If you live in California, this week was a corker. We nearly melted when temps hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Santa Cruz. As we chugged iced water, Rory and I laughed at how he grew up in the blazing hot San Fernando Valley and I was born in tropical Saigon. After living in the Monterey Bay area for nearly thirty years, we’ve become hot weather wimps!

In our town, going out mostly means heavy food options — pizza, burritos, pasta, and burgers. We wanted light fare to keep us cool and refreshed. I didn’t want to turn on the oven for lengthy bakes or grill outdoors under the blazing hot sun. So, I focused on easy cooking — little things that I could do quickly without breaking a literal sweat and then use later on in many ways. I looked in the fridge at my vegetable bins and started tinkering.

With Thai cooking on my mind these days, I revisited a favorite recipe Thai-style watermelon salad. It’s got garlic, dried shrimp, lime leaf and other ingredients to turn watermelon into a salty, sweet, spicy refreshing salad. The 🆓 watermelon salad recipe is at my website, along with watermelon selection tips.

Feeling refreshed and energized, I experimented to create 3 solid recipes, plus a combo of two of them to make yet another 1/2 recipe, to share with you today:

• Cheater’s Confit Tomatoes preserves tomatoes with umami depth in as little as 10 minutes.

• Viet Grilled Eggplant and Garlicky Green Onion Sizzle (yields plush rich-tasting eggplant that evokes fatty pork. Use it with the confit tomatoes for what I describe as an Grilled Eggplant “Bonanza” Platter (that’s the combo I mentioned).

• Roasted Vegetable Poke is nontraditional and remarkably good. The veggies are great as is and even better dressed up as poke.

Moreover, I realized that a good recipe is the draw, but what makes it highly valuable is any enterprising cooking techniques held inside it. Those culinary takeaways you come across will enhance your cooking skills and life.

This week’s recipes are loaded with mini building blocks for you to make healthy, tasty food fast. Having building blocks around is how a chef or a restaurant effortlessly puts deliciousness on the table for their guests. They’re back-of-the-pocket small recipe that you can whip out as you need them.

Think of these three recipes like a three-piece suit that you can mix and match, plug and play with. They take little time to prep and prepare. The varied flavors, colors, and textures are joyful, to boot.

Above are two lunches we had this week. They each took about 15 minutes to prepare because I had the building blocks around. Soon, you will too!

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This may or may not happen to you, but sometimes when I’m a guest in someone’s home, where everyone pitches in to make dinner, all eyes (or just the host’s eyes) fall on me to make dessert. Gulp. I happy to pitch in with the cooking or bringing along a few baked goodies for the weekend, but I’m not always prepared to bake on the spot.

If you’re lucky, there may be a scale, a cake pan, a sharp knife, and hopefully sugar, butter, eggs, and flour. If you’re really lucky, there might be a whisk and a spatula, too. But if you’ve ever tried to peel a dozen apples with a steak knife because it’s the only one that’s even close to sharp, or eyeball 1 cup/140g) of flour, you know what I’m talking about. I once did a post on Things I Bring When I’m a Guest for the Weekend, which raised the ire of some, but I require a minimum of a knife, a spatula, a bowl, and a cake pan if I’m going to bake something, like a cake.

You’re likely familiar with the Moelleux au chocolat, the soft warm individual melting cakes that everybody loves. (If you have the kind of friends that have six to eight ramekins, well, that’s great.) I recently saw French food writer and journalist François-Régis Gaudy (his book, Let’s Eat France, translated into English, is a lot of fun and pretty amazing) make a Moelleux à la abricot on his Instagram page, which didn’t require a mixer or any special equipment. Not even a whisk!

His Apricot Cake was a very casual affair, baked in a rectangular mold on a sheet of parchment paper, and came out of the oven rather free-form, looking exactly like something that would come out of a French home cook’s kitchen, when baking dessert for friends. I’m fine with that but didn’t know if you were, so I thought I’d tinker with it and make it in a cake pan, which is easier to slice. I also fiddled around with the ingredients, as well as putting the brown granulated sugar on top (rather than underneath), to give the moelleux a nice sheen.

I used a springform cake pan but you can use any similar-sized vessel; an 8-, 9- or 10-square or round cake pan would work, or even a baking dish. The baking time will vary but if your experience with using a variety of ovens in other people’s homes is anything like mine, you’ll find that each one is different, and what one says is 350ºF/180ºC will be different than another whose dial says 350ºF/180ºC. I don’t travel with an oven thermometer but may add that to things I bring when I’m staying with people.

