A Return: Thai Curry

It's been a full year away.  Kind of amazing, but it was a pretty crappy year so go figure.  All that is fading into the past now, and it's back to cooking.

This is an attempt at a rich yellow Thai curry -- and it worked beautifully.  The flavors could probably be enriched by using tamarind over lime and a Thai basil over Italian, but all that just creates trouble getting it done with a visit to the local store.  And it's actually quite good enough as is.

In a dutch oven, melt 4 tablespoons of butter and immediately begin sauteing 1.5 medium red onions.  Add to that 4 sliced jalapenos, seeds and all.  You could moderate the heat here, but it's Thai -- so don't.  (Also note that these jalapenos are the only source of heat, so don't skimp.)  Dash on both raw sugar and salt here.

As the onions cook through, chunk up 4 or 5 potatoes -- russets worked fine and added to the overall sweet notes to the dish.  Also slice 4 or 5 large carrots.  When the onion is mostly translucent, add those and toss to coat.

While that is cooking down a bit, mince 4 (large) cloves of garlic and an equivalent amount of ginger.  Add those as you can with perhaps a bit more sugar.

When all that is combined, add 1 quart chicken stock and 3 stalks lemongrass (if using dried).  Juice 1 lime into the pot and heat to a simmer.  Keep cooking until the potatoes are done and have acquired plenty of spicy-sweet flavor.

To finish, add 1 can of coconut milk (just go for full fat) and a very generous amount of rough chopped basil.  Serve over rice.

Split pea soup

Another in the series of "well, I have this laying around and by the way it's cold": split pea soup.

Having been informed that maybe lentils again might be overkill and that it definitely wouldn't kill me to dial back the capsaicin for a change it was time to find a new legume to play with.  Luckily, split peas were available by the pound from none other than the kitchen cabinet.

But of course there was no ham hock.  So at least I got to improvise a bit:

First, a 1:1:1 mirepoix in olive oil.  Nothing fancy.  A bit of salt helped to draw out the liquid and speed the process and several rough-chopped garlic cloves finished it off.

In another pan, I browned half a pound of chopped bacon which quickly joined the mirepoix, grease and all.  A pound of kielbasa, chopped, joined everything just before the pound of peas, 8 cups of water, 2 bay leaves, and pepper.

Forty minutes, more salt, and a generous amount of lemon juice later and the whole thing was actually better than the more traditional method.  Thank goodness for spare bacon in the freezer....