Pattaya Thai Cuisine

My mum and sister stayed with me in Philadelphia for a few days! I rekindled my love for fiery Thai cuisine on the first night they stayed over, at Pattaya Thai Cuisine. The last time I had legitimate Thai food was at least three or four years ago (and I loved it then too). Unfortunately, my sister was not a fan of the spice (even though we got "very mild" dishes).


I have never had drunken noodles before, and these vegetable ones tasted a bit tomato-y and sweet. I'm not sure what they're supposed to taste like. I enjoyed them though!


We also got a panang red curry with cow, which meant that there was peanut in the sauce. The curry sauce was so creamy and umami. How I lived for all this time without Thai food confuses me.


My sister got some spring rolls which she did not enjoy (they were ok), and we shared some calamari rings which had a really nice sweet, sour, and spicy sauce and lettuce with dressing. It turns out that the "fried and chewy fish rings" that I used to eat in Australia are not in fact cod, but actually squid.

I was highly satisfied.

Whole Wheat "Leftovers" Cookies

Well. It's my last Sunday subletting at HamCore and I have to use up all my food by (Thur|Fri|Sat) of next week.

SP and I made delicious whole wheat cookies with curry powder, cinnamon, and dark chocolate. We did not freeze the dough (as the instructions say), and after baking, we both proceeded to devour the whole batch of cookies (well, we made half a batch of cookies - 1 leftover stick of butter) while watching Sheep in the Big City. These cookies were quite filling (both emotionally and physically) and tasted a bit like gingerbread and had a satisfying sandy texture. I also wanted to just eat the cookie dough raw. So there - no more butter and chocolate! SP tried to grind  a cinnamon stick, first using a knife (nice little chunks, but highly inefficient), and then using a cocktail masher + bowl. We ended up with sizable chunks of cinnamon along with the puny bits.

I also had about a liter of skim milk leftover and I was afraid that it would go bad, so I decided to freeze it with some maple syrup, to make milk and maple granita. Basically, you break the ice slurry every hour or so until you have pin-sized ice crystals. You can easily chip at this structure to get a good amount of dessert. It is not creamy but it's fine. I'm not sure why I didn't make this with all the leftover milk and half&half during the semester. So, milk used!

Finally, I was a counselor for an Engineering camp last week, and at the final reception, there was a giant cake, with an anticipated 100+ servings (I assume - there were 69 students, and you have to include their families!). Miraculously, there were about 13 slices leftover, and they were going to trash all those slices! So, I claimed it, took it to DRL, fed some physicists, and brought the rest home to eat. Unfortunately, the end pieces of cake were slathered with "American Buttercream Frosting", a publicly-celebrated disaster. To me, that stuff is vile. Fatty and flavourless. I scraped off most of it from the cake parts and ate those, but I didn't want to throw out this butter+powdered sugar concoction, like I have done in the past (at least three times, especially whenever we got the Costco cakes). The answer hit me like a slice of pie hitting a serving plate - bake with it! Duh!

So I mixed it with the rind, juice and pulp of two lemons I happen to have, 1.5 c of whole wheat flour, a sprinkle of instant rice (just for experimentation) and some baking soda, and baked the stiff dough at 350 F for 10 minutes on the middle rack of the oven. I ended up with 18 cookies with a crusty exterior (crispy bottoms) and a cooked gooey filling. The cookie is not particularly sweet, and did not expand significantly while baking. It was quite lemony and I'm pretty glad I found a use for gross "American Buttercream Frosting"!

So, all I have now are about 6 eggs, some Brie, flour, almond meal, cocoa powder, oil, cooked pasta, rice, frozen mango, frozen veggies, an apple, and yogurt.

Cooking!

 SP made tomato salad and we made mashed potato together. It's a huge mountain of mashed potato, and I even dug a tunnel for it!

I made SP risotto + poached eggs for dinner. It turns out that I'm terrible at making poached eggs, and I realised that I've never actually made poached eggs by myself before. Anyway.
 In exchange, SP also "made me dinner" :) It's curry (curry sauce in a jar) with fried tofu (first covered in flour), an orange pepper, and onion, all on sushi rice. Extremely delicious!! :) Better than any food truck curry.

Last week we also had dinner together, although there wasn't much fancy stuff. Just pasta one night and corn tortillas+cheese+egg the other. We had lunch together at Hummus last Sunday, and I don't think I'm ever going again. If there is a fast food name for Mediterranean food, this would be it. To me, everything was salty, the tabouli didn't have wondrous flavour (actually, the salt, in general, masks the fact that none of the foods have much flavour), and the falafel was dry. I feel like the hummus from the grocery store actually tastes fresher than the one here. It was just really disappointing, because all the food truck falafel/hummus-type foods have been far better (meaning the House of Pita and Magic Carpet). Oh well.