Tip: If you’re staying in someone’s place for the weekend, you can mix the dry ingredients in a container or zip-top bag then put the dessert together when you get there.

I made one cake with apricots first, which was sensational, but knowing fresh apricots are harder to come by elsewhere, I made another one with plums, which came out great as well. It would work with other summer fruits and berries but I really like the tanginess of apricots or plums against the moist cake layer, so stuck with those two. A handful of berries wouldn’t hurt either, but I do recommend keeping it simple.

This recipe, from The Great Book of Chocolate, is one of my favorite recipes in the book. It’s a deep-dark chocolate spread that’s just as welcome on the breakfast table with warm croissants or toast, as it is as an afternoon snack, swiped on a slice of baguette.

The recipe comes from my friend Deb Perelman, of Smitten Kitchen, who came to Paris and made it in my kitchen with me. You can watch the full video here.

Since you’re making it at home, unlike store-bought spreads, you know what’s in this delectable. This recipe uses olive oil, which is healthy and delicious with the dark chocolate. I like to use one that’s fruity, which compliments the chocolate perfectly.

Depending on the type of chocolate you use, and it’s percentage of cacao solids, as well as the ambient temperature of your kitchen, the spread can be a bit firm, or soft, at room temperature. If it’s too firm, you can zap it for a few seconds in the microwave to make it more spreadable. If it’s too soft, it can be chilled briefly. In my kitchen, it’s perfect just as it is at room temperature…and I think you’ll love it too.

Margot Lecarpentier is one of the best bartenders in Paris. At her bar, Combat, she shakes and stirs up cocktails – with and without alcohol – that are some of the best in the city. One a warm summer day, Margot stopped by to make an Affogato for us to enjoy in my backyard.

In Italian, affogato means “drowned,” and the typical affogato is a scoop of ice cream drowned in espresso, which is delicious. But Margot ramps things up a notch using a blend of rum, coffee liqueur, and amaro, which gives the dessert a lively kick. While you could use vanilla ice cream, Margot likes chocolate as much as I do, so I churned up a batch of chocolate sorbet, which also happens to be dairy-free, and she used that. Feel free to use your favorite flavor.

Cheers!

You can watch the full video of Margot and I making the Affogato in my newsletter here.

These Steamed Chicken Legs are an easy-to-make comfort food. Marinated with shallots, garlic, fresh ginger, sand ginger powder, and chicken bouillon, the result is tender, perfectly silky chicken with a delicious aroma and concentrated chicken flavor.  Another reason to try this recipe? Chicken drumsticks or leg quarters are by far the most affordable cut of […]

It’s no secret that summer vacation is sacred in France. When I moved here, I found it curious that everyone went away en masse, at the same time. Bakeries, restaurants, eyeglass stores, market vendors, and almost every other business take time off for les congés annuels, their yearly break.

But twenty-five years later, I get it. At the beginning of August, things start to slow down, and while I like the relative quiet of Paris during that month, I want to head to the beach and drink rosé and jump in some waves, rather than stay in sticky-hot Paris.

It took me a few years to unwind, and now I’m more low-key than my French friends and family, and am simply content to sit in a lounge chair and read for a few weeks on a beach or by a pool, while they’re scrolling through their telephones. I forgot to set a vacation notice for my email so I had to answer some messages. I think I’ll set it now for next year, so I don’t forget.

Romain tried to get me to visit museums, and he managed to get me in a few churches; if you live in France and have a French partner, the main attraction in any city is the church, whether they’re religious or not. As a good sport, I try to get in some culture on vacation. For example, I loved the Louisiana museum when we went to Copenhagen, even though it cut into my cardamom bun time. (Admittedly, there were no beaches nearby.)

This year I tried to deflect, that I’m an ouvrier, someone who works with his hands (not so much his brain), which got me mostly off the hook.

Happily, I’ve been able to coerce Romain into going to the south of France in the summer. We used to go to Brittany in the summer, a popular destination for Parisians. But sitting on the beach there, even in August, can require a down jacket and a scarf, and my idea of vacation is not to wear anything but a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals.

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Aside from the five — or was it six? — heatwaves we had in France this year, the second big topic was the mosquitos, which have taken over the country, save for one small region…

…and that’s where I want to go next summer.

Mosquitos aren’t as compelling of a story as, say, the lack of air-conditioning in France, which was analyzed to death by magazines and newspapers in and out of France. By early summer, we couldn’t go in our backyard, which seemed to be the breeding ground for the entire country.

I did find two effective things to ward them off. One was Off! Clean Feel, which is unscented and doesn’t leave a greasy film; friends from the States bring it to me, even though I’m not keen on slathering it on my skin. On the natural side, I found the anti-mosquito stick made by Comme Avant pretty effective, in spite of its waxy feel.

