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Hot Farmers Market Peppers

Top Row: Bangalore Torpedo (orange-red), Pasilla (green), Orange Thai (orange), Espanola (red), Guajillo (red)
Second Row: Fatalii (orange), White Bullet Habanero (white), Jalapeno (red), Lemon Drop (yellow), Serrano (red), Chile de Arbol (red)
Third Row: Chilpicitin (yellow), Stavros Greek Peppers (red), Costeno Amarillo (orange), Paprika (light yellow), Shishito (green), Anaheim (red), Paperlatern Habenero (red)
Fourth Row: Cayenne (red green), Cuatro Milpas (red), Italian Peperoncini (red)

Brooklyn, NY – Peaches and berries have finally given way to apples and Brussels sprouts at the New York City farmers markets. I’ve come to expect pumpkins, concord grapes and pears with the the new cold flush, but I was happily surprised last weekend with an overwhelming array of chilies at the Evolutionary Organics stall in Park Slope’s Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. The stock included your standards (serranos and jalapenos) alongside some harder to find varieties (habaneros and shisito) all the way down to cultivars I’d never heard of (chilpicitin and white bullet habanero). I really couldn’t help snatching up one of each and, despite the farmer’s annonyance, snapping a photo of each basket and label in the vain hope that I could identify each when I got home (god, I hope the above is true).

Of course, the focus of chilies is always the heat. There’s even a scale for measuring chili heat: The Scoville scale is broken down into Scoville heat units (SHU, naturally) that measure the level of capascim – the chemical that produces a burning sensation – present in a pepper. Habaneros are on the upper echelon of the scale just below world-record breaking naga jolokia aka ghost chili from the Indian subcontinent, which recently played a bit part is Saveur’s 25 Best Meals issue. On the other end pimentos and peroncini with a barely perceptible spice and bell peppers, which have no significant heat.

In an ideal world, I could try them all side by side, but practically speaking it’d be pretty hard to taste anything at all after a tiny nibble of some of these hotties and, as advanced as I think my heat tolerance is, a tasting of about twenty chilies would probably result in some uncomfortable stomach issues. Still, I’m tempted to try later today. After all, chili meister Mark Miller conducts chef trainings with a tasting of up to 20 chilies. Time to put on the rice and grab a carton of milk.

Evolutionary Organics Pepper Display

Evolutionary Organics Anaheim Chiles

Evolutionary Organics Scotch Bonnets

Evolutionary Organics Pasilla

Sweet Fine Day's Kitchen Conversion Chart

Brooklyn, NY – The pastry duo behind Brooklyn indie confectioner Whimsy&Spice also do gorgeous food-centric prints under Sweet Fine Day. Their kitchen conversion charts are a good graphic solution over leafing through cookbooks while pots burble away.

Diana Kennedy/Washington Post

In the cookbook world, and the magazine and online worlds for that matter, there’s tremendous pressure to put out easy and easier and easiest recipes when the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people still aren’t cooking them. When discussing her new book Oaxaca al Gusto with NPR, Diana Kennedy told it like it is. “They’re going to say, ‘Oh there are a lot of wild recipes that nobody can do in this book,” she says. “There are a lot of recipes you can do. And I want to say, ‘How many recipes do you do in any cookbook? I swear you don’t do half of them.’” What a dame, indeed.

Passion Poppers

I’ll admit it: Sometimes kiwis languish in my refrigerator because I’m too damn lazy to peel them. It’s pretty pathetic. But apparently there are other lazy Americans who can’t be bothered to remove the fuzzy skin either because there’s a product for us. Pennsylvania-based Kiwi Berry Organics distributes two miniature, fuzz-free cousins to the kiwi we all know (and sometimes put in the effort to love). The ones I tried, Passion Poppers, were small, sweet and smooth, the result of fourteen years worth of breeding. Given the length of development, you would think they could have come up with a name that sounds better than a gay club drug (the other cultivar Aloha Annas makes it sound like they’re in on the joke), but I guess I can’t complain about a company that spends their time on organic product development over marketing. In any case, the kiwi berry season lasts about as long as club romance so don’t sleep on it. Sometimes you gotta work for your sloth.

John's Deli

Brooklyn, NY – So here it is. It’s time for a new direction for this blog. Although it’s not all that new. For awhile now, fedification has been mostly about Southeast Asian food and culture. I didn’t name the thing “One Girl’s Bangkok Adventures” or “Eating Through Thailand” or “Siam Eats” or whatever because I always meant this thing to just be about the interesting things in my sight. Then it was the overwhelming sensory deluge of Southeast Asia. Today it’s different. It’s the intersection of food with design and culture and politics and and families and communities and everything else. So if you’re still there, bear with me. I’ll weave in a little Thai flavor from time to time, but it’s time to meet the present, which at present is a whole lot of different things. Here we go.

Brooklyn, NY – What better way to start it back up than with this track. Get ready.

Peonies & Wine

Brooklyn, New York – Yes, it’s been awhile, a long, long while, but work and life got in the way. I’m back. Here’s how my spring went.

Strawberries & Milk

Biscuit & Egg

Shu Mai

Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand – Jumping back again to my trip in Ubon…

Day trips on a motorbike can be journeys in themselves.   By the time you arrive home, the morning, almost hard to recall at this time, seems like it was ages ago.  My first full day in Ubon, I found myself first in an orchard of dragon fruit trees, where I got to see their blooms, the centers were a bouquet of yellow beads nestled against the inner skirt of long creamy-white petals, which tumbled from a crown of spiky petals, yellow with a reddish tinge at the edges.

