Ah Granola. So easy to make and so easy to customize to your own specific tastes and so very very awesome. It’s irresistible straight and hot out of the oven, beautiful when mixed with yogurt, an easy energy snack for hiking. The effort involved is minimal. About five minutes prep time and one hour fifteen minutes of cooking with minimal oversight. It’s also cost-effective but you have to commit to making more than one batch. The primary expense comes from the maple syrup (each bottle will get you three granolas) and the nuts. The original recipe I used years ago had one quarter cup of brown sugar and more maple syrup but I have decreased it over time to fit my own tastes. The ratio below has a light sweetness instead of an overwhelming one.
Tag: food
Categories
Doruk’s Tomato Sauce
There must be billions of blogs and posts about making food and secret recipes and the like. I have no issue with that. I love food. Here’s an easy recipe for foundation tomato sauce that’s tremendously savory and versatile canvas.
I use canned crushed tomatoes – my brand of choice these days is Cento. If tomatoes are in season, then of course I use fresh tomatoes but still fortify the sauce with something canned. The canned tomatoes are guaranteed to be packing with tomatoeness and they have a tendency to form crusts on the side of the pan, which have a similar effect as fond from meats when folded back into the sauce. Still, they require a bit of rework to remove the tinniness and achieve something wooden spoon-lickingly savory.
I slice and dice some onions very thinly and saute them in a substantial amount of olive oil. I’m looking for them to eventually dissipate into the sauce. Add some garlic after a bit, throw in a pinch of cumin and pul biber, let that get fragrant then dump in the tomatoes. Stir in some umami bombs – a great and easy idea I read in a cookbook: a few shakes of soy sauce, a couple drips of fish sauce (or anchovies would be great) and a teaspoonish of marmite.
Categories
Bangkok Food – Continued
Previously I described the food I experienced during the Historic Bangrak Tour during a visit to Bangkok. That same day, I took another tour in the evening – the Midnight Food Tour by Tuk Tuk. I figured that as long as I am in Bangkok, and as long as I greatly enjoy food, instead of trying to find a place to eat for dinner I would do another tour in the evening and experience more flavors.
This time I was on-time to the tour but barely. I had only recently returned to my hotel after getting lost near Wat Pho in the rain, looking for a taxi that would take me back to the hotel (and failing), and ultimately taking the crowded, dark river ferry back down to a metro station I was familiar with. On my way to the meeting point, I walked right past the group and only found them again a few minutes later. I’m just not very good at following certain directions.
The tour included not only food but some tourist activities as well. Our first stop was near the meeting place where there was what seemed like an outdoor Buddhist temple that was teeming with devotees and tourists. There was dancing and music, a shrine in the middle of the square, and some holy water in the corner, which we all got a quick splash of. It was a walled enclosure that led out into a street full of people, noise, and general lively cacophony.
Categories
Bangkok Food
During a recent work trip to Southeast Asia, I partook on a quick weekend jaunt to Bangkok. It’s a fascinating city and a fascinating culture with a wonderful vibrancy. It also has an intimate relationship with food with more than 20,000 food-serving establishments in the city. So when I went to Bangkok I took not one but two food tours.
The tours I took were offered by Bangkok Food Tours. Aside from the food, it was a good opportunity to see parts of the city I would not have explored otherwise.
In the morning, I took the Historic Bangrak Tour. It began inauspiciously as I was late to the meeting point because I came out the wrong exit at the metro station. However, I found the group and soon thereafter we were heading through a sprinkle of rain to the first destination. There, we were served a simple but delicious plate of roasted duck on rice. That was followed by a more adventurous item: duck feet wrapped in pig intestine (looked like bacon) and stuffed with more pig product. The first dish was quite tasty, the second was just an experience.
