubba's recipes. The problem is that when you don't have a bunch of people to share them with, making a lot of vareniki with various fillings and toppings is impractical and labor-intensive at best and ill-advised at worst. It's also wasteful as I can never eat more then 10 vareniki in one sitting and would always end up with leftovers that just don't taste as good the next day.
I thought this recipe would come in handy after Thanksgiving when you're stuck with odds and ends day-old bread. I used day-old homemade brioche, but you can use any kind of bread or any combination of different breads. Keep in mind that some breads are sweeter than others, so adjust the amount of sugar accordingly.
Have you ever wanted to put all that is good about the autumn: the flavors, aromas, etc., in a bottle? Make a batch of this flavorful glaze and, right away, you got yourself autumn in a jar. Sweet, tangy, buttery with just a hint of malts and hops, this glaze goes well with just about everything.
You all have met my all-purpose stir-fry sauce, Bruno; I'd like to introduce to you his all-purpose little brother.
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All you have to do is boil 24 ounce apple cider, 12 ounce dark beer (stout or porter), 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt in a large saucepan over medium heat until the mixture is reduced down to about 3/4 cup, thick, and syrupy.* (Watch the pan and monitor the heat a bit more closely towards the end as the sauce becomes sticky and prone to burning.) Once that happens, remove the pan from heat and stir in 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter.
If not used right away, the glaze can be stored in a clean glass jar, covered, and refrigerated for a month. It will become very thick upon refrigeration. To get the refrigerated glaze back to its original consistency, just scoop some out and slightly thin it out with warm water.
*The amount of reduction time depends on the width and depth of your cooking vessel; the wider and the shallower, the more surface area and the shorter time it takes to evaporate liquid.
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Breathlessly, I sat there with my pupils amply dilated as M.L.[1] Sirichalerm Svasti, better known as Chef McDang, regaled me with stories of what a typical meal time was like at Sukhothai Palace. Sure, you can find secondary, tertiary, quadriary accounts anywhere about dining in the palace by those who know -- or think they know -- about the subject. But, you see, I was listening to a first-hand witness who spent more than a decade of his youth at the scene. And in many ways it is as if I was in the presence of an extant papyrus manuscript detailing historical events. The exception, of course, is that this manuscript is interactive.
After I discovered flourless peanut butter cookies, I've never once made peanut butter cookies the traditional way again. You might ask why we need to go flourless on something that doesn't taste bad with flour in it. Well, peanut butter cookies don't need to be flourless. It's just that some of us -- even those who have no issues with gluten -- prefer flourless peanut butter cookies to traditional ones, because the peanut flavor in flourless peanut butter cookies is much, much more pronounced. The cookies are also moister and remain that way longer. They even taste great frozen.
I'd waited two years to introduce Tom Kha Gai (ต้มข่าไก่), one of the most loved Thai dishes of all time, on this blog because -- and this probably won't make a lot of sense -- I've loved it so much and for so long that I didn't know how to write about it. I still don't. And while some dishes, e.g. Pad Thai (which is even more popular), have been left out mainly due to apathy, this one had been put on hold solely due to fear.
Tom Kha Gai isn't just any dish; it's one of my top five most favorite dishes in the world, Thai or otherwise. At a risk of taking anthropomorphism of food a bit too far, I felt that if I let myself write about Tom Kha Gai with the kind of unbridled affection from the depth of my bowels, I'd bore -- or scare -- you. Yet, if I held back, I'd be remiss for not giving the dish the love it deserves.
Therefore, I've decided to be very factual and emotionless about it. I'll even write in bullet points.
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