from Asia! I’ll be back in early January, jetlagged and 10 lbs heavier, with vivid details about my travels to Taipei, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Tokyo & Kyoto. See you in 2010!
Fresh Panettone
According to the , Italians are expected to eat 40 million panettone this holiday season. What is panettone? A holiday sweet bread originating from Milan dotted with dried fruit, usually rum raisins and bits of citron.
Example of generic panettone in a red box
When the supermarket has red boxes of pre-packaged panettone stacked to the ceiling, it’s a strong indicator that the Holiday season is in full swing. Having heard tales of dry, stale and dense panettone, I’ve been hesitant to invest in some for myself. Luckily, my friend Gary, who works at Grandaisy Bakery, gifted me a loaf and I’ve been carving away at it like a turkey on Thanksgiving day.
Phad Thai Noodles Without the Noodles
Phad Thai
David Dale of Sidney’s Sun Herald daily newspaper recently declared phad thai one of Australia’s favourite take out dinners. As an ambassador for Thai food, this popular noodle dish has taken on the world. It seems like every Thai restaurant in America has it on the menu and packages of instant phad thai are even selling in mainstream supermarkets.
In Thailand, however, phad thai vies with boat noodles and fried rice as the ultimate comfort food. Any food centre or outdoor market inevitably has a phad thai stall which usually sells turnip cake fried phad thai-style and battered oysters as well. The oysters are fried with bean sprouts in a deliciously light, crispy egg batter and served with a healthy dose of sweet, sour and hot Sriracha chilli sauce. But that’s another blog post altogether.
It is a well-known fact that, in economic crises, traditional comfort foods return to popular favour and, in that paradox that can only exist in hard times, commonly found staples like phad thai start to get the glam treatment.
Wunderkammer
Wun•der•kam•mer (noun): 1. “wonder room” in German; 2. encyclopedic collections of types of objects whose categorical boundaries included natural history, geology, ethnography, archeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, and antiquities. Besides the most famous, best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe, formed collections that were precursors to museums.
Reinterpreting the original concept of the Wunderkammer, this new thread on World to Table is going to feature modern day (kitchen) cabinets of curiosities. It wasn’t until and I shared what we usually stock up in our respective kitchens, that I realized how different our pantries and cooking habits really were. Asparagus, couscous and ricotta are solid staples in her kitchen, while mine is almost never without an abundance of tomatoes, a loaf of Pullman bread, or a giant chunk of Parmesean. We’ll be exploring a wide range of cooking spaces — from the big to the small, from the sparse to the cluttered.
Thanksgiving Recap and a Recipe for Curried Butternut Squash and Apples
This past Thursday, the sweet and savory aromas of Thanksgiving filled my apartment building. Through my bathroom vent, I can usually smell what the neighbors are cooking. Since the kitchen and bathroom vents in the building are conjoined, it often draws in odd yet strangely alluring scents to the apartment by way of the bathroom. Sometimes it’s waffles, bacon and Pantene Pro-V on Sunday mornings. In the evening it can be a medley of pot roast and spicy Thai curry. But it was Thanksgiving day, and most kitchens in the building were already whirring with activity by early afternoon. The familiar smells of sage, pumpkin, cinnamon, and roast poultry were not only coming in from the bathroom, but had managed to slip into the hallway as well, enveloping me with delicious aromas when I opened the door and walked to and from the elevator.
Tagged: apple, brussel sprouts, butternut squash, cauliflower, Curry, hamachi, leek, liver, sage, sashimi, scallops, soup, tartare, thanksgiving, tomato, worcheshire