So much of our summer was spent swatting and itching. I was surprised when I visited a friend who lives in the Ardèche and found they’d installed screens on all their windows, which are as common as unicorns in France, and I hope the idea catches on. We did get a bid to put one (1) on our sole bedroom window, which was an astounding €900 ($1045), so it’s no wonder people are reluctant to install them.

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The first part of our vacation was spent in the Languedoc, a region in the south of France that’s known for growing grapes. Winemaker Benjamin Darnault told me it was the largest winemaking region in the world.

We also visited the Olonzac market, which has the most beautiful fruits and berries you can imagine. Every morning we treated ourselves to a big bowl of fruit, and while I do pretty well getting very good fruit in Paris, the fruits in the south of France are even more delicious.

I’m not sure where people got the idea that French people practice portion control. If anyone thinks that, they haven’t eaten at a restaurant like Les Trois Petits Cochons.

That, above, was almost a whole pork loin on my plate. A local friend I was dining with ordered a salad, thinking it would be a healthier, or at least lighter, option. She was startled when the waiter set down a plate the size of a child’s umbrella in front of her: a bed of lettuce topped with several giant bundles of deep-fried filo dough. Inside of each was a slice of toasted bread with melted cheese on it. There was enough food on her plate to feed two. An upside of Covid was that it gave us doggy bags, and if you ask nicely, you can take uneaten food home with you. One place did charge me €1 for the container, though.

In addition to doggy bags, which used to be a rarity, for those who think (or know) that ice is tough to find in France, it seems all of it is being hoarded in the south. And unlike elsewhere in the country, you won’t hear people telling you it’ll give you pneumonia or freeze your stomach, as I’ve had people tell me. For the record, I’ve enjoyed plenty of iced drinks and so far haven’t had either.

Being close to the southern coast, there’s no shortage of seafood or shellfish. During a lazy day at Biquet Plage, we had grilled sardines, oysters, and French fries. The restaurant on the beach folds up at the end of August, when everything comes down: the walls, the floors, the bar, and the dining room, and is packed away until the following year. It’s an easygoing place to spend the day since you can rent a chair and large beach umbrella, and you just need to bring a towel and swimsuit, as well as a book, and you’re all set.

In the evening, apparently the place turns into a big beach party with a lot of people arriving, a DJ blasting music, people enjoying lots of drinks, and whatever else people indulge in at rave-like parties, so we’re generally out of there by 5pm.

We stopped at a farm stand that we visit every summer. Last year we arrived at the end of the morning, after all the customers had left, and just about all of the produce was gone. We ended up talking to the owner for a good thirty minutes before waving goodbye.

This year when we showed up, during the rush, she was thrilled to see us and began our discussion with, “I think last year we decided to tutoyer each other…right?” It was fine with me since 98% of my life is tutoyer-ing people, and some of those longer, more formal verb tenses that use vous in French can require oral acrobatics for me. Invariably I end up tutoyer-ing someone I should vouvoyez, but I get a pass because people hear my accent. Someone once said that you don’t want to speak French too well because you want to be treated like a foreigner. I’d say that’s pretty true.

Last year, the owner of the stand gave me a big box of unsold chili peppers, and this year, she perhaps assumed I was coming back and gifted me a big bag of dried chilis. I think I’m going to grind them up and use the pepper powder to season food. She gave me so many that I‘m pretty sure I’ve got enough to last me until next year.

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This year she was offering a special box of vegetables for ratatouille, a dish I’ve never made. I’m not a fan of bell peppers and so many versions seem to feature them. But the smaller peppers grown by farmers in the south don’t have the same flavor that bell peppers do, which overtakes everything else in a dish and when raw, are as unpleasant as biting into a dried-out wicker basket.

Since I can’t resist a bargain, nor can I resist beautiful produce, I bought a box (Romain likes bargains too, and was insisting we buy two boxes, but I shut that idea down as I didn’t want to spend my whole vacation chopping vegetables). I looked at a few recipes online. Some said to cook the vegetables for just a few minutes, and another said to cook the dish up to 1 1/2 hours. My friend sent me her recipe for Ratatouille Niçoise from her book, Niçoise, which called for some optional hot chile powder. I also looked at Alice Waters’ recipe for inspiration, then decided to just wing it with what was in the box.

In the end (Warning: Unpopular opinion incoming…), I don’t think I love ratatouille. Mine, above, tasted more like leftovers rather than a delightful pot of freshly cooked vegetables. When you have beautiful fresh vegetables, why cook them up into a stew?

