What to Do with Green Tomatoes?

A month or so ago I pulled the last of the straggling tomato plants out of my garden. The weather had turned and nothing else was going to ripen so it was better to bring them inside and see what could be salvaged. What to do with a table full of green tomatoes? Luckily, I found a few things!

The first thing I tried was fried green tomatoes. It's a simple, classic preparation that turned out great. I used kefir instead of buttermilk or sweet milk to moisten the tomato slices, a mixture of flour and cornmeal to bread them and fried them in a mix of refined coconut oil and bacon grease. They were fantastic hot, topped with some Secret Aardvark Sauce, and also cold on top of a lettuce salad.

The best thing I've done with them, however, is this fantastic green curry with shrimp recipe I came across. The original recipe calls for making a shrimp stock and augmenting the curry with lemongrass but my simpler version was still amazingly good. I've been a fan of yellow curry for a long time but this was my first time working with green curry paste. It is fiery hot but with really interesting sour flavors as well. I found more lime juice and sugar, as well as mixing in some yellow curry paste, really helped mediate the heat. Give it a try!

Simple Green Curry with Green Tomatoes and Shrimp

coconut oil or other cooking fat

1/2 yellow onion, sliced thin

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbs ginger, minced

2-4 tbs green curry paste (I like Mae Ploy brand)

1 can coconut milk

2-3 cups shrimp, chicken, or vegetable stock, or water

1 cup green tomatoes, halved or quartered into 1 or 2 inch chunks

shrimp*

brown or raw sugar

soy sauce or fish sauce (optional)

1 or 2 limes

*I used pre cooked frozen small shrimp from Trader Joes. Because it was a splurge item I used a fair amount of shrimp. Use as many of whatever kind of shrimp you want. Adjust how long they are in the curry based on how much cooking or heating your shrimp need.

Sautee onion and ginger in coconut oil in a medium sized sauce pan. When the onion is soft but not brown add the garlic and cook for another minute then add the green curry paste. Continue to cook for another minute or two until fragrant. Stir in the coconut milk and broth until it is the consistency you like - I like mine like a thin stew or thick soup.

Bring the curry to a boil and add in the green tomatoes, a spoonful of sugar, a dash of fish or soy sauce and a squeeze of lime juice. Taste the curry and see if you think it needs more or any of those seasonings. Allow to simmer for 15 minutes or until the tomatoes are tender. Stir in the shrimp and allow them to get cooked or heated through. Adjust final flavor with more sugar, lime or fish or soy sauce.

Serve over jasmine or basmati rice with more lime juice squeezed over top.

This recipe posted as part of Real Food Wednesdays. Check out the other posts for more ways to incorporate healthful, real food, into your diet.

Street Food, Portland Style

For years Portland, Oregon has been up and coming in the food world. It is a fantastic climate to grow a wide variety of produce and meats so we are known for our local, organic, sustainable and otherwise virtuous food. Chefs like to pair local specialties like salmon, hazelnuts, raspberries and lamb with our world renown wines. There are restaurants specializing in local foods at almost every price point ranging from Higgins and Wildwood at the top, The Farm Cafe and Laughing Planet in the middle all the way down to vendors at farmers markets and street carts like Addy's Sandwich Shop.

Today, though, I went for something a little different. A little more Asian. I spent a day last week reading through Food Carts Portland.com and found myself daydreaming about a Thai cart they reviewed downtown. If you throw a rock in the air in this town you will hit a decent Thai restaurant or food cart, and as you know I do love Thai food. This one, however, is a little different.

Nong's Khao Man Gai has only one dish on the menu... khao man gai. Just one dish, you ask. And this one dish is chicken and rice? This doesn't sound daydream worthy. But just wait until you taste it. First off, it's served wrapped up in white butcher paper with the fork and napkin tucked under a rubber band. Too adorable!

Then you open the package and smell the delicate, heady scent of the chicken and rice. Whatever seasoning Nong uses in her broth is absolutely fantastic! The cucumber and cilantro add a nice crisp, cool crunch to the warm soft chicken and rice and look beautiful against the mound of brown. Then you open the little sauce cup and the ginger soy chili smell momentarily takes over everything. But you are ready. You take a fork full of chicken and the flavor sensation begins. A little chicken, a little rice, some sauce. Or no rice, just chicken and sauce. Cucumber and rice and sauce. A sip of the winter melon soup served on the side. Yummmmm. Everything is subtle, and flavorful and absolutely delicious.

I don't often spend this much time waxing poetic over a single dish, but this stuff begs for it. It is the epitome of that Asian juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity. I know where I'm going to eat the next time I am feeling a little under the weather, or just in need of some interesting comfort food. Next time, I might try adding the chicken livers or fried chicken skin, or I might just try to make it at home. Khao man gai, my new favorite food!

