This blog is supposedly about foods and beverages, but so far I have been lazy in the beverages department. Seattle has been bitterly cold and rainy of late (surprised?), so I have mostly been drinking wine and, of course, coffee. Though I love wine and drink it frequently (as previously noted), I would  embarrass myself if I tried to write about wine. Other people know way more and do it better. As for coffee, I generally drink it black, so there's not much to say, unless you want to hear one of my well-known rants about the inavailability of decent, fresh drip coffee (trust me, you don't).

However, I will take a moment to sing the praises of my new favorite beer, specifically Ninkasi's IPA and their seasonal Spring Reign. I have surprised several of my friends (and indeed myself) with my love for the IPA, as I have previously been a drinker of what less couth types (my husband) have termed swampwater (whatever, Raineer is delicious). I always sneered at drinkers of microbrews and complained that IPAs in particular were overly bitter, even going so far as to venture the theory that gravitating toward bitter beers was macho bullshit. Ninkasi IPA took me by surprise (author pauses to go crack beer in order to better describe it) with its heady mix of sweet and bitter. The bitterness is not overwhelming. It has, dare I say, complexity. Even better, the IPA brings to mind the phrase 'beer sandwich'. Not because it's overly filling, but because it allows you to actually imagine that it might contain nutrients. Which brings me to another thing I appreciate about the brewery: their copy. As a beer lover (yes, people who drink PBR can call themselves beer lovers too), a connoisseur of copy, and a history nerd, I can't help but love the following passages (found on Ninkasi bottle):

• 'Multiple hops collide in balanced perfection, dominating the senses, achieving total satisfaction. From the Pacific Northwest, birthplace of the modern IPA, comes a beer whose name says it all'

and....

• 'The ancient Sumerians worshiped the beer they made, and praised the Goddess Ninkasi for the miracle of fermentation. Beer is the staple of civilization. Worship the Goddess.'
  

As a child of hippies, the phrase 'worship the Goddess' would normally prompt me to roll my eyes, but somehow it works in this context.

I have always been prejudiced against cookbooks full of glossy color photographs. I suppose, like many of my culinary opinions, it comes from my dad. Cookbooks in our house were great soup-stained tomes, jackets discarded decades past, crusty pages packed with small print. Glossy photos were for Betty Crocker and her jello-d salads.

Nonetheless,  Mini C's Great Thai Dishes was three dollars cheaper than the other Thai cookbook at Half Price Books, and I wasn't feeling rich. I decided to give it a shot.

The slim volume has been a pleasant surprise. Mini C's instructions are easy to follow and dishes are prefaced with tips, anecdotes, and, occasionally, cheeky commentary, such as 'It would be an appropriate dish to give to your enemy!' (the dish in question, nicknamed 'Weeping Tiger', calls for 10-12 bird's eye chillies).

Her 'Grilled Marinated Sirloin with Seasonings' was succulent, and my usual culinary victims, Ricardo and Cornelius, were suitably impressed with the North-Eastern-Style Chilli Dipping Sauce. In fact, Cornelius actually admitted that it was hot, which I considered a major victory. I also tried the Tom-Kha Gai (good and surprisingly easy to cook), the Sa-Lad Khaek (salad with peanut sauce), the marinated pork, Pad Pauk Med-Ma-Moung-Him-Ma-Phaan (seasonal vegetables with cashew nuts) and Pad Pauk Roam (stir-fried seasonal vegetables). All excellent, though the peanut sauce recipe was probably  the most exciting find; I've been trying to make a good peanut dipping sauce for spring rolls for years, but it's always seemed a bit flat. (The secret ingredient turns out to be red curry paste, which gives the flavor the desired complexity.) I ended up cutting back on the quantity of sugar in almost all of the recipes, but other than that the proportions seemed dead-on.

I spent four months in Thailand and I love Thai food, but this is my first real foray into Thai cooking. Luckily for me (and the culinary victims), the book has decent glossary of ingredients. I must admit that I probably would never have been able to identify Galangal if it hadn't been for the glossy color photograph provided.

Read more of my book reviews at Goodreads.com and People'sGuide.com.

The first post in the soon-to-be-ongoing series on the cooks in my life, past and present.

It seems appropriate to start this series with the first cook, or rather the first cook who influenced me, my dad, Stephen Hale Rogers.

