Last time I wrote about Weird Food Thursday I was trying to get into a routine of sorts. Then my sister got married, and then it was 900,000 degrees outside instead of the 875,000 degrees we'd grown accustomed to since May, and then I gave up on pretty much everything for a while because seriously, fuck it.
I started it up again last week, heat be damned, and what I made was so boring that I have forgotten what it was. Oh, wait, it was something akin to, but not quite, parmesan chicken. It was fine. Its main virtues were that because it was so boring I had more than enough left over to take to work the next day, and it used up a drawer full of zucchini that was about to go bad and an open bag of Panko that was flirting with freezer burn.
This Thursday on the other hand, is pretty exciting, but it violated the "whatever's on hand" principle in just about every way possible. I made a batch of Tom Kha, which meant earlier this week we had to go to like three different places and spend $35 on ingredients like kaffir lime leaves and galanga roots.
At least for all that trouble it made about 12 servings, and I have galanga root chopped up and stored in the freezer for a future meal, so in the long run I suppose it was more economical if not cheaper than just going to a damn Thai restaurant and ordering a couple bowls of the stuff.
Besides, I wanted to make it closer to the way I like it. My two favorite versions of Tom Kha in Austin are at Thai Kitchen and Madam Mam's. Thai Kitchen's is good, but they use too many white mushrooms for my taste and it's not as rich as I'd like. Madam Mam's is fantastic, but they amp the flavor up just a little too much, so I spend my meal feeling like I've been punched in the mouth and the next day like I've been punched in the...well, never mind. They use a lot of lime and many, many peppers, is my point. As much as I like both versions, I wanted to try to split the difference.
I used this recipe as my guide because it broke the steps down nicely and sounded plausibly delicious. It took a good bit of the evening--galanga root is a bitch to chop, even just to get it into chunks small enough to run through the food processor--and it turned out really well. Not as good as the restaurants', but close enough.
I will make it again, but I would jack up the spices and flavorings by about a third, add another can of coconut milk, and leave most of the inedibles in for flavor. I pulled them out like the author suggested because I thought it would be nice to not pick lemongrass off my tongue, but it really tastes so much better when you leave everything in there.
Also, this would be so easy to make vegetarian, if you can find fishless fish sauce or if the vegetarians in your life are ok with a little fish, as many of mine are.
So, yep. That was fun, and now we have nothing to do but wait for Weird Food Thursday to become Too Long Friday, which will eventually shade into Abundant Beer Weekend. I hope you all have a very nice one.