Annie wanted to make some rendang chicken and I said, you can’t have just rendang chicken without the coconut rice and dhal! So instead of a single, easy dish, I coerced her into preparing this Malaysian feast.
Start a pot of lentils (1/2 cup) going. Season with 1 tsp turmeric powder, a pinch of salt, 1 tsp ginger, garlic and shallot paste. Toss some mustard seed, fennel seed, cumin seed, a stick of cinnamon and 2 chile peppers in oil and fry until fragrant. Add in half a red onion, sliced and a tbsp of curry powder.
The South Bay also boasts quite a bit of good Indian cuisine. We’re lucky to have an Indian grocery nearby, as well as a small Indian restaurant. I needed to pick up some fennel seed from the store. At the checkout, I asked if they had some samosas for sale. The gentleman said no, but I could buy them at the restaurant just a few doors down.
Hot out of the oil, these are deep fried dumplings filled with potatoes and peas and Indian spices. It comes with two sauces, a minty green sauce and a sweet, tangy tamarind sauce. I couldn’t resist eating a second.
Another great thing about living in San Jose is the absolute abundance of Vietnamese food here. Especially in the King and Tully Rd area of East San Jose. This is some Vietnamese take-out from Huong Lan.
Can’t give you the Vietnamese names, but the one on the left is a roll with grilled chicken in the middle, wrapped with lettuce, and wrapped again with a rice flour roll that was more stringy than solid. The topping is green onions and minced dried shrimp.
The middle is a summer roll with shrimp, lettuce and mint wrapped in rice paper and covered with peanut sauce.
The right is just flat rice sheets folded over and topped with fried shallots. Nothing to complain about, including the price.
One of the great things about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is the close proximity to fresh seafood. Especially fresh Dungeness crab. We don’t eat much crab but at the peak of the season when prices dip and live crab can be found for a really good price, we have to splurge.
After we buy them from the Asian grocery, we put them in the freezer to chill. It makes ’em “sleepy” so they’re not so feisty before being rinsed and tossed into the steamer. I learned this trick from Alton Brown’s show on lobsters, I think.
Trying to maneuver a live crab that is fully aware it is about to be cooked is an exciting operation. Once I tried killing one by poking a chopstick between its eyes. Didn’t work. It grabbed the chopstick in both pincers and tried to pull it back out.
So now I freeze them for a few hours before they go into the pot. 18 minutes later, it’s time to remove, rinse, and feast.
