Marinated grilled pork ribs, cucumber salad, and “bald head” jaew — and sticky rice, of course — from A Child of the Rice Fields.

It is exciting how much lemongrass, garlic, and chilies go into the marinade! No messing around! And fish sauce, soy mushroom and Golden Mountain sauces. All that and overnight soak plus eight hours on a low and slow grill. We got a serious pink ring with that timing.

Fresh green cucumber salad — I did not pound it too much — with lime juice and pa daek. Thanks to an Eastern European market nearby, we could get bumpy Russian cucumbers with black dots, if you know them. They are not watery, almost have no seeds, and their crunch is louder than that of a snow on a frosty day.

Yes, it’s time to move on to the next recipe in the jaew chapter but I still did not have enough fill of this simple first one.

#food #cooking #laofood #bbq #grilledribs #cookingathome #inmykitchen

Cooking for large groups creates a special kind of chaos in the refrigerator and pantry. And there is a special kind of pleasure straightening it out.

This is a good vessel to take the clutter out — a freeform dry pot.

What do we have here:
— vegetables: red onion, lotus root, wood ear mushrooms, cauliflower, yellow pepper, scallions;
— tofu;
— pork belly;
— the zing mix: crushed garlic, sliced ginger, dried peppers;
— the juice: doubanjian, oyster sauce, shaoxing wine, soy sauce, black vinegar.

Each vegetable and tofu were flash fried separately — low BTU of my cooktop does not allow for the word “stir-fried.” It is my dream to get a good burner and cook outside like my Chinese neighbor Linda used to do. She was a virtuoso with that wok and chuan — rain, or shine, or snow.

Once pork gave out its fat and charred up in spots, the zing mix with doubanjian stepped in to coat pork with a glossy aromatic paste.

And the last part — all the vegetables and the juice components to finish the dish.

The original idea came from The Woks of Life and I started measuring. Then I gave up. It turned out very good.

#food #cooking #drypot #chinesefood #cookingathome #onmytable #freeformcooking