Thai Beef Salad

Thai Beef Salad, my dinner tonight, pictured with a wicked hot Thai pepper out of the garden

I love this, and it is a perfect way to prepare leftover sirloin, which is common in my house because I love grilled steak. (My other favorite way to use leftover steak is a steak sandwich with mayonnaise on squishy white bread. And potato chips.) Most of the ingredients are right in the Central Texas garden in fall and winter.

Chopped up hot pepper, onion, mint, sacred basil, cilantro, and cucumber

You will need:

Leftover grilled sirloin, rare (buy grass-fed if you can find it. It has TWICE the flavor of conventional, and more omerga-3 oils, and JUST DO AS I COMMAND!)

Lettuce

A sweet onion (a 1014 or a Bermuda or a few shallots)

10 strands (or more) of Cilantro

A fat sprig or two (or four) of Mint

Sacred Basil if available, one sprig (or 3)

A cucumber

A carrot

Fresh hot peppers (2) or ONE SMALL THAI pepper (!)

Pickled hot peppers if you don’t have fresh

One clove of garlic

Fish sauce (one or two teaspoons)

Lime or lemon or Meyer lemon (all the juice of one)

Tablespoon of sugar

Adding the sliced rare sirloin

This salad is fun to make because everything is cold, there is no rush and no worries about overcooking anything, you can just kind of zone out while you are chopping.

Thinly slice clove of garlic and fresh hot pepper. Then thinly slice roughly a quarter of the sweet onion (less if it is big) and the cucumber and toss all the chopped up things in a bowl. Add pickled hot pepper if your fresh pepper isn’t spicy.

(HAVE I MENTIONED THAT ONE SMALL THAI PEPPER IS ENOUGH TO MAKE IT VERY, VERY HOT?)

A bed of just-picked Red Oak Leaf and Buttercrunch lettuce

Put the carrot through the fine grater and add. Deleaf and chop up the cilantro, mint, and Thai basil and add. Slice up the leftover sirloin as thinly as you can without undue strain, and toss in the rest of the stuff. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce. Pour over the salad and toss. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

Pad See Ew: A dish served with Thai Pickled Jalapenos

Pad See Ew with Pickled Red Jalapenos

“It’s hard to feel mysterious and romantic when you have been supping on Pork and Greens!”—–Anne of Green Gables, L.M Montgomery

Every culture has their own version of “Pork ‘n’ Greens”, but probably the BEST version is the Thai Dish Pad See Ew. Jam from Thai Fresh told me that, although Pad Thai is the most popular Thai dish in America, in Thailand the  dish that most Thai would identify as “The National Dish” is Pad See Ew. It is considered to be total comfort food, Mom-style cooking, although it is a street vendor favorite as well.

The ingredients for Pad See Eew are relatively few: Rice noodles, Chinese broccoli (or Kale), fresh pork, an egg, and garlic. Oh and Soy Sauce. I probably would never had tried making this dish at home, except for the Gardening Challenge:

“What am I going to do with all this ________?”

Last spring it was “All this Kale????” I myself am very fond of greens, I particularly love arugula and kale, oh but I also love Swiss Chard and Spinach. But I am the ONLY person in my house who likes them, so I have to eat ALL of them ALL BY MYSELF. Usually a garden of any size will produce enough greens to feed a family of 8, so using them up takes a lot of ingenuity. Pad See Ew is a GREAT dish for using up KALE.

(Of course, my kale plants at the present moment are a little over an inch tall, so I didn’t make it this time in order to use up Kale. In fact, I BOUGHT KALE AT THE STORE especially to make it, because I was craving it. Because it is SO DELICIOUS, the most POPULAR dish in all of Thailand !!!)

P*L*U*S, I noticed on the recipe that it is served with fresh pickled Chile Peppers (such as the Thai style fresh pickled jalapenos in my icebox right now) so this dish falls under the heading “What to do with pickled jalapenos”.