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I was ready to give up on ratatouille forever until my friend Kat invited us for the aforementioned lunch and as part of it, brought out a big vintage casserole dish of…ratatouille. It was so delicious that I started changing my tune about ratatouille.

Perhaps it’s just something I don’t have the touch for, or it’s something you have to live in the south of France to get it right. And if that’s the case, I’ll need help convincing Romain that we need to move to the south of France. I’ve convinced him to go on vacation there, but not sure how far he’s willing to go down that route with me.

And just when I thought my ratatouille wasn’t up to par, we stopped at an Autogrill at a highway rest stop and below was their ratatouille, which they served alongside a steak à cheval:

As a former restaurant cook, my inclination if I was cooking for a customer, was that if I broke an egg, I’d cook another one. But since the burgers were taken directly out of the freezer and placed on the grill, I wasn’t expecting the best meal of our vacation.

Romain’s brother said, “C’est pas trop mal pour le déjeuner d’autoroute” - “It’s not so bad for lunch on the autoroute.” While the cook was frying our patties, she asked how we wanted them cooked. The burger ended up being bien cuit, well-done, or à la semelle, as they say in French: like the sole of a shoe. The other option at the rest stop was Burger King and, like moving to the south of France, that was a pretty hard non when I half-jokingly suggested it to Romain.

One notable place where we ate in the south of France was Les Grands Buffets, an all-you-can-eat buffet that proudly features the food of Escoffier. It’s one of the most…if not the most popular restaurants in France, and I was a little wary of (over)eating there, especially in the heat of summer, but it was quite an experience.

I’m going to write about it in another post since there’s a lot more to share than I have the space for here. Stay tuned…

Now that we’re back and well into September, I remember being told by someone, in no uncertain terms, that I shouldn’t mention when I’m busy. So I won’t mention it, but rather, let’s just say there’s a lot going on around here this month.

Those of you who’ve been with me for a while know I have a website, formerly my blog, with 700+ recipes on it. The technology and all the software and annoying SEO stuff you have to do for a blog finally got to me, and I said, “Game over,” and moved here. But some of my favorite recipes are archived there and I’m shooting short videos to accompany the most popular ones. I’m going to start uploading those this month.

Visit DavidLebovitz.com

The final stop during our vacation was in Provence, which had a magnificent fig tree right outside our room that was loaded with the most delicious figs I’ve ever tasted. I’ve tasted a lot of figs and each one could barely hold in the sticky-sweet interior, which was ruby-red and already close to being jam. The owners of the property don’t eat them so most go into the compost bin.

We furiously picked as many as we could and snagged one of the last coolers in the south of France, to transport them back to Paris. I felt a little guilty taking all their figs, but they said we were doing them a favor as it saved them from having to rake up the figs and haul them over to the compost bin. One man’s trash is certainly a treasure to me, and I can’t believe how many we picked.

The morning after we got home, I found myself with ten 1-gallon bags full of very ripe figs that needed to be tended to, pronto. Before we left, I cleared out my main kitchen island (which was loaded with pottery and baking dishes and pots and pans and other stuff), where I do all my cooking, because the polished concrete kitchen floor needed to be sealed. The guy who originally laid the floor forgot that step. Oops.

Kitchen floors get a lot of wear and tear and ours got really grimy, which required plenty of elbow grease to scrub, and we were never able to get it really clean. So we finally got someone to come over to seal it properly, which was a several-day process.

I won’t get into the details but when we came home, the new sealant had been applied over the grimy floor - the grime so was embedded in the floor that it couldn’t be cleaned and the sealant just made it look worse. So the floor needs to be re-scraped and completely redone.

That started at the end of last week and will be continuing all through this week, until the weekend. While it’s being redone, we can’t go into, or use, the kitchen. So no cooking or baking for me until it’s finished.

Paris Apartment Renovation Stories

Fortunately I already took care of a few bags of my figs, making Fig Jam and Fig-Pineapple Jam, ending up with nearly thirty jars. The rest will have to wait a few more days until I’ve got my kitchen (and my sanity) back.

-David

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Hey there!

A balanced lifestyle combines a little naughty with lots of nice and healthy. With that in mind this week, I have three (3!) recipes for you.

The first is a delicate, fluffy vegan whipped cream topping that’s remarkably sturdy. It keeps for days, if not for a good week in the fridge. It’s texturally lighter than the vegan frosting I developed for the vegan strawberry and cream cake because you want something ethereal when you’re aiming for a whipped cream topping. That said, you also do not want it to deflate!

