Some people love ketchup; others, barbecue sauce. In our home, this peanut coconut sauce is king. My daughter Abigail loves it so much that I often jokingly offer her some chicken with her sauce! She usually responds with a snarky grin, "More sauce, please."
This favorite of street stalls, simple cafés, and roadside stops is ideal for a casual meal for friends. Serve with a selection of fresh and cooked salads. Calculate three brochettes per person.
Ingredients
The Mediterranean is rich in mussels, in particular in the rocky coastal regions. They are also abundant in the coastal regions of the United States. Cozze, or mussels, are a very popular dish in Italy, especially around Naples. It seems that just about every Italian American restaurant has some rendition of a mussels dish: alla Posillipo (spicy tomato sauce), alla marinara (mild fresh tomato sauce), and so on. Well, here is a spicy one. Mussels are not an expensive seafood and deliver a lot of flavor if fresh and still briny from the sea. Otherwise, save your San Marzano for another dish.
Ingredients
If the test of a great dish is that you taste something new and delicious with each mouthful, then this northern Indian masterpiece is in the first ranks. It’s special occasion food there and it should be for us too.
A celestial trio of Italian ingredients — dried figs, sliced prosciutto, and creamy Gorgonzola — makes an irresistible filling for boneless chicken breasts. Once stuffed and skewered, the breasts are pan-seared, then quickly roasted until golden brown. A glaze made with honey and balsamic vinegar gives the chicken a polished look and complements the distinctive flavors of the stuffing.
This is one of the cooler dishes I’ve ever made. I’d heard about Chinese tea eggs before, but had never made them. Then I found myself working with madrone bark, which peels off in cinnamon-like curls every summer. The Indians here in California used madrone bark tea medicinally, and I’ve been experimenting with the concoction, which tastes like a combination of cinnamon, mushrooms, woodsmoke — and something I can’t quite pin down.
Soybeans are such an integral part of Asian cooking that tofu is often paired with edamame in the same preparation, showcasing the beans’ versatility. In this lovely Japanese soup, white silken tofu is surrounded by a green moat of pureed edamame. Traditionally, pods of fresh soybeans would be boiled, shelled, and hand mashed. You can liberate yourself by using frozen edamame and a blender.
Silken tofu, unlike regular tofu, does not entail pressing the whey out during the tofu making process. Rather, the soy milk is solidified in its final container. The curds and whey never separate, resulting in the velvety soft texture of silken tofu, called kinugoshi-dofu (silk-strained tofu) in Japanese.