In
my last food blog,
I mentioned that I had made my last country meal in DC; Little did I know I
would have the opportunity to make another DC country dinner a few months after
moving back to Pittsburgh. For
Thanksgiving this year, Noah and Emily suggested that we all get together at
their new house for a Friday night country meal. While they did almost all the work planning
the meal, shopping, and cooking, I was sous chef and took responsibility
for blogging about the meal.
The
first dinner I blogged about (Afghanistan)
was also a Thanksgiving Friday night dinner, as was the Iran dinner. This dinner that Noah and Emily hosted was
much larger than what I had hosted in the past – both Noah’s and Emily’s
families attended. With 18 people
overall, we needed three tables!
Fortunately, their new house can handle it, although they did have to
borrow chairs. The guest list included: my
children (Noah, Rachel, and Josh); Emily’s parents (Mitch and Becky), her
brother (Jeremy), and her grandmother; Noah’s grandmother (Brenda), aunts,
uncles and cousins (Daniel, Janice, Naomi, Roger, Marissa, Zach, Jacob, and
Jacob’s girlfriend Naomi). Oh, yes, and
Rachel’s dog, Charlie, visiting from Los Angeles, who (eventually) became good
friends with Emily and Noah’s dog Liam.
There
are many good “M” countries to choose from, and we had several discussions
before deciding on Malaysia – exotic, with interesting food combining Southeast
Asian and Indian, yet not overly unfamiliar for those in attendance with less
adventuresome palettes. Emily and Noah did
good research and planned a full and exciting meal. Since almost every recipe had some amount of
garlic, shallots, coconut, and lemongrass, they bought massive quantities of
each of those ingredients. It was quite
an adventure chopping and preparing everything – I have so much admiration for
chefs who make dozens of meals every day!
The
Appetizer:
Satay is a quintessential food in
Malaysia and Indonesia. It is fun to eat
and flavorful, especially when grilled.
The chicken
satay recipe that we used is relatively simple, although there is a
lot of prep work cubing the chicken and chopping the garlic, shallots,
galangal, and lemongrass – especially when you have to quadruple the
recipe! We started with marinating the
chicken and left it to absorb the flavors for several hours while we worked on
the rest of the meal. We made a
traditional peanut
dipping sauce for the satay, although we used a lot fewer dried
chili peppers than the recipe calls for, in order not to overwhelm the satay’s
more delicate flavors (or our family’s delicate palettes!). As with the satay itself, we quadrupled the
recipe, but once we started grinding the peanuts, I realized that we were
making enough peanut sauce to feed half of DC!
Fortunately, the sauce was good on other things, such as bread (in lieu
of peanut butter), because we had so
much left over!
Noah grilled the satay skewers on
his outdoor gas grill, and the char on the meat really enhanced the
flavors. It was a bit of a balancing
act, trying to get dozens of skewers cooked and served at about the same time,
but Noah pulled it off. I really liked
the satay and could have had a whole meal of them. The rest of the guests were more mixed – the average
rating was 5.4, mostly 5’s and 6’s, but also a couple of 7’s and several 4’s.
The
Soup:
Laksa is a very popular soup in
Malaysia. Most laksa’s, however, are
made with sambal, which contains shrimp.
Fortunately, Emily found a great vegan
laksa, made with butternut squash, one of my favorites! It was a rather involved recipe, made more
involved by one of my mistakes. The
recipe calls for grinding coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds in a mortar. I bought Noah and Emily a mortar and pestle
as an early Hanukah gift, mostly to enable us to make the recipe as
written. Well, the coriander seeds just
did not want to get ground up. We did
the best we could and decided to put the spices in the soup semi-ground. After tasting the soup an hour later, as it
all came together, I realized that the coriander seeds were very bothersome and
annoying, if not actually a choking hazard.
By that time, we had pureed about a third of the squash, and the soup
was nice and thick. Time was running
out, but we decided that we had to strain the soup to get rid of the seed
coverings. It was a very tedious
process, and we lost a lot of the squash pulp along with the seeds, but the end
result was very smooth – and very tasty.
We pureed most of the rest of the squash to give the soup sufficient
body and left a few chunks in each bowl for texture and appearance. We boiled rice noodles, as the recipe
indicated, and put them on the bottom of the bowls and topped each bowl with a
basil leaf.
