Thai Red Curry Noodles With Vegetables
by Melissa Clark
Before I relate how I totally failed to make this dish correctly, can I just talk to the recipe author for a minute? Here's what you said in the head note:
Once you have all the ingredients at the ready, the dish comes together quickly. And you’ll have enough leftover curry paste to make this again, even faster the next time.
What if I didn't like it? What if I didn't want to save half of the doctored up curry paste for a second, even faster time? Furthermore, what was the point of taking two tablespoons of pre-made curry paste and adding into it all the of ingredients that made up the curry paste in the first place?
It's not the first time I've seen a recipe take a manufactured product and add into to it the same ingredients that were already there. I've even seen cooks take enchilada sauce and add cumin, garlic, chili and tomatillo. But for me, this is the end: never again will I make curry paste and add curry paste to it.
It came out very good despite my many accidental substitutions. It's basically the same recipe I should be able to make with my eyes closed by now: fry some onion, garlic and hot pepper; add the curry paste and a little extra spice; add coconut milk and vegetables; simmer until smelly. Apologize for the odor in the kitchen to a husband who doesn't care for Indian food.
The one unusual touch was the shitake mushrooms. I adore the little morels, but I don't recall ever seeing them in Thai cooking before. Probably my stupid.
Strawberry Avocado Spinach Salad with Poppyseed Dressing
from Gimme Some Oven
Finding this sort of recipe in the backlog is really teaching me a lesson. Here's the breakdown of what it requested vs. what I used:
fresh baby spinach - okay, got that; but I'm going to use some lettuce too
strawberries - couldn't get at the farmer's market so I'll just skip them
1 avocado, diced - I'll just throw in a slice when I'm ready to eat it
gorgonzola or blue cheese - not for me
sliced almonds, toasted - too much work; skipped them
red onion - didn't have; used a couple scallions instead
1 batch poppyseed dressing (recipe below) - made a half batch and threw half of it away.
The poppyseed dressing was okay, but only because I have really good olive oil from the Texas Olive Ranch near Carrizo Springs. The oil tastes great but the dressing just tastes like oil. I don't get the point of poppy seeds. Vered Guttman at The Washington Post says,
Poppy seeds taste nutty, or, when ground to the consistency of moist soil, they offer a pleasant fruitiness I find irresistible.
He finds irresistible; I find tasteless. Should I have ground them up?
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