Curry On Wheels

SP and I trudged out into the snow (yes! First snow of the year! First snow since Halloween!) on the 21st to get lunch at a food truck, and we ended up going to Curry On Wheels, because
1. Koja wasn't open (this is turning into a running joke...it's never open when we go there)
2. Kim's wasn't open

I wasn't physically hungry (if I'm emotionally satisfied, I don't need food!) but curry is mostly always delicious. I got the Mallie Kofta Curry (vegetable curry with cheese croquettes), while SP got chicken tikka masala. The onion and sauce in the chicken tikka masala was really delicious ("medium" spicyness).

Although I also asked for "medium" spicyness, the kofta curry was like fire! Maybe I just haven't had spicy food in a while, but in order to consume that curry, I had a rice:curry weight ratio of 1:0.22 (something like that). It was still delicious, though. The cheese croquettes were a bit disappointing because there was no cheese taste, at all.

 Here is a "fully formed" cheese croquette. Note its lack of form and lack of cheese. :(

2 Days in Philadelphia

I hung out for 2 days with SP before the semester begins (tomorrow)! We ate a bunch of food (no surprises there...):

1. Falafel food truck on 35th and Market St.

Thought I had escaped from rice since I'm not going to be home until at least March. Guess I was wrong. At least it isn't plain ol' steamed white rice (actually, the older I get, the more and more I appreciate eating plain ol' rice. Maybe it's because I have just grown to love food/carbohydrates, in general).
The falafel was kinda dry and crumbly and uniform in texture.

2. Ramune (Japanese drink with the marble that seals it until you push it down).

3. Singapore Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant 1029 Race St. (six stars out of five)

 Dim lighting (how utterly romantic!), cool tablecloth*, light green tea, and multiple utensils (fork, spoon, and chopsticks that seemed to be made out of a really absorbent wood). When passing me a fork, the owner (?) of the restaurant jokingly asked me, "Do you know how to use this?", and I replied "I'll try...he'll teach me [referring to SP]." (because SP isn't ethnically Chinese, but I am). Since moving to the US over five years ago, I've used chopsticks maybe 20 times in total, usually at restaurants that don't offer alternatives. My favourite eating utensil is probably the metal teaspoon.

 Stuffed tofu with amazing chunky ginger-peanut sauce. Dude. I could drink this sauce! I realise that I would probably be terrible at getting a guy via a dinner date. Especially with the picture-taking and my indecision. Particularly if there is a vegetarian menu with sections labelled "Beef", "Poultry", "Pork", and "Tofu" (all made with soy or gluten, of course).

 VEGGIES!! I am going to make stuffed tofu one day. I think they stuff the tofu AFTER stir-frying it, else the veggies would fall out.

 We also got dumplings. I want to drag SP here for dim sum one day, just because I love dim sum, and every time my family and I go to some dim sum place, most of the stuff has animal pieces. I didn't particularly love the dumplings because the filling was kinda mushy, and there was a lot of extra space inside the dumpling. SP liked them though.

 SP got a curry hotpot, and the veggies at the bottom were still tongue-burning-hot by the time the meal was over. It was pretty amazing, although I got my tongue burned a bit. I was going to get curry with gluten (read on the menu as "Curry with Beef") but I ended up getting Crispy Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs (gluten). I was debating between that and Sweet and Sour Pork Loin (soy), but the owner (?) recommended the gluten, so I got it. I mean, what do vegetarian chefs substitute animal bones with, right?

The sauce was really sweet. There were chunks of pineapple, tomato, pepper, carrot, and broccoli in the dish. I'm glad that this restaurant uses sundry vegetables in all its dishes (unlike other Chinese restaurants that pair broccoli with EVERYTHING) -- well, duh, it's a vegetarian restaurant.

The gluten ball tasted a bit like potato, a bit like gluten, and sort of had the appearance and texture of pig flesh. It obviously didn't taste like pig flesh. The sauce masked everything, though, which was neat. I'm going to believe that the "bone" part is just a potato fry, because that's what it tasted like. It was odd chewing the "bone". Seriously. It's like having an edible popsicle stick.
Note the brown rice.