Why would you make a vegan whipped cream topping? Because the commercial plant-based options for whipping cream are inconsistent and not widely distributed.

If you’re following a vegan diet, the recipe is for your dessert pleasure! Dip fresh fruit in for a simple treat. Spoon it onto a cake or pie for a rich garnish.

If you’re lactose challenged or a curious cook who likes to have a few tricks in your back pocket for emergencies -- the vegan whipped topping recipe is a great fallback for when you need a whipped topping but don’t have regular whipping cream handy.

Get and make the 🆓 vegan whipped cream topping recipe. It’s a knockout, trompe-l’œil.

Poke, a food rooted in versatility

To counterbalance my forays into the land of whipped cream topping, I made some light meals this week. I had a little poke festival. We’ve got our minds on Hawaii with hurricane Lowell bearing down on it. We hope all our friends there are safe.

At the same time, I’ve thought about our grocery trips to the Foodland at the Ala Moana shopping center in Honolulu. It’s one of the fanciest markets I’ve been to on the islands. The poke bar dazzles with so many freshly made, incredible options. And they’re not all made from ahi tuna, as we think poke is chiefly is.

The word “poke” means “section” or “to slice or cut”. Hawaiians have been poke-ing various kinds of fish for centuries — long before Captain Cook arrived in the 1700s to ‘discover’ the islands.

Using reef-caught fish, locals would cut or scrape the flesh from the fish bones (this scraping is a technique that’s common in Southeast Asia to make fresh fish pastes). The Hawaiians would flavor the fish with sea salt, umami-laden fresh seaweed (limu), and ‘inamona, a seasoning mixture of salt and pounded candlenuts (candlenuts are also used in Indonesian, Malaysian, and Peranakan (Nyonya) cuisines).

Think about the shared Asian Pacific cooking techniques and ingredients and you realize how seafaring people exchanged ideas across the oceans over time. The concepts are simple yet brilliant for putting fresh food on the table.

Obviously, poke evolved over time and purists love the Hawaiian-style poke prepared with seaweed and ‘inamona. But the prevailing poke nowadays, as chef Sheldon Simeon writes about in his book, Cook Real Hawai’i — is shoyu poke, poke seasoned with soy sauce and a myriad of other ingredients, depending on your taste and mood.

Learning to poke from a local

I learned to make poke from Kiki Aranita, a Hong Kong and Hawaii-raised chef who now lives in Philly. She’s known for smartly adapting island flavors on the mainland.

We chatted for a Food & Wine article years ago and she taught me her basic framework for making poke and shared her recipe for a delicious ponzu and ginger salmon poke seasoned with a bit of shiso. Vietnamese shiso (tia to) is totally fine, Kiki told me. It’s easy to find at Vietnamese markets and is affordable.

And, there are many ways to enjoy poke. For a casual wine and snacks get together, my friend Lori, a PTFS subscriber and Kauai native, served poke as a pupu (appetizer, small bite). She distributed chopsticks and we noshed on her poke selection, shelled and nibbled edamame, drank lots of wine and caught up! Or, you can have poke as a rice bowl. I like to make poke lettuce wraps too. How do you like to eat poke?

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This week’s poke exploration yielded three renditions — I’m not ready to premiere one of them quite yet. Look for my roasted vegetable recipe coming soon! The two quickies are:

1. Kiki’s Ginger Ponzu Salmon Poke

2. Andrea’s Tofu Poke

Poke is fresh tasting, healthful, and casual. When made with tofu or a cooked ingredient, it keeps well in the fridge too, for meal prep and snacks. Below you’ll find discussions on

• Basic parameters for making and serving poke

• The two recipes in full text and downloadable pdf

• Ingredient sourcing plus substitutions (Do you need Hawaiian seaweed and candlenuts? How to buy salmon that’s safe to eat raw?!)

• Variation suggestions

Let’s unleash your poke-mania!

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We’ve collected a bunch of back to school recipes, with tons of meal ideas to help you get into the swing of the school year hustle. Summer may be ending, but we hope you can find some ideas—from on-the-go breakfasts to packed lunches and busy weeknight dinners—to soften the blow! Delicious weeknight and school lunch […]

This blackberry cobbler recipe is a summertime delight! It features jammy blackberries underneath a tender, golden, scone-like topping. I’m quite smitten with this recipe—something borderline magical happens when you bake blackberries. The heat of the oven seems to enhance their floral undertones and make them taste extra special.

This is a simple dessert that you’ll want to make over and over again. Lemon zest, a touch of cinnamon, and a dab of tangy Greek yogurt add some flavor intrigue. Your guests might ask, “Why is this so good?”