A NOTE: I find that when I am cooking Thai food, I use more meat and more sauce or curry paste than the recipes call for. So, consider this recipe rather flexible; you can really add more or less of anything and it will probably still be awesome. This recipe reflects the way I made it this evening.

PAD SEE EW

2 TBS oil

2 TB sugar

1 cup thinly sliced fresh raw pork (I use fresh ham steak from Peach Creek Farms.)

1/2 cup light Thai soy suace (you can buy this at Thai Fresh or  any Asian Market)

2-6 cloves of garlic. I myself like a lot of garlic!

several stems of cilantro if you’ve got it

Half a package of flat, wide dried rice noodles

1 egg

1 TBS dark soy sauce (tamari)

1 TBS white vinegar

A bunch of Kale, or you can be AUTHENTIC and use Chinese Broccoli. But don’t use regular broccoli, it’s flavor is not strong enough. To be Perfectly Wonderful, this dish must have that “Bitter Greens” flavor.

Use your biggest Le Creuset stockpot, or, a wok if you have one. I have given up on Woks and just use my Le Creuset anymore, I just seem to get better results.

1. Get out a big ceramic bowl, and put your dry noodles in it, and then run the hot water in your sink until it is coming out Burn-your-hand-hot, and fill the bowl with hot water. They should soak for about 45 minutes, they are ready when they are all floppy.  While they are soaking, you chop everything up. When cooking Asian, YOU REALLY HAVE TO do that Galloping Gourmet thing where you have everything all ready and chopped up before you turn the stove on.

Peel and mince your garlic (I do it the “SMASH” way) and also the cilantro if you have some. Chop up the Kale into pieces the size of which will fit easily on your fork when you are eating. Slice the raw pork into bite-size strips. Salt and pepper it while you are at it. Get an egg out of the icebox.

2. In a little dish, mix up the sugar, Thai soy sauce, Tamari, and the spoonful of Vinegar. Mix to dissolve the sugar.

Okay, ready to cook!

Drain the noodles.

Put the oil in the pot. When you think it might be hot, add the garlic and cilantro and stir a little. Add the Pork. When it looks about half done, add the Kale. It will start to turn bright green. Just keep stirring everything until the kale begins to wilt and get smaller. Grab your DRAINED noodles, and add them and really begin stirring so that the noodles cook too. Add the little bowl of sauce and sugar and STIR! When it seems like everything is cooked to your liking, clear aside a little empty area in the bottom of the pot, and crack the egg into it. Smash it up a little, that is, scramble it a little, and then toss everything around so that the egg can coat everything. It will be barely discernible, but it is important! To the Flavor of the Dish!

It is done!

Top with a few Thai pickled Jalapenos!

The version of Pad See Ew I made tonight was the BEST I HAVE EVER MADE!

Pad See Ew pictured with my jar of Fresh Pickled Jalapenos

Things to Make with Jalapenos: Jalapeno Cream Cheese

Half-used jar of 2008 jalapenos from the Icebox

There are these WONDERFUL farmers, Michael and Debbie Sams, who have a business called Full Quiver Farms (because they are Amish and have a big family) and they makes cheese. You can buy their cheese at the Sunset Valley Farmers Market; I always buy my cheese from them whenever possible, they make a zillion kinds, okay they make like twenty five kinds. It is my considered EXPERT FOOD CRITIC opinion that their FETA CHEESE is the Best to be HAD on Planet EARTH. I also buy their fresh mozzarella, and on occasion their cheddar. But probably their most popular item is their flavored cream cheese spreads, they make, as near as I can remember, these flavors: blueberry, pineapple, garlic-basil, chive and onion, jalapeno, spinach-feta and strawberry.

So one day I was about to buy some jalapeno cream cheese spread, and I thought, “You know, Self, most of the things he uses to flavor these cream cheeses are things you have loitering around your very own garden, that you can never seem to find enough uses for.”

