Over the weekend, Chuckro and I hit up the Asian grocery store for supplies to tackle our first recipes out of the new Asian cookbook. I am proud to say we can now make a Thai Red Curry Beef that actually tastes like real Thai Red Curry beef. Probably because it has actual Asian ingredients instead of random American substitutions - red curry paste I can't read most of the label of, coconut milk, tamarind concentrate, etc. The only one we couldn't find was palm sugar, which the cookbook said could be replaced with brown sugar. It was delicious. I am proud.
I just attempted tempering chocolate. Unfortunately, our candy thermometer starts at 100 degrees, which is problematic when I'm supposed to cool it to 88 degrees. We'll see if the peppermint bark I just made comes out glossy and hard or if it melts if you look at it crossly like my chocolate covered strawberries always do.
In other news, I've become my mother-in-law, she of the "Beef and broccoli made with chicken and red peppers" fame. We were supposed to be having fusilli with braised fennel tomorrow night. But the food store, which has had fennel the last three times I was there, had no fennel. So we're having peppers instead, which are entirely unlike fennel. And there was no fusilli (none of the four brands of pasta they carry had any fusilli left), so we're having tri-color rotini instead. And there's no fresh tarragon or parsley, so we're using dried. Sigh.
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