It also happens to be gluten free, since I used almond flour in the topping instead of conventional all-purpose flour. Almond flour is very easy to work with and offers a subtle almond flavor that pairs beautifully with berries. If you’ve tried my peach cobbler or blueberry cobbler, you’re already familiar with it. I hope you’ll give this one a try!

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Hello there,

I have a knack for saying things that many people think and few dare to voice openly. Airing dirty laundry has gotten me in trouble a few times with my family but in the past week, in talking to people about Cooking Thai, I’ve had private conversations with folks who quietly say, “You know, such and such Thai restaurant is not very good.” My sister Linh and I have the same conversation about Vietnamese restaurants.

So I have to admit to you that a lot of Thai and Vietnamese restaurants are not great. Many offer the same menus and flavors. To borrow from the New York Times food critic Ligaya Mishan, “We’re in an epidemic of sameness.”

I empathize with the restauranteurs.

If you’re a Viet or Thai restaurant owner, you’ve got financial goals to meet and are looking to fill seats and sell food. You cannot afford to spend too much time to labor to make food that’s going to be as good as homemade. You’ve got to cater to a broad swath of customers. As a result, your menu may be huge and your flavors can easily become diluted.

But, you as the diner — if you’re armed with cooking knowledge, you can make good food yourself to satisfy your palate, save money, and learn. Perhaps you’ll eventually engage with local restaurant owners so they know you have a high level of appreciation of their craft. Maybe they’ll feel more open to try new dishes and offer bolder flavors.

Cooking at home and eating out are not mutually exclusive. I love the healthy and relaxed aspects of home cooking but I want someone else to plan my meal and wash the dishes once in a while!

So, that’s why I write cookbooks and teach cooking — so you can understand how foods are prepared, make them yourself, and be a more informed diner! It’s a Nguyen-win if all that happens. A girl has to maintain and manifest her dreams!

💎 Nampla prik — a 1 minute Thai Wonder Sauce

A few months ago, someone asked about nampla prik, whether or not Pim had a recipe for it. Yes she does, and it’s tucked away in a recipe Note (always read recipe endnotes in the book to unmask little hidden gems!).

Nampla prik literally means fish sauce with chilies spiked with lime juice. I’d had it before at restaurants where it was lackluster, but Pim adds thinly sliced shallot and the sauce dazzles with complex flavor. You can have it as you like — with or without chilies — as much as you like, sometimes with garlic. Add extra lime juice to boost the tanginess for your taste.

How does Thai nampla prik compare to Viet nuoc cham?

Nampla prik is more intensely tart, salty, spicy and pungent. There’s no sugar and no water involved like what’s in my nuoc cham recipes. Also, nampla prik is enjoyed in relatively small, yet potent, quantities. You stir together it together and serve with a small spoon like you see in these photos from Cooking Thai.

Nampla prik isn’t super multipurpose like nuoc cham. In the book, we present it as a Thai “serving sauce” to accompany dishes like the holy basil stir-fries, salted egg yolk-shrimp fried rice and northern curry and mushroom fried rice. But ubiquitous holy basil stir fries (pad gaprao) can be made with practically any kind of meat or tofu so you’re apt to see the same sauce on many tables.

How to make Pim’s nampla prik

Nampla prik brightens and enlivens anything it touches. Use a small spoon to sprinkle the sauce onto your food at the table.

In a small bowl, mix together 1½ Tbsp lime juice, 1½ Tbsp fish sauce (or Thai thin soy sauce), and 1 Tbsp chopped fresh Thai chilies. If you like, stir in 1 Tbsp very thinly sliced shallot. Makes about 1/4 cup to serve 4.

I always pack my tablespoon with the shallot because it tastes really good after sitting in the lime juice and fish sauce. For a primer on Thai fish sauce, check page 22 of the book or visit this page on my website for a 🆓 guide to salty, spicy Thai condiments and seasonings.

💎 Take this life expectancy quiz. I got an “F”.

Getting only four out of ten questions right underscored the marvelous facts I didn’t know about living longer! Rory happily said that he may live past 100 so I better get ready to take care of him in his dotage. 🫡

Take the life expectancy quiz via my free gift link. You may have to click through some pitch to subscribe but you should get there. There are good explainers and statistics at the end.

💎 Coming up . . .

In this coming Sunday Special, you’ll see some easy, light recipes that have recently impressed me more than I expected.

