After green curry

When I was in Thailand, I took an afternoon cooking class and one of the highlights was making my own green curry.

We rode a Rot Dang to some sheet-metal pole barn, and got a lesson from the only "cooking school" in Chaing Mai that advertised itself as "vegetarian friendly." It was a blinding hot paste of green chilis, toasted spices, and the general Thai menagerie of cilantro, coriander, galangal, etc.

Since I foolishly left that cookbook at my folks' house, and haven't been able to get it back, I've been flailing along with a succession of green curry recipes, most recently this one.

Because you go to the stove with the ingredients that you've got, not the ingredients that you'd like (well, more that I don't really plan shopping by recipes), Amy and I made a series of substitutions from almost the giddyup. Our recipe follows:

1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp whole white or regular peppercorns
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek (Amy hates anise, so we don't buy it)

Grind to powder.

1 1/2 tbsps garlic
3 tbsps cilantro leaves and stems
1/2 cup loosely packed chili leaves
1/2 cup chopped Thai chilis (leave seeds in)
1 cup green pepper
2 tbsps ginger, peeled and minced
2 tbsps lemon juice
3 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp shallots
1/2 tbsp Vegetarian Stir Fry Sauce

We fried up a bunch of veggies to go with 2/3 cup of the above paste:

1 1/2 cup cubed tofu
1 cup chopped onions
1 1/2 cup chopped potato (two small red potatoes)
3/4 cup beet (one golden beet)
1/3 cup chopped carrot
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 can light coconut milk
1 tbsp cane sugar

It came out well, tasting halfway between a green curry and a yellow one, and very spicy. We didn't have a blender, so it was mostly chopped and blended with a mortar and pestle. There are half a dozen ways I could make it more authentic, but it was damn tasty and tomorrow we're going to scramble it with eggs (and maybe rice noodles).

Kidneys, man, kidneys

I made absolutely fantastic kidney beans on Saturday for Annette, Chris, Carson, Amy and myself, and I keep talking about them, in part because they were just bafflingly good, and in part because the dish was mostly improv and with ADD, either you keep it in the front of the mind or you lose it.

I was serving them with a crunchy kale/dandelion greens saute under the idea that collards and beans were pretty tasty and why not? We'd made chard or kale and paired it with boil-in-a-bag Indian before, so that was what I was thinking of. Some panchejeon (sp? Korean pancakes) and pow, crazy world food.

2 big cans Kidney Beans (Trader Joe size, y'all know it. Hold on to the cans).

Two medium yellow onions
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds, ground
1/4 tsp. yellow mustard seed ground
1/4 tsp. tumeric
dash brown sugar
one whole dry New Mexico chile, chopped
pinch Korean red pepper flakes
Bay leaf

Saute onions with bay leaf, cumin, mustard, add rinsed beans. Add tumeric, 1/4 can water, let cook off. Add chile, repeat water. Add sugar, Korean pepper flakes, repeat water. Serve moderately wet.