Thai Salad Dressing

I don't have a picture for you today. I just have a recipe, a very simple recipe, for an easy and yummy salad dressing . It's so good, you'll drink it up if there's any left in the bowl after you finish swirling your last lettuce leaf around in the dregs.

Maybe all you have is lettuce in the fridge, because it's Thursday night and you're in a hurry to watch Grey's Anatomy and running out of food. Maybe you throw a can of soup into a pot, but it's all too unsatisfying and unhealthy and you pull that slightly wilted head of romaine out of the fridge and motivate yourself to wash it and tear it up. Then it goes into a salad spinner or patted down with a towel and finally you are staring at a pile of green in a big bowl. And that's even more pathetic than the canned soup.

Maybe you have a bottle of fish sauce in the fridge because you made a Thai curry two months ago, and a lime because you were going to make guacamole before the avocado turned mushy and brown, except it turned mushy and brown the day after you bought it. So you mix up some fish sauce, lime juice, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, sugar, and whisk in some vegetable oil. Toss that limp, clean lettuce with your dressing to wake it up a little, and what do you know, there are some ruddy looking radishes rolling around in the crisper, so you add some thin slices of radish on top for color and bite. A little salt and pepper and your meal just became something special. And it's nice to have something special during a mundane Thursday night meal.

Thai Salad Dressing (Joy of Cooking, for the Thai Beef Salad, but it's good on any light salad)
Yields 1 cup dressing

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
red pepper flakes to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.

The Kind of Brownie I Like

I just made some amazing brownies. When I pulled them out of the oven, a little undercooked, it seemed like they were going to fall apart. I started imagining all baked goods in which the crumbs never fuse together, but instead form individual crumblets that stay in the pan shape until cut into. Like a Monet you've come too close to, or a dream that disintegrates when you wake up.

But with brownies, as with life, patience is a virtue, and once the recalcitrant crumbs had cooled down, they formed a dense chocolaty interior with a glistening crust, and held together just fine when I lifted my second piece out of the pan (just to be sure it was any good).

This was the kind of brownie I liked. Dense and gooey and not at all cake like. Not too sweet, with a dark chocolate richness enhanced with a touch of espresso. No nuts, no frosting, no embellishment of any kind.

There are a lot of brownie recipes out there. Besides the wide variety of plain ones, there are recipes for mint brownies and cheesecake swirled brownies and caramel brownies and the brownie's sweeter, gentler younger sister the blondie. And you could try all of them. You should try all of them, to find the kind of brownie you like. Take your time and enjoy the search.

Double Chocolate Mocha Brownies (Gourmet, Dec 2002)

This recipe uses unsweetened chocolate squares, but cocoa powder works just as well. Since cocoa powder is just unsweetened chocolate separated from the cocoa butter, you can substitute one for the other by altering the butter or fat in the recipe. The substitution rate I've seen is 1 oz unsweetened chocolate = 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon butter. Don't be fooled by the chocolate chips in this recipe. They melt away and you'd never know they were there. If you're like me and hate a strong coffee flavor, cut the espresso in half. Also, I cut the recipe in half, using 3 oz chocolate and 5 tablespoons butter, in an 8x8 pan, and baked for only 15 minutes. It was perfect.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 5 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon instant-espresso powder or instant-coffee granules
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a 15- by 10- by 1-inch baking pan with foil, allowing 2 inches of foil to hang over ends of pan, and grease foil well (except overhang) with 1 tablespoon butter.

Melt remaining 11 tablespoons butter with unsweetened chocolate in a large metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Remove bowl from heat and whisk in sugar, espresso powder, vanilla, and salt (mixture will be grainy), then add eggs 1 at a time, whisking after each addition until batter is smooth.

Toss together flour and chocolate chips in another bowl and add to batter, stirring until just combined.

Spread batter evenly in baking pan and bake in middle of oven until top is firm and edges just begin to pull away from sides of pan, about 20 minutes (do not overbake).

Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then carefully lift brownies from pan by grasping both ends of foil and transfer to rack to cool 10 minutes more. Cut into 32 squares and lift brownies off foil with a spatula.

Getting A Bad Rap

I didn't think I really liked cabbage. Maybe it was a childhood influenced by Cabbage Patch Kids. I mean, what about a baby growing in a cabbage patch is appealing to my taste buds? Then there was the goopy, mushy coleslaw that comes as a side with fried chicken or hamburgers, stuffed into a translucent plastic cup on the side of the plate, the limp cabbage attempting to stand up for the vegetable team but crowded out by a plethora of fries and weighed down by an abundance of mayonnaise.

I admit the Napa version of cabbage does its part in making a solid potsticker. But most of the time I envisioned cabbage, particularly cooked cabbage, as a smelly, dark, tasteless dish doled out to poor orphans or homeless people.

It turns out that cabbage had been getting a bad rap all this time.

I don't know what changed my mind, but two things happened within a 24 hour period. I spotted a recipe for cabbage salad that was reminiscent of the flavors of guacamole, and I ate some cabbage salad by default because it was the only vegetable served at a dinner party. The salad I spotted looked so simple, with mostly ingredients that I already had in my house (other than the cabbage): cilantro, scallions, chilies, mayonnaise, lime juice. The salad I ate was light and crisp, dressed only with olive oil and salt, and when I ran back for more it had been cleaned out. Suddenly cabbage was no longer a bitter, ugly vegetable associated with patches of babies, no longer a limp accessory.


And yes, it's another salad, that's two in a row from me, so where's the dessert girl you know and love? There's no doubt she'll be back, but in the mean time, continue to follow your resolutions.

Winter Cabbage Salad
Yield: 4 servings

Half a head of green cabbage
Handful of cilantro leaves, washed, dried, and chopped
4 - 5 green onions
1 serrano chili
4 tablespoons light mayonnaise
Juice of 1/2 to 1 lime
salt to taste

Slice the cabbage. Slice the white part of the green onions and discard the rest. Slice the chili in half lengthwise and remove the ribs and seeds. Chop the chili. In a small food processor, blend together the mayo, lime juice, half the chopped chili, and half the cilantro. Toss together the cabbage, green onions, remaining chili and cilantro. Add mayonnaise dressing to the salad and combine well. Salt to taste.