This Fried Eggplant is dangerously easy to eat. Crispy sticks of eggplant are cooked til tender and seasoned with a universally loved savory blend of salt, white pepper, and five spice powder!  This recipe is best as one of multiple dishes in a meal, or as a delicious appetizer / finger food with an ice […]

These stuffed poblano peppers are boldly flavored and legitimately hearty, boasting 20 grams of protein per pepper. They’re stuffed with soft, blended black beans followed by two kinds of cheese. The cheese turns gloriously golden in the oven while the chili peppers become nicely tender and caramelized.

Two layers of red salsa, one underneath and one drizzled on top, bring this crowd-pleasing vegetarian main dish together. Consider it a simpler alternative to enchiladas or layered casseroles that’s just as satisfying.

This recipe will be perfect for game days and casual home get-togethers as the temperatures drop. I hope you’ll make them again and again this fall—I’m already looking forward to my next batch.

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First up — I realized that a correction needed to be made for last weekend’s vegan strawberry and cream cake recipe. You don’t want to use vanilla paste. I tried and the vegan whipped cream was no bueno because of the xanthan gum involved. Grab the updated the vegan recipe and PDF. The correction did not impact the standard recipe for the strawberry and cream cake for fans of eggs and dairy!

It’s not every week that you have a book launch and the icon Nigella Lawson says that parts of your new book are indispensable. Yes, she did. Nigella featured Cooking Thai in this week’s post at her website’s Cookbook Corner, which offers not just recipes from cookbooks but also Nigella’s inimitable voice and authentic reflections on food writing and cooking.

Cooking Thai is my eighth cookbook release and it was not as stressful because I am a co-star. At the book launch dinner at Pim’s restaurant, Nari, I got to enjoy the food cooked from the book, flowing wine, and company! I did have to work a bit for our book launch talk held at Omnivore Books in San Francisco. It was standing room only with overflow onto the sidewalk. Thankfully, they handed us microphones and had a speaker outside.

We signed many copies Cooking Thai, which ought to be en route to PTFS folks who pre-ordered from the shop. I also signed copies of my solo book projects too so if you want those, check the Omnivore Books website. It was great to briefly catch up with old friends, PTFS subscribers, and meet new cookbook authors, like , who has a fabulous new book — Great Bakes from the Midwest.

Cooking Thai condiment guide

Among the many things Nigella wrote about Cooking Thai was that the section on ingredients was indispensable. We built it to be just that but we didn’t know if others would take note of it! I’ve been in the fog about many Thai ingredients for decades. Pim answered all my Thai ingredient questions, which helped us build the book with extra detail and insights.

If you already have the book, turn to page 22. If you’re waiting for the book and gearing up or just curious about the Thai pantry, check out article on Basic Salty, Spicy Condiments and Seasonings for Cooking Thai Food at the website (it’s free!).

Cooking Thai spotlights near and far

Raise your hand if you’re a Food & Wine magazine fan! The September issue that just hit the newsstand contains a “Curry Class” feature article written by Pim and me. In the book, the curry chapter (over 50 pages long) is the biggest because curries are essential to Thai daily life and celebrations. For that reason, the chapter contains a wealth of practical tips and techniques along with some of Pim’s brilliant curry pastes formulas and favorite curry recipes.

Food & Wine editors and test kitchen crew test drove a handful of recipes for the feature, including this one. I’m thrilled by the magazine’s positive response.

If you’re more of an online reader, Nigella spotlighted the book’s Bougie Pad Gaprao (holy basil and beef stir-fry) on her website. To try some Cooking Thai recipes on Substack, check out these newsletter dispatches by Bay Area author (Savory Thai Citrus-Herb Salad) and NY-based Maggie Hoffman of (Kin Khao Wings; Maggie also interviewed Pim for her podcast and post).

For a behind-the-scenes look at cookbook making, interviewed me about my first cookbook collaboration for the Cookbook Collective.

Sharing the Cooking Thai love . . .

When you cook from Cooking Thai, tag me (on Substack Notes or on Instagram
@ andreanguyen88) and Pim (@ chezpim) so we can amplify your enthusiasm! And, please review the book on Amazon or wherever you purchased your copy to help other people realize the book’s value.

Emily (@lucylovesbooks) got her signed copy from Now Serving in Los Angeles. Maia (@thecookbooknerd) went Thai grocery shopping. Joe made a DIY book bundle from Amazon! Cooking Thai’s laab Issan and Thai tea cheesecake prepared by Nikki (@skoppbakery).

If you have any questions about Cooking Thai or Thai cooking, let me know. I might be able to help!

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I hope you had a good week yourself and I’ll be back on Thursday with a Midweek Gems — which we’ve not had in a while!