Even though he was famous for his cooking (somewhat literally) and conjured some of the best food I have ever eaten, I never think of Steve as a chef---always as a cook. Anything but a snob, my dad cooked the way your grandmother might cook if she happened to be capable of shifting ethnicity several times a day and had a predilection for undermined ingredients (fish heads, jack, government cheese).

He cooked comfort food in that his dishes were often saucy, usually fatty, and always intended (perhaps required) to be eaten in large quantities. He was not the sort of man who blinked an eye if six extra people randomly showed up at dinner time. His comfort food was comforting because the cooking of it infused the house with aromas and warmth, and the eating of it always entailed the camaraderie of satisfying gluttony. It was not, however, bland or easy.

I think growing up in Ohio in the 1940's gave my dad a disdain for many types of meals that perfectly acceptable to the foodies of today. Roasted chicken, mac n' cheese, meatloaf, pot roast, steak--these things were never served in our house. As a 14-year-old, my dad had rebelled against his mother's Midwestern cooking and started on his culinary career. The first dish he served his family was fish head soup, and that was portentous of things to come.

He thought breakfast foods were boring, but wasn't one to pass up on a meal, so breakfast at our house (at dawn, before I left on the long bus ride to school) consisted of enchiladas verde, giant fried burritos, or possibly 'a nice curry' sold in a wheedling tone to a blurry-eyed ten-year-old who dreamed of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

His appetite was limitless, and his curiosity was boundless. He cooked everything from chimichangas to African groundnut stew. He ate songbirds in Thailand, Armadillo in the Yucatan, Iguana in Oaxaca. Being a cheapskate and a culinary explorer, he dismissed restaurants, preferring to ferret out the grungiest (aka most 'authentic') street cart in the most dubious part of town.
He called this practice 'street grunting', with a gleam in his eye.

When I turned 19, my friends and I drove up to Vancouver to celebrate. I called my dad to tell him about our adventures. "Vancouver!" he cried, "a great city for food. There's fantastic Asian food in Vancouver, especially if you get out of the tourist districts. Where did you go?" I was obliged to tell him that we'd gone to a Hooters (it wasn't my idea, I protested) where I'd ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. His mournful, disappointed reproach still rings in my ears.

My dad didn't teach me to cook, because that would have required him to actually let someone else into his kitchen. But I think I learned a lot by osmosis, sitting on a stool, my elbows on the kitchen counter, watching the mad, joyful flurry that was his evening ritual. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that food was a way to bring people together, and that all was right in the world when a circle of people sat around a table bellowing things like "Pass the ground nut stew!" and "Is there any more of that habanero stuffed squid?"

You can read my dad's recipe for Chiles Rellenos here.

I missed my bus yesterday, so I had some time to kill in the International District. Time to kill in the International District equals food, of course. Normally I'd pop into a unassuming cafe for a bowl of pho or some fresh spring rolls, or hop over to Shanghai Garden for their unforgettable hand-shaved noodles, but I'd just eaten, so I had to content myself with buying a bag of groceries.

Which is more fun than it sounds. Although many Seattle residents equate ID groceries with Uwajimaya, the epic and admittedly entertaining Asian superstore, I've always preferred to poke through the countless mom-and-pop shops that line the Jackson street corridor. The entire area is like a candy store for people who love pickled things and odd cuts of meat: you can find Chinese pickled lettuce, Vietnamese pickled water spinach, and about 50 varieties of pickled chiles, not to mention pigs' feet and live fish swimming woefully in murky tanks. Eleven dollars will buy you a bag bursting with odd roots and colorful cans, and the crowded isles and pungent smells create a vaguely Third World ambiance that always makes me feel at home, even though I'm sure I stick out like a sore thumb. If my  tendency to gangle over the vegetables, peering at roots with a confused expression didn't mark me as a novice, to the trained eye my selection of groceries spell dilettante: lemon grass stalks, a bunch of cilantro, rice sticks, oyster mushrooms (organic! 2.99 a lb!), canned baby corn, two cans of coconut milk, and a can of coconut juice (I am curious, but it turns out to be too sugary). Total cost: the aforementioned eleven dollars. Now on to find some doable recipes in my new Mini C cookbook. (On Sunday, I used her recipes to make marinated pork and rare sirloin steak with chili sauce, and both dishes turned out pretty damn delicious, so I have high hopes for the rest of the book.)