So I decided to try to make my own. It worked G*R*E*AT, tasted just like Full Quiver Farms, and I get to use up my own garden herbs and things. MAINLY, the flavors that find the greatest approbation from Mr. Thornberry are the Jalapeno and the Chive and Onion, and sometimes I make Dill or just “Herb” which means a bunch of herbs like Italian Parsley and Cilantro and Sacred Basil and Dill. But 9 times out of 10, I make Jalapeno. It is the most popular flavor BY FAR. It is the Michael Jackson of Flavors!

Pickled Jalapenos and a pickled garlic from the jar, getting ready to be pulsed.

I use 365 brand Organic Cream Cheese, which costs $2.50.

First, you put one or two pickled or fresh jalapenos in the bowl of your food processor. Red ones make a very nice color of spread. If you are using the Mexican Pickled Jalapenos from the previous recipe, you can use the carrot and the onion and the garlic from those along with a jalapeno. The number of jalapenos will depend on how hot they are; mine from last year were SUPER HOT and the ones I picked at Johnson’s Backyard Garden were SUPER HOT too.

Add the Pieces of Cream Cheese

ANYWAY: to the one or two jalapenos, add about a teaspoon of French Gray Sea Salt. If you don’t have that kind of salt, use a half teaspoon of regular salt, and of course you could use any fancy gourmet salt you have around! Put the lid on the processor and pulse until the jalapenos are in tiny shreds.

Open your block of cream cheese and slice it into like 6 slices. Put the cream cheese in the food processor and pulse until it makes a ball sort of. Like there will be a ball of cream cheese flinging around in there, but not completely blended together. Take a rubber spatula and wipe all the little shreds of jalapeno off of the lid and the sides and make sure it is all in the bottom of the processor. Then replace the lid and pulse UNTIL THE BALL GOES AWAY and nothing is getting mixed anymore because it is all sticking to the sides.

Sticking to the Sides

Using the same rubber spatula, scrape all the jalapeno cream cheese out of the bowl and off the blade, and place in a handy receptacle. I use a glass with a lid.

This jalapeno cream cheese is mostly eaten on crackers by Dave, but I PARTICULARLY L*O*V*E it on a baked sweet potato! OMG so DELICIOUS! Also it is very good as a spread on a sandwich, not as the MAIN thing but used as one would use mayonnaise.

In a Glass with a Lid

Pickling Jalapenos

Can you see how big and crisp and fresh these are?

Last month I went to a VERY FANCY dinner, out under the sky at a place called Johnson’s Backyard Garden. It was an event called Outstanding In the Field, where I enjoyed a fabulous meal in wonderful company for free, that I meant to blog about. Sometimes people say to me “Do you ever RUN OUT of things to Blog About?” and It is SO not what is happening! I actually have such an ENORMOUS backlog of things to blog about, that I have HUNDREDS of photos of events and recipes and dishes that I never found the time to blog about in a TIMELY fashion, just sitting in my computer.

Once it is not TIMELY anymore, I feel embarrassed! I wish I got paid $50 a post or something, so that my innate GREED coupled with my DESIRE TO MAKE A LIVING would COMPEL me to write a post everyday, maybe even TWO a day. But if I ever want to get to that point, where I am getting PAID to share my fascinating thoughts, I have to write two posts a day for FREE for, I don’t know, a WHILE. RIght? So let’s get down to business:

"Outstanding In The Field" fancy outdoor dinner table

ANYWAY: While I was at this event, I got to talking to Mrs. Johnson, the wife of Farmer Johnson, and we discussed farming/gardening. And she said something along the lines of, right now we are sending our CSA customers a lot of jalapenos because everything else is either dead or still a seedling. I said in reply, “Oh, you have Jalapenos? Because my crop FAILED this year! I kept the plants alive through September, which is when they are really really prolific, but instead of getting a couple of grocery bags full of Jalapenos, I got ZIP!” And Mrs. Johnson, BLESS HER HEART, said, “Oh just come out here and pick some for free, you can have all you want.”

