Beef Tongue Stew Recipe

While the food blogosphere is all about beautiful holiday cookies this time of year, I'm giving you beef tongue. It's really not about me being a holiday grouch (though I am); it's just that this beef tongue stew is one of those things that remind me of home. I know it sounds odd, but this was one of my favorite things to eat growing up. So I thought I would add this to a list of my "homesick menu" after Mom's Pork Chops with Crispy Garlic and Lemongrass and my aunt's Soy-Braised Chicken Wings with Quail Eggs.

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Swedish Chocolate Balls (Chokladbollar)

My reader from Sweden, Mikael Zayenz Lagerkvist, who has previously shared with us his recipe for Swedish cheesecake, Ostkaka is at it again. This time, he sent me a recipe for a Swedish confection, chokladbollar (chocolate balls), which he describes as, "very easy to make and very unhealthy." O-kay.

These Swedish chocolate balls don't require any cooking or baking. It's just a matter of mixing all the ingredients together to form a paste, then rolling it into balls. Mikael is right; they're very easy to make. But about these chocolate balls being unhealthy, he may be mistaken. How can something this delicious and smile-inducing be unhealthy, Mikael?

But, hey, thank you very much!

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Khao Pad Naem (ข้าวผัดแหนม): Thai-Style Fried Rice with Soured Pork

Have you tried naem (แหนม),* a distinguished member of Southeast Asian** class of preserved meats? This soured, fermented sausage is made by curing chopped fresh pork (sometimes with strips of cleaned and boiled pork skin added) at room temperature for a few days until it develops the sour, savory flavor. Naem is traditionally served uncooked as an appetizer, in a salad, or as an ingredient in a dish (in which case it's served cooked).

Ask the purists, though, and they'll say naem is supposed to be served raw -- always. They believe that only in the raw state can naem truly fulfill its raison d'être. Serving it cooked, they insist, is heretical.

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White Chocolate-Almond-Lime Pavés and Bricklayer Love by Carl Sandburg

I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.

I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.

When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
Carl Sandburg 1878-1967

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Soy-Braised Chicken Wings with Quail Eggs (ปีกไก่ต้มเค็มกับไข่นกกระทา)

Since we're in the midst of the holiday season, I thought I would continue with the "homesick menu," inaugurated by my mother's Pork Chops with Crispy Garlic and Lemongrass, with this simple dish which my aunt used to make all the time. This dish is based on the various Chinese five-spice soy-braised dishes (Pa-Lo พะโล้). Most notable among such dishes is the version with hard-boiled eggs and pork belly (Khai Pa-Lo ไข่พะโล้) which has been adopted into the Thai cuisine at large and fondly included in the home cooking repertoire of many Thais.

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Pork Chops with Crispy Garlic and Lemongrass

Your experience as an expat living in North America may be different, but for me the loneliness that already gnaws on your heart from time to time throughout the year becomes so intense it tears you up around the holidays. Funny how even with all the friendly faces around, something about this time of year never fails to trigger the kind of deep longing for home that you never get used to or outgrow -- the kind that makes you nearly double over and sob.

One Christmas Eve, I made pork chops with crispy garlic and lemongrass, missing Mom who used to make these all the time.

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How to Make Cream Cheese at Home

After having nailed -- if I do say so myself -- how to make homemade goat cheese chèvre style, my confidence as an amateur cheesemaker has soared. In fact, for the past few months, every time I open the fridge, I can hear the collective gasp of all liquid dairy products. And they're right to tremble in fear; my refrigerator has become the place where milks and creams from different animal species come to curdle and age.

Homemade cream cheese is my latest project. Boasting freshness, creaminess, and a bit of tang, freshly-made cream cheese has completely ruined me for commercial cream cheese. Admittedly, in things such as cheesecake or other baked goods, wherein cream cheese is baked along with other ingredients, the vast difference between commercial cream cheese and homemade cream cheese is not so obvious. However, when cream cheese is served as the main -- or sometimes sole -- ingredient (e.g. as a bagel spread or in a dip), quality counts tremendously.

And this is when knowing how to make your own cream cheese comes in handy.

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