After several hectic months that left me with little kitchen energy, I found vast reserves of it last night. I’ve been out of sorts and no good for more than fried eggs and sauteed greens lately. Last night as I was moving around the kitchen I felt myself coming back to life.
First up was an attempt at making my mom’s tomato curry oxtail stew. I thought it’d take somewhere along the lines of an hour and a half, based on my mom’s hazy emailed recipe (which included the line: “At this point I squeeze in an unknown amount of ketchup.”) Hers is a perfectly composed affair–fall off the bone meat in a cozy curry sauce that absolutely demands rice to soak up that gravy. Mine turned out fine, though I burned, er caramelized, the bottom of the stew a few times in my impatience. Low and slow are my mother’s eternal cooking directions. Next time I know: three hours.
In that waiting time I got to try out a crab meat, cucumber, vermicelli salad. The dressing is super light: rice wine vinegar, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, a few drops of sesame oil. (That’s basically the entire recipe.) I found it in one of my favorite cookbooks, a series of slim 5×7 bilingual cookbooks by Harumi Kurihara (the “Martha Stewart of Japan”) I picked up at Kinokuniya. Light, refreshing, with a gentle brightness and no pungent tang. Please excuse the fish sauce-stained kitchen table.
And after all the cleanup was done, we turned on Sleepless in Seattle–Kevin lasted all of 18 minutes before he begged off it–and I made this pound cake via xobreakfast with yams I’d roasted earlier in the day. Bridal shower soon means it’s recipe testing time, plus I was just plain curious. It was 1:30am by the time I got that glaze on, and collapsed into bed a sweaty, sore, very alive mess.
Here’s the breakfast shot (that large hole thanks to my improvised chopstick-cake tester). It’s a true pound cake, but moist and not too sweet, and just about requires a cup of tea or coffee on the side. Perfect to share with book club tonight.
So nice to be back!