Redemption…

A couple of weeks ago, I made a new Thai dish that was a huge hit; the bad news was I didn’t make enough, so there were no leftovers; Sam was beyond disappointed. Lol!

I actually make pretty tasty Thai food, as good as any of the places we have around here in Southern Vermont, which isn’t many. We literally live in a food desert; if you want something different or ethnic, you must drive at least an hour away.

I found a recipe for Thai Coconut Grilled Chicken when I was menu planning. I read through the blog post, then the ingredients and recipe. I’ve never used a few of the Asian ingredients the writer used in her recipe. Typically, I don’t add soy sauce or oyster sauce to my Thai food; I use traditional fish sauce as the umami.

Umami? If you have watched any cooking programs over the last 5 years, you must have heard the word umami at least 1000 times. For those who don’t cook or watch cooking shows, umami is considered the fifth sense of taste after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Umami:

Umami (/uːˈmɑːmi/ from Japanese: 旨味 Japanese pronunciation: [ɯmami]), or savoriness, is one of the five basic tastes.^[1] It has been described as savory and is characteristic of broths and cooked meats.

Foods that have a strong umami flavor include meats, shellfish, fish (including fish sauce and preserved fish such as maldive fish, sardines, and anchovies), tomatoes, mushrooms, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, meat extract, yeast extract, cheeses, and soy sauce.

I followed the recipe exactly, except I used boneless breasts of chicken instead of chunks of chicken on skewers. I also followed the recipe for the peanut sauce even though I have one that I’ve been making for years, way back to our catering days. I like this one perhaps a little better; it has a deeper depth of flavor and is brighter than mine.

I owed my family a good meal after the disastrous shrimp skewers from last week. This time I doubled the chicken and coconut rice, leaving plenty of leftovers. Sam already had me pack his tv dinner type to-go dish for work on Monday; he wasn’t taking any chances that there wouldn’t be any left. A chip off the old block!

Sam loves food and looks forward to it as much as I do. He has learned from Mama Julz how to hide things you love and don’t want someone else to devour. For years I was able to hide good chocolates in the produce drawers of the refrigerator, God forbid someone looks for a piece of fruit or vegetables as a snack, so it was a perfect hiding place until Sam found it.

One of my favorite hiding spots is in a huge pot high up on top of the pantry. Sam found that one too. I cry laughing when I see some of his hiding places for his favorite snacks. Sam and I don’t eat each other’s hidden snacks; we hide our snacks from Marty and when Noah lived here. They can have their own snacks and hide them if they want to. Food is serious business for Sam and me.

What led up to this over the years is looking forward to eating a leftover or snack all day, and it isn’t there. Someone ate it, not out of the love of the food, but out of boredom or just because. OMG, I used to lose my shit, “Who the hell ate my whatever? Are you kidding me right now? Is nothing sacred? I’ve been looking forward to this all day! Son of a bitch!” And so on and so forth. It became easier to hide what I wanted to eat later, and it saved a lot of me bitching about it. As I said, food is some serious shit here at the Irion place.

After making the Thai coconut grilled chicken for the second time, I have to tell you it’s a winner of a recipe. Kudos to the woman Prasanna whose website I found the recipe on. Here is a link to the recipe. If you like Thai food but don’t have all the ethnic ingredients, I urge you to pick them up and not start substituting or leaving them out. Each ingredient is important I found after making and tasting it for the second time.

https://www.savorybitesrecipes.com/2021/05/thai-coconut-grilled-chicken.html

Happy Friday! It’s almost the end of another week that has flown by this summer. Have a great weekend, everyone; I’ll catch up with you on Sunday. Goodnight!