My Favorite Coconut Recipe

The Real Food Wednesday topic this week is healthy coconut recipes. When I was a kid I thought I didn't like the taste of coconut, but it turns out that it's actually the texture of coconut flakes that I don't like. Since discovering coconut milk and coconut oil I have come to really love the flavor of coconuts. I use it for lots of things in my kitchen (which I will share with you here) but, as any of you who have read my blog before know, my all time favorite recipe with coconut in it is - yup, you guessed it. Thai Yellow Curry. Today I'll share with you my two home made thai yellow curry recipes. Both are delicious.
For more information on why coconut is so healthful (and it is) check out these links.

The Weston A Price Foundation article on coconut oil.

Bruce Fife's page on coconut - note, he sells coconut products. Not that his research is bad, just that he's got a reason for you to love the stuff.

Kelly the Kitchen Kop's blog on coconut.

Practical Nourishment - a blog I just found and intend to read often!

I always have coconut milk and coconut oil in my kitchen. I use expeller pressed coconut oil from Omega Nutrition anywhere I would use vegetable oil (which I don't use because it is so high in polyunsaturated fats which are not very healthy for you) because it can be heated to medium/high temperatures and doesn't add a coconutty flavor. Here are a few of my other favorite uses for coconut oil and milk.

*Coconut milk kefir. Just drop kefir grains in coconut milk for a sweet, sour, tangy non-dairy fermented treat. Kefir grains will not grow in coconut milk, but they survive just fine as long as they get switched back into dairy milk. SN of Everything Free Eating propogates kefir grains in dairy milk and then uses them in coconut milk until they die to make kefir for her dairy sensitive kids.

* Coconut oil mixed with butter on popcorn. Oooohhhmmmyyyyyyuuuummmmm. Yeah. It's that good.

* Coconut-chocolate bark made with coconut oil, cocoa powder or melted chocolate and chopped nuts. It's candy, and it's good for you, I swear. I've never added butter or peanut butter, but here's a recipe that is worth trying over at Practical Nourishment.

* Jamacian Beans and Rice. A one pot dish adapted from the recipe in Nourishing Traditions. So, so good!

* Sometimes I eat a spoonful of coconut oil off a spoon to tide me over until I can eat real food. It's amazing how well it works at staving off hunger.

And now onto the meat and potatoes, er, coconut milk and chicken. As you can see from my Mission: Yellow Curry PDX entries I love Thai yellow curry. I love how complex it is, and how filling and soothing. It's wonderful for a hang over, not that I know anything about that sort of thing. Amazingly, it's super easy to make at home as well. Remember, a curry is just a stew. Add what you have, subtract what you don't and adjust the amounts or consistency to suit your tastes or the number of folks you are feeding.

You do need one special ingredient to make Thai curry and that is Thai curry paste. Indian curry powder will not do. My favorite brand, and one that a friend who actually lived in Thailand used, is Mae Ploy. I buy it locally at an asian supermarket, but have seen it at other grocery stores in town. You can also get it here on Amazon. Or just google around, maybe some other, slightly less giant/evil corporation will ship it to your house. Mae Ploy makes other flavors of curry paste and all can be substituted for the yellow but the all have slightly different tastes. Yellow curry is the mildest as far as heat goes, so if you have gringo taste buds be careful!

This is the Thai curry that my friend Rosie taught me to make my freshman year of college. It changed my world. Maybe it will change yours as well.

Thai Curry at Home
* 1-2 tbs virgin coconut oil or flavorless cooking fat
* 1/2 -1 yellow onion, sliced or chopped coarsely
* 1-2 cloves garlic, sliced or minced
* minced ginger (I would use about 1 tbs minced, but if thats too much for you,use less)
* chile flakes (optional)
* 3 or 4 tbs Mae Ploy Thai Yellow Curry Paste
* 1 14 oz can coconut milk
* 2 cups water or chicken stock or a mix
* 2 tsp soy sauce
* 1-3 tsp Thai fish sauce
* 2 frozen chicken breasts or equivalent in cooked meat or cubed tofu (I don't recommend it, but that's how I was taught - it's your dinner :)
* approx 2 cups of any of the following, or a mix: yellow, red or purple potato or sweet potato, washed and chopped and/or chopped carrots and/or chopped eggplant or zucchini and/or cauliflower florets, green beans, frozen peas
* Fresh limes for juice
* a spoonful of brown sugar (very optional)

1. Melt fat in a largeish sauce pot (mine is probably 3 quarts.. not quite a soup pot) and add onions (and carrots if using). Rosie taught me to slice the onions longitudinally, and I still like to do it that way for curry. It doesn't really matter though. Cook over medium heat until transluscent. Add ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant (add chile flakes now, but don't unless you know how spicy your curry paste is). Add curry paste to the cooked vegetables and mash, mix and fry until quite fragrant.

