chocolate and coconut

Fresh coconut shredded with my new microplane grater. Served simply over chocolate ice cream. The awesome thing about the microplane is the fine slices release lots of oil into each bite. I may have to get another one of these tomorrow....

Coconut Caramel

I frequently buy new stuff in Chinatown, but never two jars of something I haven't yet tried. Coconut caramel, ingredients are 100% coconut, I figured how could I go wrong?

It doesn't taste like coconut or caramel... somewhere more between dark soy and maybe tamarind or something. I found it of most value during passover (there's wheat in soy sauce) and have not opened the second jar.

Here's some chicken scraps cooked down to jerky in coconut caramel.

Big Knife

My brother in law Yishai was a slaughterer for Hebrew National... This was several years ago; he had put his name in a pool of available rabbis and (he lives in Israel) got a call saying 'Be in minnesota in 72 hours, bring your knife'.

He made a stopover to visit us on the way; this picture is from that first trip. He's sharpening the knife for slaughtering cattle before his first day of work. Typically, he saw about 400, er, 'clients' a day.

Devilled Eggs

Take the time - they are yummy and not that hard. First make sure you don't boil the eggs so much they turn green -- some sort of sulfur compound, I think -- but leave them a little soft.

Mix with mayo and sri racha, stuff back into the eggs and dust with paprika. Voila.

Li'l Color

This is from the autumn... threading a bunch of hot peppers up to dry for the winter. I hung them on a cabinet and they dried nicely.

Bean Thread Salad

I love bean thread salad, and learned to prepare it the way I learned in Thailand. The formula, roughly, is to prepare your bean thread, and mix with a dressing of palm sugar, fish sauce, hot pepper, and lime (sweet, salt, hot, sour). Then add some vegetables, and maybe a protein with a chewy or crunchy texture. In bangkok, that might be shredded pomelo and dried shrimp; here it's fresh cucumber and salmon cracklings. The serving bowl has shredded radish for color.

Served alongside an avocado/cucumber/scallion futo maki I whipped together, sort of a Japanese sub sandwich in my book.