At the end, we got 2 orange slices, 2 fortune cookies (grr) and 2 fried sesame balls with custard filling. My fortune was "The weather is nice". Great.
I think that for a sit-in vegetarian restaurant in the city, the meal was reasonably priced. With presumably fresh ingredients and a lot of veggies in the dishes, dim sum at night-time, a regular customer sitting in the corner reading a book (who ate a meal and also ordered take-out before leaving), and pretty tablecloths*, Singapore Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant is quite charming. SO BRING YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S) THERE!

*In looking at pictures of this restaurant online, I realised that they also have pink tablecloths. I prefer the paisley blue ones more)

4. Lotte Koala's March (cookies) - not a huge fan of them but SP loves them.

5. Lovash Indian Cuisine on 37th and Spruce St.

 More rice (long grain, rather cold -- but that may have been due to the weather, but the peas and paneer cheese were still warm). Some of the peas were still a bit hard, which means that they use dried peas, and not frozen ones. I love frozen peas and frozen corn. I eat frozen corn while it's still frozen, and I intend to do that with peas too, in the future (for other frozen things I eat, read here). The panner was less plasticky/smooth compared to paneer I've had before, and I'm not sure if that makes it more/less authentic.

 SP got chicken with something...It looked good because it was in a plastic container while mine was in a styrofoam one.

6. The Crepewalk, 36th and Spruce
Nutella crepe. Obviously better than the crepes that I made (which SP said were too thick). These are pretty much translucent!

Soybean Curry!

Ingredients
Some oil or butter
Soybeans! --SOAKED OVERNIGHT!
LOTS OF minced GARLIC!
1 small diced red onion
1 cut tomato
1 tbsp curry powder
Dried coriander
50 ml milk
Chili flakes/powder (or real chilies, which I don't have)

Method
1. Stick everything in a pot and let simmer for some 20 minutes, until the soybeans are cooked.

Curry!

I made some curry today with potatoes and squash from the garden. I also added in two carrots and two pieces of coconut. It was delicious!! Even my brother agreed, and he even wants to eat it again (with rice, this time)!!! My sister didn't, though, because she just wanted to eat candy/pancakes/chips. The curry wasn't too spicy, because I didn't add any chilies (but my sister STILL thought that it was spicy. Sigh.) This goes perfectly on its own, with rice, with noodles (yes, noodles), and even with whole wheat bread! Mmmm.

Ingredients - serves 5 to 6.
1 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic
0.5 onion
2 tsp curry powder
3 tsp coriander
(1 packet chili powder/flakes or chili)
Around 300 g potatoes
2 carrots
300 g squash
350 ml liquid (I used 250 ml water and 100 ml milk)
2 chunks of coconut for fun
A lot of tofu.

Method
1. Cook spices, garlic, onion and oil in a BIG saucepan for a few minutes.
2. Add chunks of potato and liquid to the curry mixture and stir on high heat until liquid starts simmering.
3. Add chunks of squash and let everything simmer on medium-high for 10 minutes.
4. Add carrots and let everything simmer until the vegetables are at the consistency that you prefer. We wanted something slightly mushy, so we simmered for about 20 minutes in total.
5. Pour curry into a bowl that has cubed, fresh tofu.

I'm just glad we don't have to ever buy the ready-made curry sauces from the vacuum packages that have globs of oil. I ought to add shredded coconut next time.

Polenta.

I'm starting to be a hermit in my room. I really don't enjoy being around my apartment-mates (I guess I'm just antisocial) even though they're nice and all. I guess I'm just really self-conscious when I cook food in front of strangers, especially when it involves vegetables, because apparently my apartment-mates don't consume vegetables (at least, they don't store vegetables in the fridge.)

It's pretty awkward when your apartment-mate's boyfriend asks "What's that?" when I take out some (smallish, not globular) eggplants from the fridge and set them on the cutting board, while waiting for my apartment-mate to finish using the sink. It gets worse when he asks, "So what's that?", and points to one stalk (Yes. One.) of chard that's sitting in an empty glass, and I answer "It's chard...uhh... it's like spinach but it's got pink parts."

And then when they leave and I finally start smashing up the tube of polenta (I know, I should make polenta from scratch. I'll do that one day) in a saucepan, another apartment-mate comes down and sticks one plate and one fork into the dishwasher and starts the cycle. She glances at my food and perhaps thinks, "woah, what is that?! It's like pink mashed potatoes!"

It turns out that pink (actually, "rainbow") chard and eggplant turns polenta a grungy shade of pink. It also appears that eggplant ought to be diced, rather than chunks, when on a stove with lumps of polenta. Over time, though, the polenta got thick and smooth, while the eggplant just... didn't fully cook :(.

Unfortunately, adding an ounce of cheese did nothing to make the polenta taste cheesy. I should've just eaten the cheese by itself!

