Pho, Egg Rolls and a Trip to the Market (Part 2)

Finally getting around to finishing this post, which is long overdue. I'll skip to the good parts, and just post the recipes. If you missed it, here is part one.

My niece's handiwork, with a bit of Chinese mustard, Hoisin and Sweet and Sour. 

How to Cook an Elephant

I picked up a copy of "Cuban Home Cooking" at the thrift shop the other day. Spiral-bound cookbooks tend to be pretty hit-or-miss, but this one has some good recipes and will serve me well if I ever need to put together a Cuban meal. The last recipe in the book is for Elephant Stew, Cuban Style. It's too good not to share.

Elephant Stew, Cuban Style

Caldo de Elefante

1 Elephant, medium size, obtained legally

1 Barrel garlic cloves, finely minced

1 Crate sour oranges, squeezed

1 Barrel salt

2 Chickens (optional)

Cut elephant into bite-size pieces. (It is reported to take about two weeks.) Work garlic into the meat well. Cook over a kerosene stove fo 4 days at 450F. Sprinkle with sour orange juice and salt.

This recipe will serve 3,800 people for lunch. If you run short of food, add the two chickens. If seating is a problem, you may invite 1,000 people for four days (some may want to come twice), but most importantly - be sure to keep everything properly refrigerated!

                                                         -- from Cuban Home Cooking by Jane Cossio

Swordfish with a Caribbean Flavor

Still need to finish the Pho post, but I wanted to get a few recipes up this morning before I forgot them.

The inspiration for this meal was pretty simple. Dad wanted swordfish for his birthday, mom wanted to try a new recipe for asparagus, and I needed something to tie them together. We play kind of quick and loose with the definitions of different cuisines, so we'll call this a Caribbean-inspired dish. Not terribly accurate, but it looks like an island dish.

Swordfish and Purple Yam Sauce

Pho, Egg Rolls and a Trip to the Market (Part 1)

What is an uncle to get his niece for her 14th birthday? If he's lucky like me, the answer is a trip to the International market and a day in the kitchen.

Pho for your birthday? Sounds right to me.

This all started with a the idea that we needed to learn how to make Pho, a Vietnamese soup that Peyton and her family had come to love at the late, great Asian Express. I'm not up on my Viatnamese, so I won't offer a primer on all of the different names for the different ways pho is made, but I know what we made, with rare beef and noodles, is called Pho Tai. The process of making the soup is long, but not terribly difficult if you know what you're doing. I won't claim that we did, but we had a general idea.

Vivaldi, Carbonara, and That Little Extra Something

People love to ask me what is my favorite dish. For as many times as I've tried, I've never been able to come up with an answer to that question. There are dishes I love to eat, dishes I love to cook at home, and dishes I like to make for crowds. There are sentimental favorites, technical accomplishments, and flat out comfort foods. Then there are dishes that are so common that it almost seems trite to mention them, but that have a small secret that, when discovered, makes them sublime. Any of these could be my favorite dish on a given day, and a few have even been my answer when I've felt particularly decisive. But the truth is, I don't have one favorite dish, I have a lot of favorite dishes.

Old Fashioned Cookery

The news that we're going to be working on another historical meal has got me a little amped up, especially because I get to work with some of my favorite people on this event and raise some money for a great cause.

For the third straight year, Fr. Andy and Fr. Josh down at St. Joseph's are going to auction off a dinner party to benefit St. Joseph School. Two years ago we did A Taste of Kentucky, with all of the dishes either being traditional Kentucky favorites or dishes inspired by the foods of the region. Last year the theme was A Tour of Italy. For this year, we're going to change things up, and instead of focusing on a place, we're going to take our inspiration from a bygone era. I'm not quite ready to reveal all the details of that event, but it did get me thinking of another event I did recently that had an historical theme: A Dickens Christmas.

This event was put on by the students at St. Thomas Aquinas on the WKU campus. I first met some of them when they were volunteering at our St. Patrick's Day benefit, and we've been working together ever since. What I really like is that they have some creative ideas, and I was excited when they approached me about doing a party themed around Victorian England. I knew it meant an excuse to do some research and maybe learn some new recipes. That's music to my ears.

To anybody familiar with English food, the menu won't be terribly surprising. We had a green salad with radishes and remoulade, roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding. That may not sound like anything unusual, but how many people have ever actually made Yorkshire pudding? Or prepared mincemeat from scratch? Those are the kinds of things that I don't get an excuse to make very often. It will be interesting to see how I can incorporate them into a modern menu somewhere down the road.