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| This is the pensive look Alex and Sarah get when we're cooking together. It's also how they look when they're figuring out where to hide a body. |
Recipes can be found in the following places:
For our Thai Coconut Soup, aka Tom Kha Gai: http://www.healyrealfoodvegetarian.com/tom-kha-gai-thai-coconut-soup-vegan/
Our Pad Thai recipe comes from here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vegetarian-Pad-Thai-240960
Spring Rolls originated with this recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/vietnamese-fresh-spring-rolls/ , BUT we substituted cucumber for the shrimp and instead of the fish sauce we created our own veggie substitute with seaweed water, fresh garlic, soy sauce and miso. Y'know, like you do.
Cake and brussel sprouts were improvisational! Yay, improv!
"Madison Wisconsin is much less intense than Nairobi", says Sarah, who has biked in both places. Biking seemed like a better choice than taking the Mutatus, the chaotic busses, but transit was still an interesting adventure.
Sarah says something is "up Deb's alley", which to Deb has all sorts of scatological connotations that all began a few weeks ago when she looked up what "up the wazoo" refers to. Cringe! Cringe!
As Jim has the artist's eye, he's torn in two directions as people want him to both assemble a sample spring roll and work on the soup. Jim's gearing up to teach a pottery class in the next week or so, molding (heh) young minds.
Even though we only cooked the noodles for 30 seconds, we're concerned at the way they seem to have congealed into one lump. Yet it's not TOO congealed; we ponder the pasta and pensively plan to perpetuate our plot. (Also, Alex pours cool water on them and rescues them.)
Sarah has assembled the spring roll manufactory! I photojournal the whole process!
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| Like watching a caterpillar become a butterfly (but with fewer legs) |
We hit a TEENY TINY snag with baking the cake, which is that halfway through, the oven somehow got turned off. TINY snag. Alex and Deb keep it a secret from the rest of us until it's almost fixed, and I have total faith that it's going to turn out totally fine. Totally.
As the pad thai cooks in shifts, Deb and Sarah team up for the tofu/shallot frying process. There's a little concern that so many scallions got chopped up for the pad thai that we might not have enough left for the soup, but we'll cross that tiny green onion when we come to it.
The soup is pretty much ready to go, Sarah says; we just have to put the final two ingredients (mushrooms and somethingsomething) in, and that should only be right before we're ready to serve.
As the tofu grills, Alex has made the buttercream frosting and finishing up the cake; after that the plan is for him to make the sauce. It's time for the brussel sprouts to begin to be...stir fried? Roasted? We check the recipe, and it looks like stir fried in oyster sauce (nom!)
Everyone pauses to praise the tofu, which is looking more like Chinese restaurant tofu than any we've ever made before. Yay for wok frying!
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| This week's tofu |
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| How our tofu has looked in other weeks |
Jim stops at 10 spring rolls (two apiece).....plus one crude little deformed one for him to taste test. Because chef, is why. Deb and Sarah are preparing to wok side by side, Sarah doing the sprouts, Deb doing first the pad thai eggs, and then the rest of the pad thai ingredients. The tamarind-brown sugar "muck", as Deb calls it, is ready to go into the boiling water.
After Jim bangs his leg on the open dishwasher, we learn that when Jim *really* hurts himself, we'd know because he's a yeller. As we learned from Alex's arm burn last week, either he takes burns very well or he's verbal about pain but not LOUD verbal, if you get the difference.
Finally our meal is complete:
GRADING!
SPRING ROLLS
Alex: I give them a B+; they were fine. The filling didn't make me love it to death, but it was solidly executed and I don't know what I would have done differently.
Jim: I'd give them a B. The basil was too strong, too much. It would have been nice to have tofu in there or something similar.
Deb: I'd give them an A, I like them. The sauce was fabulous.
Sarah: A! I thought the paper was too sticky on the outside, but everything else was perfect. And I'm not just saying that because I chose the recipe and shopped them.
Brian: B...the basil was a bit tough and chewy, and it's weird to have to use a toothpick for a spring roll.
PAD THAI
Alex: B+ also. The sauce was not quite sweet enough, the balance wasn't quite right; the recipe is shitty. The noodles, on the other hand, were the perfect texture, the fried tofu was perfect. In my perfect world pad thai has peanuts on top, which this didn't have. So, solid effort but with room for improvement.
Jim: I would give it an A. I liked it! Better with peanuts, I'd agree, but it wasn't really greasy, it had that delicious egg taste, I thought it was delicious overall.
Deb: I give it a B+. I loved it, but it needed more vegetables. It was also kinda oily, but it was damn tasty.
Sarah: B-. I think it varied from batch to batch, and that mine was too greasy. I think I want peanuts, more vegetables, more variety of texture.
(We pause to debate whether or not pad thai traditionally has a wide variety of vegetables.)
Brian: B...the noodles and egg were great, the bean sprouts were meh.
SOUP:
Alex: On my first bite of soup, I thought it wasn't that good, but then on bite 8 or 9 I thought it was great. I didn't enjoy the mushroom part of it, though. (The stems were tough.) So A-...I liked it, I'd make it again.
Jim: It was really rich. If we make it again I'd use white mushrooms and slice them razor thin. A-, and I agree with Alex.
Deb: I didn't have a lot of it, it seemed kind of sweet, so B-.
Sarah: B+. I wanted it to have more complex flavoring...more lime-y sourness to it. And I agree, the mushrooms were not quite right. But it was real close to how I wanted it.
Brian: B....the broth was great, but the mushrooms did nothing for me. (I also ate it last, so my full belly might have something to do with this grade.)
BRUSSEL SPROUTS
Alex: C+. I like them in general; however, they suffer a little bit from One True Wayness, where if they're not the one way I like them (roasted with some sweet thing) they suffer. These were wilty and mushy, with a little of that overly brocolli-y flavor. So. If I was going to do it I'd roast it and toss it in a sauce afterwards.
Jim: I give them a D...which is a pretty high grade considering that they're brussel sprouts! I ate half, and the outer part with the skin had some really nice flavor that disguised the vegetable itself. I didn't throw up in my mouth at all!
Deb: A-. I loved them, except they were a little too greasy. I thought the flavor was delicious.
Sarah: C-. I also want mine to be crunchy on the outside, either fried or baked to an almost blackened state. This was the dumbest recipe I've ever seen--it called for a 1/2 cup of vegetable broth!
Brian: B, solid. I thought the stir fry nature actually worked well with the pad thai.
CAKE!
Alex: B+. I thought the texture was pretty good; it was light and fluffy. A little dry, but I had a gigantic piece, really thick. There wasn't enough frosting, but there was really nice.
Deb: C-. There's something crazy about that texture, and it did not taste like restaurant or bakery cake, it tasted like ohmigod what the fuck happened cake. It was edible! Sometimes you get a cake-cake that tastes like CAKE, and that's not what this was. You know, a NORMAL kind of cake.
Jim: B+. I really liked the cake, I thought the texture was good, and the icing was good but I would have preferred a cream cheese icing...heavier and more.
Sarah: B+. Mostly it would have been perfect if it was a little more moist, and I wanted twice as much frosting if not a little bit more. Plain in kind of a delightful
Brian: A-! The cake was a little dry, and more frosting (or maybe ice cream, oooo) would have bumped it up to an A+.
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