Thai Chicken and Watermelon Salad

It’s been over a week since we returned from vacation, but I’m still not really ready to be back to our usual schedule. It is still summer after all. We escaped the Austin heat and spent a week in the mountains in Colorado where we hiked on trails under bright, sunny skies in Beaver Creek, Vail, and Breckenridge. This wasn’t really a food-focused trip, but a few meals were definitely memorable. The homemade donuts at Northside Kitchen were nearly habit-forming, and we had to stop in for one last fix on our way to the airport. Another gem was found in Aspen. I highly recommend a visit to Meat and Cheese which is a gourmet shop and restaurant with very well-sourced items both to purchase and on the menu. Another meal that I keep thinking about involved a simple salad with watermelon, grilled chicken, and arugula at a spot in Avon. I love using watermelon in savory dishes, and the light, crisp, sweet chunks are perfectly refreshing summer food. Watermelon with seared haloumi, basil, and olive oil is one of my favorite salads, and watermelon with feta and olives is another. But, that salad with grilled chicken got me thinking about this recipe I knew was stored away in my files from a few years ago. In the September 2011 issue of Food and Wine, those ingredients were given a Thai spin. As soon as we got back home, I found the recipe and fired up the grill. 

First, the chicken needs to be marinated while the grill is being prepped. Lemongrass is needed, and I was thrilled to have some growing again that I could use here. It was minced and mixed with canola oil, and I added some minced serrano chiles as well. The chicken was added to the oil and left to marinate for 30 to 60 minutes. After being grilled, the chicken was allowed to cool before being chopped into cubes. The watermelon was seeded and cut into cubes as well. The dressing was a simple mix of Thai chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, water, and more canola oil that was mixed and pureed in a food processor. The original recipe suggests mint and cilantro, and they would be great but I used Thai basil, purple basil, and Genovese basil instead since that's what's growing in my herb garden. I also added some frisee leaves. The herbs, frisee, and watermelon chunks were tossed with the dressing. That mixture was plated and topped with the cubed chicken. I garnished with more herbs and a chiffonade of lime leaves from my tree. 

This salad is everything I want in a summer meal. It’s light but still satisfying and full of bright flavors. Lime juice and chiles are meant to be with juicy watermelon, and the flavors of the chicken and herbs pair well with it too. If vacation has to be over, at least I can still eat like it isn’t. 

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Thai Coconut Mussels

Needless to say, I’m picky about food. Over the years, I’ve become much more open-minded about trying new and different flavor combinations, but I seem to be getting choosier all the time about exactly where my food comes from and how it was raised/grown/caught/delivered. Kurt dreads the string of questions I ask about the menu when we try a new restaurant. I’m especially picky when it comes to seafood, but there are some handy clues for deciphering seafood dishes on restaurant menus. “Atlantic” salmon always means farmed, and therefore, I avoid it. If the menu also mentions bluefin tuna, Chilean sea bass, or orange roughy, I’ll probably just want to leave. The news about different types of fish is constantly changing, and overfishing is an ongoing concern. But, maybe it’s not too late to do something about it. When I heard about the new book, The Perfect Protein: The Fish Lover’s Guide to Saving the Oceans and Feeding the World, by Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana, I was very interested in learning what tips it offered. I received a review copy of the book, and I’m also one of the Perfect Protein bloggers. The book covers how we got to where we are with unsustainable fishing practices, how many people around the world rely on fish as a food source, what we could be doing differently, and how the fish in the sea could become abundant again one day. The book includes success stories of places where regulations have been put in place, and fish populations have improved significantly. The three steps outlined to bring about sustainability are: “set science-based fishing quotas, reduce bycatch, and protect habitats.” What consumers can do includes being informed about sustainable seafood options; choosing wild seafood, smaller fish like anchovies and sardines, and mollusks more often; and spreading the word about the issues. 

One of my favorite quotes regarding sustainable seafood is from chef Barton Seaver: “It’s our patriotic duty to eat as many farm-raised shellfish as we can.” While most fish farming is an environmental nightmare, farmed shellfish is a completely different story. Clams, oysters, and mussels are natural filters or “water scrubbers.” They feed on the lowest level of the aquatic food chain and improve the water quality where they’re grown. So, enjoy eating mollusks as often as you can. The Perfect Protein book includes recipes for some of the best, sustainable seafood options from several well-known chefs, and I wanted to highlight a dish with mussels. The Thai Coconut Mussels dish is from Sam Talbot of Season Two of Top Chef. I always start by soaking mussels in a big bowl of water with a few tablespoons of flour for about 30 minutes. This helps with eliminating sand and grit. Then, the mussels should be rinsed, and any beards still attached should be pulled off with the edge of a knife. To start the cooking, a few tablespoons of olive oil were heated in a large Dutch oven, and three tablespoons of grated ginger, four minced garlic cloves, one finely chopped shallot, and two tablespoons of finely chopped lemongrass were added. In a couple minutes when fragrant, two tablespoons of unsweetened, ground coconut was added followed by a pound and a half of cleaned mussels. The heat was turned up to medium-high, and then a tablespoon of soy sauce and one teaspoon of fish sauce were added. I also added some finely chopped, fresh chiles. After about one minute, three-quarters of a cup of coconut milk was added, the pan was covered, and the mussels were left to cook for about four minutes or until opened. Any mussels that don’t open should be discarded. The opened mussels were placed in serving bowls, and cilantro and mint leaves along with the juice and zest of two limes and some Thai basil and purple basil from my herb garden were added to the coconut milk. I also added some thinly sliced lime leaves from my tree. The coconut milk broth was poured over the mussels. 

