Good morning, Exchangers. You’ve got some challenges to meet, as always: places to buy gluten-free foods and recipes to use; an education about rice; layered green salads; green salads without lettuces or spinach leaves; edible flowers for salads.
Correspondent “A.H.” of Signal Mountain is hot on the trail of gluten-free foods for Chattanooga diners. She would love to collect some tips for restaurants that serve gluten-free items and also for recipes, especially for breads.
The remaining requests came in a conversation about the multiplicity of rice and the predictability of salads. One reader bought some short-grain brown rice for a recipe recently and loved the taste. “What kinds of rice are best to use in what menus?” The conversant agreed that they were ready for an easy, layered salad that travels well, for salads without lettuce or spinach leaves, thereby salads that keep well, and finally for edible flowers to add to salads.
Jeana Reidl read the request for a white sauce served at Japanese restaurants and found this one. If this doesn’t fit our reader’s requirement, she resolved to keep digging until she finds it.
Japanese Steak House White Sauce
11⁄2 cups mayonnaise (Hellman’s or Best Foods recommended)
1⁄4 cup water
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon melted butter
1⁄2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1⁄4 teaspoon paprika
Dash cayenne pepper
Using a fork or a whisk, blend all ingredients together thoroughly until well mixed and the sauce is smooth. Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to blend. Bring to room temperature before serving. The sauce will not taste right if you don’t let it sit overnight. And don’t try to substitute catsup for the tomato paste. The water brings it to the right consistency.
Carli Snyder, a resident of West Brow, Ga., and a kitchen designer, recommended this recipe, which answers the recent interest in Thai cooking. Mrs. Snyder did a lot of experimenting to arrive at this finished product.
Shrimp Pad Khing
2 tablespoons extra-light olive oil
8 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped
1⁄2 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
1⁄4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1⁄4 to 1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper, to taste
12 to 14 large shrimp, peeled, deveined and butterflied
3 teaspoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons soy sauce
Cooked rice
Heat oil in a skillet or wok over medium-high heat, and begin sautéing mushrooms. Cook them until they are good and brown (maybe 7 to 10 minutes depending on heat). Watch carefully so they don’t burn. Add the onions and cook just a minute; you want them to stay pretty firm and keep their shape. Add the garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes and black pepper, and cook about 2 minutes (Again, be watchful. You will need to lightly toss occasionally so the tender garlic doesn’t get too brown.) Add the shrimp, oyster sauce and soy sauce. Toss to coat and cook just until the shrimp are pink. This doesn’t take long, maybe a minute or two. Don’t overcook them; they will turn into rubber. Serve over rice. Makes 2 servings.
The following very small recipe was requested several years ago. Its sender, “F.H.,” found a scrap of a magazine page that had been the beginning of his training as an omelet maker. He reported that the recipe came from a small walk-down French restaurant on or around East 61st Street in New York City. “That restaurant may or may not still be in operation, but the recipe lives on.”
Omelet Marat
1 rounded tablespoon unsalted butter
Bits of cooked sausage, crisp bacon, croutons, cooked noodles
Freshly chopped herbs (chives and parsley)
Fresh-ground pepper to taste
Salted, beaten eggs (2 per person)
Put butter in a skillet and heat just until it sizzles. Add other ingredients except eggs, and sauté slowly. Add 2 beaten eggs per person, stirring frequently and lifting edges of mixture so that uncooked portions can flow underneath the cooked portions. Fold mixture in half and serve.
A recent discussion of aioli, a garlic mayonnaise, brought several answers, this one from William Corbin.
Aioli
1 clove garlic
2 pinches sea salt (French sea salt is best)
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1⁄2 cup olive oil
1⁄2 cup vegetable oil
Cut ends off garlic. Peel it, and either chop it or put it through a garlic press. Put it in a mortar and pestle with the salt, and grind it into a paste.
In a heavy mixing bowl (one that won’t scoot across the counter as you’re mixing with one hand and pouring with the other), whisk (you can use an electric whisk) the egg yolks, lemon juice and garlic mixture together until well combined, about one minute.
Start adding the olive oil, drop by drop, whisking all the while. You can add it a bit faster as you go along, but as with mayonnaise, the key to success is going very slowly at the start. When you are done adding the oil, you may adjust the seasonings. Makes 1 cup; this recipe is easily doubled.
Until next week ...
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