Variations on the Vestal Prik

Prik Nam has been the mother sauce of late for most of my culinary adventures because I made about a half gallon of the stuff and I can’t seem to use it all up. It is a very simple sauce that I came back to in the previously written spoof of a bridal shower where the menu included many tasteless prick references that went unnoticed by the ladies attending. My cousin, both the hostess and a female, was rather baffled that such blatant crude references to the male anatomy were lost on the ladies. But she has fallen for this vestal sauce as much as I have. We will follow with the base for a stir fry, salad dressing, grilled salmon marinade and sauce.

For reference purposes we will use this base recipe of ½ C chopped Thai chilies, ½ C chopped ginger, ¼ C chopped onion, ¼ C chopped garlic (these are all chopped about 1/8 inch), 2 C low sodium soy sauce. Place all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender and give it a whip for about 30 seconds, put it in a storage container and let sit in the fridge for 24 hours. The next day add 2 T agave nectar or ¼ C Turbinado sugar or your sweetener of choice to taste. The goal is just enough sweetness to take the edge off the ginger and chilies but not to be too sweet. This is a base sauce that you will add fresh orange juice, lime juice, herbs, and other spicy condiments to later so don’t go overboard. Don’t overcomplicate the Prik!

A good idea is to freeze half of the sauce into ice cube portions for later use. One batch I just left in the fridge and after 5 days I diluted it with a cup or so of water and a bit more sugar since the ginger and heat of the chilies became a bit too powerful. I generally wanted more fresh ginger in my diet and I found this to be a good way to do it.

For a dipping sauce or salad dressing I would add 1T of lime juice or 2 T orange juice and some fresh chopped cilantro or basil.

For stir fry, I add the sauce after the meat or tofu was seared and the veggies were steamed. You can also marinate the meat in the sauce, but when you cook it you will want to watch for the saltiness. I found seasoning the meat with turmeric or cumin before cooking to be a nice earthy balance to the sauce. When finishing your stir fry that is when I add the squeeze of fruit juice and herb of choice like in the dipping sauce.

For the Salmon, I chose some bright red Coho and sockeye. These are a thinner filets, so if you want more salmon flavor choose a thicker filet like king. An Ivory King filet Is a gorgeous presentation, but the stuff is hard to get. I added a pinch of Thai Red curry paste so the sauce and marinated the salmon for about 4 hours. Marinate less if you want, not more, or dilute the sauce with some water so the flavors compliment the salmon. Remember, the marinade will become a glaze on the salmon thus concentrating the flavors. A friend said he used some guava jelly and grilled some chicken this way, but I think he was just getting his freak on. In any case, I will make no actual claims and no lawyers will get involved.

For beef I added lemon grass one time and orange zest another time. When you zest your fruit do it into the sauce or right over the meat. There is a lot of flavor in that spray that really maximize the flavor in a marinade or the finished sauce. You know how good your hands smell when you peel an orange? Also, in my experience, the less you cook the fruit juice the better. I gave the base sauce with a squeeze of orange juice to a friend and she ate it like soup. A revitalizing tonic I guess.

It is a good start for a sweet potato curry. Prik nam is my answer to bad teriyaki sauce and brings fresh flavors to my quick meal plan. Enjoy.

Red Radio and Whole Paycheck

NPR, better known as “red radio” among the conservative world, is a regular part of my information diet. Let it also be understood that I balance this source with a dose of Rush, Mr. Allen bros. beef, Limbaugh. Note that my computer just capitalized his name as I typed this. Maybe Microsoft is a devotee as well. Anyway, I usually laugh about the far right and left opinions that each source opines on any given day. But today I had to stop for a moment and get my reactions down for my sanity.

In a brief story about shopping in the current economic environment, NPR told the story of a retired assistant librarian, an upper middle-class lady, and a poor woman who makes $380 every two weeks and has three kids. My feelings on these three examples starts with the simple fact that the story has been arrange to support the simple sound bite “the rise in food prices really sucks for everybody”.