The herby, spicy flavor of the coconut milk broth was a great match for the mussels, and some rice noodles were ideal for slurping with the extra broth left in the bowl. It’s not easy to always make perfect choices in the ever-changing world of sustainable seafood, but learning about the issues makes it possible to do better as often as we can. 

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Corn and Zucchini Simmered in Coconut Milk with Thai Basil

I kind of like ingredient-hunting through recipes. It’s become a fun, new hobby of mine when I have an ingredient and can’t decide how to use it. I start looking through the indexes of cookbooks, searching for whatever the ingredient of the day is, in hopes of finding some interesting dish in which it’s used. When I decided to make Thai style crab cakes the other day, I used some Thai basil from the farmers’ market. After making the crab cakes, there was still a lot remaining of the very generous bunch I had received. So, off on my ingredient-hunt I went. My first stop was the index of Local Flavors, and under Thai Basil, it reads 'see basil.' And, under basil, I found this dish, and the hunt was over in record time. In creating this dish, Deborah Madison was inspired by the flavor of Thai basil, rather than Italian basil, with corn and zucchini, and then decided to add coconut milk and tofu. I think that she had a fantastic idea.

Cubed tofu was dried and then browned in a skillet with zucchini chunks. Fresh corn was cut from four ears, and the corn milk was pressed from the cobs with the back of a knife. All of that was added to the skillet along with chopped green onions, some Thai chiles, and chopped cilantro and Thai basil leaves. Coconut milk was added, and it simmered for just a few minutes, and dinner was ready. This simple stew was served with white, long-grain rice.

Everything about the dish was very fresh-tasting, and even though it was all about the Thai basil for me, I wouldn’t skip this if you don’t have any on hand. You could go with all cilantro or even try it with Italian basil. Corn, zucchini, tofu, and coconut milk are all a little mild in the flavor department, but they go together very well. In fact, there was something very comfort food-like about that combination. It’s the green onion, chiles, and herbs that livened things up and gave the dish great character. All together, it was a dish that seemed like an old friend even though this was the first time we’d experienced it.

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Thai Style Crab Cakes

I’ve made crab cakes many times in the past. I’ve made different sizes and mixed up the ingredients in small ways, but nothing really new and different in any significant way ever happened with my approach. Then, I saw Mark Bittman’s NY Times article about Thai style crab cakes, and there was a new and different twist that I simply had to try. His idea was to mimic Thai fish cakes that use pureed fish as a binder, but he used shrimp instead of fish for a better melding of flavors with crab. A few more ingredients common in Thai cuisine were added, and he had a new kind of crab cake. I had prepared a shopping list with this recipe in mind, and we stopped off at the farmers’ market before going to the grocery store. I was excited to find locally grown Thai chiles and Thai basil to use in the crab cakes.

For one pound of lump crab meat, six medium, raw shrimp were pureed in a food processor. The pureed shrimp were added to a mixing bowl with a little fish sauce, one egg, some chopped green onions, cilantro leaves, a seeded and chopped Thai chile or two, minced fresh ginger, chopped Thai basil, and the crab. This was carefully mixed together while trying not to break up the crab too much. Two to three tablespoons of fresh bread crumbs were to be added, and I think I used even less than that. The shrimp and egg held the mixture together very well, and the breadcrumbs were almost unnecessary. The cakes were formed and refrigerated for 30 minutes or so and then were dredged in flour before being fried for a few minutes on each side.

In the article, Bittman suggested serving the cakes with a dipping sauce of fish or soy sauce with lime juice, etc. or possibly with a mayonnaise mixed with fish sauce. I stirred together a quick sauce with mayonnaise, fish sauce, lime juice, and chopped Thai basil. These crab cakes were fantastic with a little dollop of that on top, but they were so full of flavor, they were also great all by themselves. I’m definitely hanging on to this recipe and foresee cute, little, mini versions of these cakes being served at upcoming holiday parties.

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