My mum asked me to incorporate juniper berries in my cooking so I added a few. I couldn't really taste a difference, but I didn't really enjoy the taste of it when I chewed one by itself.

On the bright side, TVP pairs very well with polenta! My second batch of polenta included bak choi and curry powder, although I don't think I added enough curry powder. However, it looks more appetizing, and I decided to cook earlier (while everyone was asleep).

Good times to be in the kitchen:

Weekdays:

Before 8:30am, from 5pm to 6:30pm (any later, and they are cooking/drinking with friends)

Weekends:

Before 11am, not 12pm to 2pm (Any other time is unknown territory/up for grabs)

Reading Terminal Market - The Spice Market

It was forecast to rain around 1pm today, but it never did. It rained for around two minutes at 2pm. It never rained again. Because of this, I had planned my run for the morning, when I totally could've run in the afternoon (which is what I prefer). I ran to Reading Terminal Market with $5 in my key pocket, my key strung to my shoelaces, and my ID card in a secret location (haha).

$5 couldn't possibly buy everything that I wanted at Reading Terminal Market. It's a wonderful place; nothing like markets in Hong Kong (which are way better), but it's still pretty amazing; it's like Quincy Market in Boston, except that Reading Terminal Market sells more than prepared food; there are links of sausage, expensive kitchenware, honey, candles, and spices!

After browsing around the candy store and the spice store (The Spice Market), I decided to spend my $5 on curry powder and sour salt. Apparently, the sour sugar on Sour Patch Kids (and other delicious, addictive sour foods) is called "sour salt", which is just citric acid. Around February, all I wanted was to eat citric acid! ...Now I've found it, for $2.50 for 2 oz! (At least, I think it was 2 oz...the broken customer balance said "0.14". The woman told me that the stuff in the packages are either 1 or 2 oz). There were also juniper berries, but they weighed "0.07", so I'm assuming they were selling 1 oz for $2.25.

I've yet to try the curry and the citric acid... so stay tuned.

On the run back, I went through Rittenhouse and browsed the farmers market there. It's pretty awesome; next time, I'll have to bring more money and walk back, instead of run back. I'm lucky I have running shoes, and plenty of time. I don't know what I'm going to do during the semester, when I need my citric acid fix...

Later, I went to Clark Park's Farmers Market, and bought 8 oz of unsweetened coconut for $2.50! I also bought a bunch of organic rainbow chard ($2.50) for the first time, since I recall that chard tastes pretty okay from Penn Dining (although the way they cook it isn't that appetizing).

So, now I'm nearly out of cash.

Psychology Dinner Weeks Ago...

There was a psychology dinner a few weeks ago and I completely forgot to blog about it. The dinner was supposed to inspire us and make us want to major in psychology. The speaker, however, was extremely biased. She advocated against double majoring, stating that psychology is the most important subject in the world since it infiltrated every subject. Well, I would say that Biology is more important, because it studies LIVING THINGS whereas psychology only studies animal behavior [arguably, only human behavior, because psychologists always try to extrapolate animal data so that it can explain HUMAN behavior. However, then people may say that chemistry is what makes the world run since it explains THINGS, and the physicists will then claim that physics actually explains both THINGS AND NON-THINGS [a.k.a. tangible and untangible, including all those theoretical quantum stuffs] instead of just THINGS or merely LIVING THINGS. However, the mathematicians claim that maths runs everything, because physics relies on mathematics. This is an idea from XKCD.

Anyway. I got kind of irked because she had no right to tell me to singly major, so I think I lost some respect for her. She's a psychologist so she should have an inkling on how to manipulate us so that we'd leave falling in love with psychology.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about Indian food, not psychology, so I'm just gonna say that I couldn't eat half the stuff due to the chicken chunk infestations. I actually thought the spinach was with paneer cheese but it turns out it was chicken chunks...

However, the chickpeas were quite nice, as were the vegetables with paneer cheese. I don't really know why I'm so fond of curry yet not so inclined to eat spicy Chinese food. Perhaps the curry, due to the addition of tons of fat, is mellowed out, whereas Chinese spicy food is a full-out firecracker.

This is some doughnutty cake thing that was saturated in sugar syrup. It was extremely soggy and quite uniform in taste, so I'm not sure why I liked it. I believe it was deep fried before being drenched in sugar syrup, because it had that oily taste to it. Perhaps that's why I liked it.

The naan was extremely oily so I didn't really enjoy that part; generally I prefer savoury floury carbs to remain low in fat [breads, my mum's tortillas etc.]