In one sense it really does suck. Man, I can’t have my Yugu beef tenderloin for breakfast anymore. But maybe mom is right, “this is what America has needed for a while.” I would have to agree. And for simplicity’s sake I will start with the upper middle class lady who now “can’t afford” to shop at whole foods. The Red Reporter starts out her segment with the sound of this woman shopping at her new food store saying “breaded chicken, breaded ______, and breaded ______.” She is peering into the deli case whining about she is not eating organic and shopping at whole foods anymore. Well if you want to go this route you are better off buying kool-aid and stuff off the dollar menu at the local Wendy’s. It is more time effective and you will cover more of the basic food groups. This is where House Cuisine philosophy started, with that menu planning for my sister. Without going back to that first page I am sure I didn’t recommend shopping at the deli counter at a budget food store. Let’s take our upper middle class wench back to eating organic and how you can still go to Whole Foods on OCCASION and pick up a nice piece of Mercury-laden fish. Wait, here is the quote, “I spent $186 at Whole Foods and I didn’t have enough food for three meals.” Quote approximated, but you get the gist.

What the hell was she buying? Are you kidding! They unfortunately didn’t give a list of what she had in the cart at the time. Now I will grant you, the reader, that Whole Paycheck has earned it’s moniker through diligent marketing and a local reputation as a good pickup joint. Since I don’t shop there that often I have taken it upon myself to shop for three meals for a family of four, assuming that they are all dinner. Just to be an asshole, I have shopped for breakfast lunch and dinner for three days at Whole Foods. If the kids don’t like a particular menu item, you are more that welcome to employ the aforementioned stop at Wendy’s for breakfast or lunch or dinner, and you will still be money ahead. Although I hear that the McDonald's and Burger King franchisees are bitching about the dollar menu at the moment.

One gallon of milk, 1 box vanilla soy milk, 1 Box Super Crunchy Granola Cereal, _1# Whole Wheat Organic Pasta, 1 bag cellophane noodles, Big Jars Organic Free Trade No GMO Pasta sauce (carried to market by trucks powered by recycled mule farts), 1 dozen eggs (cage free in Hoboken), 2# ground bison (free range, hormone free, raised by ted turner post Jane Fonda), 4 baking potatoes (wash well, they were raised in organic dirt, aka shit laden), 2 sweet potatoes (or yams) 1 # extra firm tofu (all the basic yadas), 5 various packages of frozen veggies (spinach, sweet corn, stir fry) .5# aged cheddar, 1# steel cut oats, 1# ground flax seed, 1 bag mixed greens (triple washed), 1 jar organic peanut butter, 1 loaf 50 grain colon blow bread, 1 bottle soy sauce, ¼ # ginger, ¼# chilies, 1/# # garlic, 1 small bottle agave nectar (the politics of this product I am still working on). 2 bananas, 2 oranges. 1 small jar of the jelly of your choice (three berry is a good one because it will taste good on your oatmeal), 1 bag potato chips (because I like them), 1 bottle canola oil.

OK.

Breakfast: choose oatmeal with fruit, breakfast cereal, omelet with cheese and toast
Lunch: Italian pasta with sauce, cellophane noodles with veggies and fried tofu in prik nam sauce, tortilla Espanola (Spanish omelet), PBJ, grilled bison salad with ginger/orange dressing, Baked potato stuffed, banana/orange smoothie, fried tofu satay, bison lettuce wraps, bison burgers with cheddar, mashed potatoes, over roasted potatoes, home fries, potatoes Swiss with salad on top, sweet potato curry with tofu, spaghetti and meatballs, meat loaf, meat loaf sandwich, sloppy joes, and on and on.

Dinner: choose two of the previous items that you didn’t have for lunch.

Ya know, if she really wants to make her kids happy and get a great deal and feel like she is helping someone…..work out a trade with an elderly person who gets government cheese every month? Here’s why:

1. Nobody, especially an elderly person, should have 5fivepounds of artery-hardening cheese in their fridge.
2. Gov’t cheese makes the best mac and cheese I know of. We loved it in college.
3. Trade her for $15 worth of healthier food and that has to be better for the elderly diet.
4. Even for my brother’s family of four or my sister’s family of four, do you know how long it takes to burn through five pounds of cheese?
5. Besides mac and cheese, it makes great queso dip, pizza topping, grilled cheese, the list goes on.

The if you want to take this further just ask me for the recipes. In this list I did assume that you have one or two things in your upper middle class pantry. Start in your pantry and make an old family favorite as the base of a meal. One of mine is ham loaf with mashed potatoes. In the end this computer did not ask me to capitalize Jane Fonda or Ted Turner. Very interesting indeed.