An hour or so later, I found myself passing stands and stands selling salapao, the steamed Chinese buns, and shu mai out of wide metal steamer baskets around Phibun.  I hemmed and hawed, unsure of which would be the best stand to patronize, finally just stopping at one where the friendly owners packed up my purchases in a little plastic bag to hang from my motorbike bar.

The relief of settling on a purchase didn’t last long, I soon found myself being pulled over, along with nearly other rider, by the police.  I’ve had few, if any, interactions with the Thai police and all the stories I’ve heard about them have included bribes and sometimes trips to jail.  Needless to say, I was somewhat anxious about my status as a foreigner and one driving around on a motorbike at that.  I handed them my passport, tried to assume a respectful demeanor and then tried my best to understand whatever they were asking me in Thai.  It soon became clear that they were going to let me go so I asked for a breakfast recommendation.  The officer motioned to a place up the street and recommended the soup.  “Kuay tiew gai?” I asked.  He smiled at my pigeon Thai.  I gingerly restarted the motorbike trying my best not to run over either officer as I drove towards breakfast.

The rest of the day was like a dream.  I drove through the gong village.  I ended up at a wat on a mountain, there were no English signs and no mention of the sites in any of my books or maps, but it seemed to be a destination for Thai tourists who showed up to see the chedi and white temple, which was a shadow of the white temple I’d seen in Chiang Rai just a few short weeks ago.  For lunch, I stopped at Mae Nam Song Si (Two Color River) a terrible tourist idea, in Khong Jiam and had naem muu, a sour fermented pork sausage sliced and dressed with cilantro, chiles and fried peanuts.

Later I found myself driving around behind an abandoned building on rocky paths and then sitting by a small blue-green lake without a soul in sight.  Back on the bike and heading home, I passed through the gong village again, but this time I stopped to see the gongs up closer.  A woman came out.  “Is okay if I take pictures,” I asked.  She smiled and, producing a stick, began tapping each gong.  One sounded hollow, weak and muffled.  Another bellowed loud and clear.  Each had its own voice.   I was drawn to small one that sung clear and true; it would be perfect for my 1.5 year old nephew, whom I would see in a month or so.

Driving back was long and grey.  The sky was overcast and the rice paddies a duller green.  By the time I reached Ubon proper, I was tired, dirty and hungry.  Again I was unable to find the laab restaurant.  Not thinking clearly I did the silly thing and went to one of the restaurants on the water recommended in a book.  It was nearly empty.  I ordered laab and som tom, both unremarkable, and was too tired to finish a beer.  I headed home, the day’s activities already dim memories.

Geow Mangkorn (Dragon Fruit) Orchard

Dragon Fruit Blossoms

Salapao (Steamed Buns)

Kuay Tiew Gai (Chicken Noodle Soup)

Gong

Chedi

Naem Muu (Fermented Pork Sausage)

Overcast Rice Paddies in Ubon Ratchathani

Som Tom (Papaya Salad) & Laab Muu (Minced Pork Salad)

Michael Ginor, Ian Chalermkittichai & Todd English

Bangkok, Thailand – I won’t jump into the snarkiness that is reverberating through the digital space.  However, this post couldn’t be more timely unless I had actually gotten it together for the period of time when the Food Trip with Todd English episode on Thailand (Big Mango: Three Nights in Bangkok) was airing.  The picture above of Michael Ginor, Ian Chalermkittichai and Todd English was taken during a taping at Thip Samai for the episode.

If you’ve ever wondered how Anthony Bourdain eats without reservations and Ruth Reichl finds herself making ant-egg salads…well I probably can’t speak for all travel shows.  What I do know is that most shows have a dedicated team of producers who do some research online, reach out to tourism boards and try to make local contacts through those resources.  Once they’ve set up their contacts and sketched out brief itineraries, they’re on the road (or in the sky) for consecutive tapings that are then edited and portioned out over the course of a season.

For this episode, I joined Ian and his wife Sarah as Ian gave Todd and Michael the background on phad thai.  Just so you know, the first place we tried, one of my and Ian’s sous chef’s favorites, was on the corner of soi Ari and completely gone by the time the camera crew arrived at 10:30 p.m.  We ended up at Thailand’s most famous phad thai place on Maha Chai road.  It’s not my favorite, but admittedly the theatrics up front probably made for the best clips.

Sarah and I actually tried to sneak some phad kee mao (drunken noodles) at Raan Jay Fai down the street.  As it turned out, they needed us to be in the taping so we followed orders as silent actors.  As they rolled the film, we had to walk down the street with the guys pretending to have a light-hearted pre-phad thai conversation…and then back up and walk down again.  But we couldn’t sit down to eat just yet, first we had to look on with pretend great interest as Ian explained each ingredient for the dish and once seated wait with pretend patience for everyone’s commentary on the dish before digging in for real.  It was all done in the name of travel television and my fifteen seconds of fame.

Beht Sam

Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand – Last night my father called to tell me that a box of notebooks and shoes arrived at my parents’ house in Massachusetts.  I sent it from Bangkok over two months and its arrival was a reminder of things past and things left undone.  So, I’m picking up where I left off on my last travels.

I spent my first day in Ubon biking all over the countryside and then circling and circling around town looking for a nonexistent restaurant.  My search unfruitful, I stopped off elsewhere and ordered tom yum goong and beht sam, roast duck bathed in soy with green chiles, coriander and a chile sauce on the side.  (That’s coagulated blood in the upper left.)  The soup was lackluster, but the duck was delicious and more than I could eat anyway.  I headed home sated.

Suang Sawad
64 Palochai Road
Ubon Ratchathani, 3400
045 24 2256