As my good friend Enas Yorl noted, I am a predominantly Asian cooking fanatic. I just feel better physically after eating asian food and it is a way of life for me. Luckily Cruel Wife is usually tickled enough that she did not have to make dinner that I can get away with fixing this stuff 4 times a week minimum.
It occurred to me to ask: Would it be of any value to you if I posted pictures of the recipes as they look after plating? They won’t be professional pictures but enough to recognize carbon-based food elements.
Son-in-Law Eggs (Thai) – take a hardboiled egg, cut it in half, fry it face down in oil then make a sauce of some oil, brown sugar, and fish sauce. Pour the sauce over the eggs and sprinkle with chilies and fried onion flakes.
Note: You will mock me. I know you are sitting there and thinking “God what hideous concoctions this twisted tool eats!” You will be somewhat justified since there is no equivalent flavor in any dish I have ever tasted. I took these to a party and they were all gone within minutes. Open your mind up and try them. Would I lie to you, dear Constant Reader? Someday I shall make Tea Eggs and post the results
Chili Prawns and Bean Stir-Fry (Vietnam) – Honestly, I have not tried this yet but I am going to tonight. This very evening. I can’t see how it could possibly lose. I just can’t. I’ll keep you posted.
Update: Bad pain night, and I did not make the dish, instead ordered chinese with triple-dose of chili sauce to get the endorphines flowing.
Crisp Chili Beef with Orange Rind and Szechuan Peppercorns (Undetermined) – Very intense dish, and I have rounded it out with copious amounts of broccoli to stretch the quantity and make it more healthy
Shrimp with Red Peppers and Basil (Thai) – A quick and tasty dish, always a favorite here.
The recipes can be found at the top of the page or here.
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This just in from Fox News. Thanks for reporting, Fox!
Flags just went up! Not that it has any bearing on the candidates but it sure paints a general picture…
McCain Chastises Dems for Discarding American Flags
So all these flags are found in the dumpsters behind the DNC Convention after it was over and they are then brought to McCain’s rally. But:
But Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”
Are you SURE you want to accuse Boy Scouts and Veterans of participation in carrying out cheap political stunts? Oh, that works. Well sure the Boy Scouts are part of a civilian paramilitary group and the vets are probably all mercenaries now…
Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were “proudly waved” at their convention.
Proudly waved. And then thrown away. I don’t throw away things I’m proud of, I keep ’em. I throw away things I think are shite. Ergo, I keep my flags. But then, I’m proud of my country all the time, too. 🙂
But that’s not the point, the Dems say:
“But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,” he said.
So does anybody really believe that there was a contemporary Flag-gate operation going on? We’ll see what Bob Woodward scrapes off the bottom of his shoe next.
Notice “bundles of our flags from the stadium” does not refute that they were in the trash. Words have power, words mean something, and therefore omission of words is every bit as important and as nuanced as inclusion of them. Sort of like how things hang on what the definition of the word “is” is.
But on another note… Fox editors (foxnews.com) you might want to check your work a bit more carefully…
Slained for Seeking Annulment
“Slained”???
Lemur King's Folly 
We’re having king crab legs tonight. So did you spend time in s/e asia at some point?
No, I didn’t Enas. The whole issue is that some number of years back I had seen an allergy doc because Michigan flora was killing me slowly. He did a scratch test and it turns out I am mildly allergic to wheat.
What that means is that I can eat it but I don’t feel great afterwards and that by steering towards non-wheat ingredients and rice instead of pasta, I end up feeling a lot healthier.
And I love chilies of any kind.
I also think I am probably an Asian trapped in an American’s body, culinary-wise.
I’d forgotten the wheat thing, but I couldn’t help but notice your recipes tend heavily toward thai, vietnamese, and the like.
Currently I’m eating Haagen-Dazs cherry vanilla ice cream. The History Channel has a show on every Saturday morning called “America Eats” where they showcase popular American foods and trace thier history. Today was ice cream. I rarely eat ice cream but that show made me crave it all day long.
Thai is my favorite, closely followed by Korean, then Vietnamese. All have flavors that are intense but with three-dimensionality to the palate. I don’t know if it is synesthesia or what but I visualize both flavor and sounds in a three-dimensional fashion and those foods are very spatial.
I tend towards strongly spiced food and in particular I am smitten with the Thai cuisine’s ability to meld sweet and salty flavors together – fish sauce and tamarind or palm sugar are fantastic together. The other great combination is chilies and peanuts. I make habanero peanut butter cookies and serve them with orange sherbet. Not Thai but it’s a wonderful combination!
The other item which turns people off (besides fish sauce) is shrimp paste. Yes, to our noses it stinks to high heaven, but when cooked in a dish lends a wonderful accent flavor that is both in-your-face and subtle/complex at the same time.
Hogs-n-Dogs ice cream, oh yeah. Ben and Jerry’s, too. Anytime you can get chocolate, cherry, and vanilla all romping around in the same playground is a good thing.
How was the K-crab? King crab, not krab…
Shrimp paste – two words that have absolutely no buisiness being that close together ;-).
The crab was excellent with drawn butter and cocktail sauce. Dad had already gotten all the meat out of the shells so we didn’t have to fuss around with them.
I’d probably be a lot healthier if I ate more of the stuff that you do. I just don’t like to cook and avoid it as much as I can, which of course leads me to eating the junk that I do. Maybe I should start ordering take-out. There’s a Panda Express nearby…
You would be amazed at how little it takes to cook an asian-style meal as long as you have ingredients handy – veggies, lots of veggies.
I’ll come home from work, sit my butt down on the couch with a cutting board, couple of onions, shallots, red bells, chilies, broccoli, celery, bok choy, scallions, spinach, whatever – and just start prepping for dinner while watching the tube.
Then it is mostly a matter of picking a meat and dissecting it while the rice cooks. Throw the sauces together and get the wok shimmering hot, you’re good to go. Actual cook time is never more than about 8 minutes unless you are doing a panang curry or a masuman curry.
Be really wary of take-out because they typically use about 3x the amount of oil that you actually need to cook a dish.