A friend asked me last week how long it takes to get a recipe right. I told him the only answer I know: As long as it takes. I’d like to be someone who could “adjust my expectations,” make peace with “close enough,” or have the slightest amount of chill when it’s clear that whatever I’m trying to do isn’t something I can pull off, but we’re wired how we’re wired.

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Let’s talk about hemp milk. It’s easy to make at home (no soaking required), and yields a silky-smooth, creamy milk. Hemp milk boasts the most impressive nutrition profile of my alternative milk recipes, offering nearly 10 grams of plant-based protein per serving. While hemp milk can’t compete on the calcium front, it offers an array of nutrients that can be hard to come by otherwise.

I always feel good about sprinkling some hemp seeds into my baby’s food or serving my daughter a glass of this hemp milk. It was our house milk of choice for a couple of years, though she’s grown more particular—fingers crossed that she likes the chocolate variation I made today.

If you take nothing else away from this post, consider adding a sprinkle of hemp seeds to your next smoothie recipe! They’ll blend right in and offer an easy boost of protein.

Continue to the recipe...

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This Chinese Spinach Salad is a hearty and delicious way to enjoy lots of fresh spinach. Adding tofu skin and peanuts makes it extra tasty and nutrient-dense!  The Art of the Chinese “Cold Dish”    Every year, I like to come up with one or two new “cold dishes” that can be served chilled or room […]

This Chinese-style Steamed Lobster is cooked to perfection and finished with a garlic soy butter that brings out the very best in the sweet, tender meat. It’s a seafood treat that has the best of both worlds—the simplicity of steamed lobster and butter, with Chinese flavors!  A Lobster Recipe Bridging East and West There’s something […]

Last weekend, soon after the Strawberry and Cream Dream Cake recipe published, Anh emailed asking if I thought a vegan version was possible. I know little about vegan baking. What to do about eggs for the batter? What about the whipped cream frosting? Those are are all ingredients that brilliantly and naturally function to make baking’s chemistry work.

Could I come up with a version that would fool even non vegans?

To goad me on, Rory reminded me of the 1970s Chiffon margarine commercial:

Ha! So, I spent most of this past week working on an eggless, dairy-free version of my pandan-strawberry and cream cake. Finally, I got satisfaction on Saturday afternoon.

Just because you’re vegan doesn’t mean you should be left out of the dream cake action. I shared the cake with two neighbors — one who’d sampled the regular cake on two trials, and the other is a former vegan. They all enjoyed the vegan cake!

Rory was skeptical but was impressed by the cake’s flavor, which allowed the pandan to shine more than in the regular version. He adored the vegan whipped cream frosting. “No one would know that the whipped cream frosting is vegan,” he said.

The whipped cream

The main reason this cake took me so long to figure out was the whipped cream. I went six (6) rounds with it. Most of the experiments tasted gross or failed to fluff up. No, I didn’t want to use a commercial product because they’re unreliable and can taste funny. In the end, I manipulated a recipe by Miyoko Schindler to get the flavor, texture, and performance that I wanted for this frosting — which is icing on the cake in many ways.

With this vegan cake recipe, the Strawberry and Cream Dream Cake reaches a much a broader range of eaters!

🌱 If you follow a vegan diet— here’s your dream cake with variations and a luscious whipped cream frosting that you’ll be using for lots of other treats.

🥛 🚫 If you’re lactose intolerant, the whipped cream frosting is phenomenal. It would be great for the regular version of this cake or other cakes.

⚡️ If you’re an omnivore, these recipes offer useful takeaways on how to fool Mother Nature and up your cooking game.

While I have you here, watch my helpful video tip for moving a cake around:

There’s lots more below to help you avoid my fumbles and succeed:

• Two (2) recipes in full text and downloadable PDF

  • Vegan Pandan-Strawberry and Cream Cake

  • Vegan Vanilla Whipped Cream Frosting

• Three (3) cake variations for vegan versions of Matcha-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, Citrusy Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, and Vanilla-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake

• Explainers about why certain hero ingredients work better than others

• Advance prep pointers to help you easily make this cake

Let’s whip up this cake!

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This Chinese milk pudding is light and creamy. You may recognize it from dim sum restaurants. They’re chilled cubes of milk pudding coated in coconut that are the perfect little sweet treat! A Lightly Sweet Chinese Dessert I’m always looking for desserts that aren’t too sweet, and this Chinese milk pudding coated in coconut flakes […]

It’s been over a year since our last garden/farm update, but we’ve been busy working on a big project: our new kitchen and studio! Who doesn’t like a good before and after home renovation project? Let’s jump in!  At this point, it’s become a bit of a cliche for barns to become food blogging central […]