I think it was a beautiful dish, and
the taste was amazing, in my opinion. Again,
the guests had a diversity of opinions on this dish – the average rating was
5.5, with most of the ratings in the 6’s and 7’s, but also some 3’s and 4’s. I will definitely put this on my keepers list –
a very hearty and satisfying soup! I
plan to make it for Davida in the depth of winter, although I will likely use
ground spices next time (Noah just made it again, however, using a coffee
grinder for the spices, and he said it worked just fine).
The
Main Dish:
Rendang curry is a common Malaysian
dish. While many of the recipes are made
with beef, Emily opted for a Chicken
Rendang recipe. We inaugurated their
Creuset pot for the meal, filling it to the brim with chicken for 18. Again, the recipe involved a lot of chopping
of garlic, shallots, lemongrass, and onion, but the steps themselves were
relatively straightforward. I had told
Noah and Emily that cooking for 18 was not much more work than cooking for 10,
but I forgot about all the prep time – while the cooking itself doesn’t involve
much more work, the cutting and chopping is pretty much proportional to the
number of people being fed.
Fortunately, all that cutting and
chopping was worth it. The sauce was
rich and flavorful – and not too spicy. Fortunately, Noah and Emily had made
the Rendang recipe the week before to try it out and found that it was way too
spicy with the number of chilis called for. So, for the family meal we used
only a fraction of the amount of what was called for, despite tripling the rest
of the recipe. Most people seemed to
enjoy the chicken, indicating that it was both flavorful and moist. The average was 6 –an even split between 7’s
and 5’s, with a few 6’s thrown in (tough crowd!). But, yet another recipe to add to my keepers!
The
Starch:
We were thinking about making either
compressed
rice or nasi lemak rice,
which is one of the national dishes of Malaysia, but ran out of time (and
energy). In the end, the starch was just
plain basmati rice – nothing to write home (or a blog) about, but excellent for
soaking up all the great juices from the Rendang.
The
Vegetable:
The vegetable
recipe that Emily found called for Kangkong (water spinach) and sambal
(shrimp paste). Since the sambal is not
kosher and she couldn’t find water spinach, we kind of made up our own
recipe. The Asian grocer suggested to
use baby bok choy, spinach, and some other green that we couldn’t identify as a
substitute for the water spinach. I
chopped the greens and stir-fried them with a bit of canola oil and some
chopped garlic, and then added a bit of soy sauce when the greens were tender. Over the years, I’ve used a similar recipe
for making green beans, so I was fairly confident that it would be okay. People were mixed on the dish – the average
rating was 4.8, with mostly 4’s and 5’s (plus a couple of 7’s!). One complaint was that the portions were too
small; I must keep reminding myself how much leafy greens cook down – the wok
was initially overflowing with greens.
The
Dessert:
Long-time readers of the blog (see Afghanistan
and Iran)
know that the dessert for Thanksgiving Friday evening dinner is always our
family’s traditional pareve chocolate cake in honor of Rachel’s birthday. I’ve probably made the cake over 50 times and
it is a big hit every time (when I remember to include all the
ingredients). This time was no exception
– the cake averaged a 6.4 rating with the guests, and you can tell from the
photo that Rachel was definitely satisfied (Charlie looks less than thrilled,
because he knows dogs cannot eat chocolate).
Looking back on the blogs, I notice
that I have not previously included the cake recipe, which I got from my mother
probably some 40 years ago. Enjoy!
Two-layer cake:
· 2/3 cup soft margarine
· 1.75 cup sugar
· 2 eggs, room temperature
· 1 tsp vanilla
Cream at high speed of mixer until
fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally; Blend in:
· 2.5 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted in double boiler
Slowly mix in the following,
alternating with 1.25 cup ice water:
· 2.5 cup flour
· 1.25 tsp baking soda
· ½ tsp salt
Put into two 9” greased pans, bake
for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees, until toothpick comes out clean; Cool on cake
racks.
Frosting:
· Melt 4 oz unsweetened chocolate and 1/3 stick margarine in
double boiler
Mix together until creamy:
· 3 cup confectioner sugar
· 1/3 cup soy or other non-dairy “milk”
· 1 tsp vanilla
· Pinch of salt
· Melted chocolate and margarine
Add more sugar if the frosting is
too runny. Use about ¼ of the frosting
between the cake layers, and the rest for the sides and top. Decorations are optional.
Up next: Nepal!
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