2. Add coconut milk and stir to combine paste in with the coconut milk. Add potatoes (sweet potatoes/cauliflower/other hard veggies or eggplant) and chicken (or tofu, or not) to the pot. Add soy sauce, fish sauce and chicken broth and water to barely cover the contents. You can use chicken broth or water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and let simmer until potatoes are tender and chicken is cooked through. Add soft vegetables like green beans, zucchini or frozen peas later in the cooking process so they don't get too mushy.

3. Add a little lime juice to the curry and taste for seasonings. Adding a little bit of brown sugar will mellow the heat a bit. Soy sauce will deepen the flavor. Hot sauce will up the heat. Serve over rice, and enjoy!

I've also made this thai curry recipe from A Year of Crockpotting in my Rival crock pot. I used Mae Ploy curry paste instead of the chili paste it calls for and it was delicious. Here's my write up over at Recipezaar. In any of these recipes you can adjust the amount of hot sauce or chile flakes, curry paste, sugar, soy sauce or fish sauce to your own tastes. I've taken to adding a little bit of turmeric to the sauce too, to counteract the dulling effect of the soy sauce on the color of the curry. Oh, and some places add basil or cilantro to their curry. You might like that.

Coconut milk and oil are amazingly tasty and healthful food products. It is worth perfecting a few recipes to get those healthful products into your repertoire. And pretty soon you'll be sneaking spoonfuls of coconut oil late at night like the rest of us.

P.S. My lunchbox is a Laptop Lunchbox (www.laptoplunches.com). You can see more of my photos by clicking on the photos and viewing my flickr streams.

Mission: Yellow Curry PDX, Entry 001

I have a goal to eat Thai yellow curry in every Thai restaurant in Portland, Oregon. This may be a herculean feat considering Yahoo local lists at least 116 Thai restaurants in Portland, but I'm going to try. And considering I could eat thai yellow curry once or twice a week, every week, it will be a pleasant challenge.

I've decided to get serious about this goal and start recording my findings. This blog seems like a perfect place to do that first, because it is convenient for me, and also because thai food usually falls within the realm of real food. Thai food is chok full of vegetables, small amounts of meat and seafood, healthy spices and herbs and good fats like coconut milk and peanuts. Fish sauce, a wonderfully nutritious condiment, is almost ubiquitious in Thai cooking. It is also relatively easy to get gluten free meals at thai restaurants becaue of the use of rice and rice noodles (though I would certainly talk to a waiter about possible cross contamination if that is an issue for you). Thai restaurants in America certainly use polyunsaturated vegetable oil for their stir frying and deep frying but if you are good about using healthy fats at home you can probably budget for the occasional Thai meal. If you cook Thai food at home you can make it super healthy with coconut oil, grassfed meat and wild seafood.

Without further ado, I give you Mission: Yellow Curry PDX, Entry 001. Kesone Thai Lao Bistro.

Kesone Thai Lao Bistro
2600 NE Sandy
http://www.kesone.com/menu.htm

What I ordered:
Lunch special yellow curry with eggplant instead of potatoes, medium spicy, with chicken. Also an order of fresh summer rolls.

Overall Curry Rating: 2

Service: 5
The restaurant is very nicely decorated with a pleasant waitstaff. It only took a couple minutes for my order to come. Looks like they have a full bar set up, in case you want Makers Mark with your stir fried eggplant some evening.

Presentation/Packaging: 1
I actually would give this a 3 on presentation but a 1 on packaging. They piled the rice neatly, a nice touch, but it was surrounded by curdled, brown yellow colored vegetables. They also packed the lunch special in one of those clear plastic, hinged, to go containers which, as usual, broke and I ended up with half of my curry inside the plastic bag. Hot, liquid things should not go in those plastic containers! They just don't hold up!!

Portion Size and Price: 4
I paid 6.50 for the curry and 3.50 for the rolls. The curry was a perfectly decent size portion so I'm happy.

Flavor complexity: 1
It smells alright, but it just doesn't have much taste at all. Kinda turmericky. Yeah. Just say no.

Overall flavor: 2
I mean, I ate it all. It's still curry. But as noted before, it was curdled a bit, and had no complexity of flavor at all. The eggplant was well cooked (this can be a problem sometimes) but the chicken was almost overcooked. And the rice wasn't even that good - like they used "long grain rice" instead of jasmine or basmati.

Anything else I ordered: 3
The summer rolls were quite nice - hard to mess those up though. I've had more complex peanut sauces before, but it wasn't unpleasant in anyway.

Last thoughts:
I might give these guys another try - if nothing else was open anywhere else in town. I guess I would like to see how they handle stir fry and noodle dishes, but this curry does not bode well for them.