Because I am EXTREMELY FOND of the word “FREE” ( as I document here! ) I replied, ” Don’t say that unless you really mean it, because I WILL COME.”  And then, after getting over the Flu, I WENT!!

Johnson's Beautiful Crops and Soil

OH. MY. GOD. You should SEE the Johnsons’ farm. The soil, though only a few miles from my house, is entirely different (East Austin is where all the good topsoil is. I live in South Central Austin, and my topsoil alternates between gravel, clay and caliche, and is about 3 inches thick.) The Johnsons’ farm is in the Colorado river alluvial bed, and the topsoil is five feet deep and as dark and rich as chocolate cake. Their plants are all enormous and thriving, the jalapeno bushes were taller than me! THEIR FARM IS AMAZING!!!

Basket of fresh jalapenos being washed in the sink

I picked a basket full of red and green jalapenos in about half an hour. Next day, I pickled them. I usually make two different kinds of jalapeno pickles: Thai and Mexican. The Thai pickles are best as “fresh” pickles, that is to say, never cooked, just packed in Thai pickling solution raw and jammed into the fridge. But you can also pickle them to be shelf stable.

The Mexican Style pickled Jalapenos are pickled with bay leaf, garlic, carrots, and onion, and have a more savory flavor. The basket of peppers I picked made 12 pints of Mexican Jalapenos and 5 pints of Thai jalapenos. Here are the recipes:

Thai Jalapenos

Fill a large canning boiler with water and bring to a boil. Sterilize canning jars (I usually sterilize MORE than I will need, and I base my need on how much I have to put up. In this case, I sterilized 18 jars, and I thought I would need 14.)

Have new canning jar lids and bands that you bought at the store handy. Buy many, you will use them up eventually! I bought 24. In a large pitcher, mix together a quart of white vinegar and a quart of water. Add 4 cups of white sugar.

Then, sit at your table, and slice jalapenos into slices (include seeds) and pack them tightly into sterilized canning jars. When they are full, pour the vinegar, water, and sugar solution over them, leaving a half inch of headroom. (I didn’t do this on one jar and it EXPLODED in the canner. SO don’t forget to leave the headroom or your jars will explode.) Put on the lids and bands, submerge in the still hot water in the canner and boil for fifteen minutes. Remove from canner and let them cool. They are done!

Slicing

If you are only going to make yourself like ONE jar of pickled jalapanos, don’t bother to can them, just follow the instructions up to putting on the lid, and throw them into the icebox and use them right away.

Mexican Jalapenos

These are a little more involved, but so good! Do the jars as above. In addition to many jalapenos, you will need one or two bay leaves per jar, a bunch of carrots, an onion, and a head of garlic.

Peel the carrots and chop them into pieces roughly the size of a jalapeno.

Peel the onion the cut into chunks. Peel the garlic cloves.

Scout investigates the Mexican Style Jalapenos

Into each sterilized jar, put a bay leaf, a carrot, and a clove of garlic. Take the jalapenos, and pierce them with a paring knofe so that the brine will be able to enter their cavities. I usually kind of poke them once near the top and then cut the bottoms in half. pack as many jalapenos as you can into each jar, adding another piece of carrot and some onion chunks as well as peppers. Add another clove of garlic if you have extra. Pack full. Add a teaspoon of salt to each jar.

Mix a quart of white vinegar with a quart of water in a jug or pitcher. Pour over the peppers, and press them down to allow air to escape from the pepper cavities. Leave 1/2 inch of headroom on each jar. Put the lids on and seal them. Process for 15 minutes and then remove and allow to cool.

My Pal Gina who lives in San Francisco asked me: “What do you use pickles jalapenos FOR?” My Mind Broke. What food is NOT improved by the addition of jalapenos? So, I will be doing a series on WHAT TO DO WITH JALAPENOS!

Eighteen pints of pickled jalapenos! ENough to last until next summer and give away too.