Thai pork peanut curry…

I was thinking last week that for someone who has a cooking and living blog, I haven’t written about food for a few weeks.

For three weeks or so, our business, The Vermont Spätzle Company, was rocking. We had spätzle orders from our wholesale accounts out the ass. We worked hard, pulling double production days to fill all of those orders.

It was almost like the universe dumped all the orders on us at once in that short time period because right after we were done, we got covid. The universe has a funny way of doing those types of things. I always acknowledge those situations and am grateful.

Did we eat while we were busy with production? Of course, we ate but nothing to write home about. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me on Facebook if we “ever ate the same shit like everyone else?” I am not sure if my friend Randy or his twin brother Ray asked, but it still makes me giggle when I think about it.

Tonight I went with Thai cuisine. I love Thai food and how flavorful everything is. When I say flavorful, I don’t mean spicy; that’s what my timid eating cooking students thought. They learned when you are making any cuisine; you have control over the amount of spice you put into a dish. Just because a recipe calls for a certain amount, you can add a little at a time or none at all.

I used a popular recipe on the internet, one that a million food bloggers call their own when they are copying and pasting. Come on, people, this is your business for Christs’ sake; at least change things up to make it look like your own. They all even use the same photo! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’ve learned a trick or two when preparing Thai cuisine that makes such a difference. Things once again they don’t tell you in recipes. For instance, whenever I make a Thai curry dish, I slowly poach whatever protein in the curry sauce. This gentle cooking method doesn’t dry the protein out like if you stir fry it first as the recipes instruct doing.

I have most of the curry dishes down when it comes to Thai cooking, but I still haven’t made a Pad Thai dish I am happy with. It’s a work in progress that is taking years. I order it sometimes when I go out to remind my palate what I am shooting for.

The recipe I made tonight is easy, even if you’ve never made Thai food before. Here is the link to the recipe I used. If you don’t like spicy food, start with a tablespoon of curry paste instead of the 4 Tbsp the recipe calls for.

Speaking of curry paste, where can you find it? Thai curry pastes are available in the ethnic section of most supermarkets; you don’t have to make a special trip to an Asian market to find some. If I can find curry paste up here in Vermont, you can find it anywhere.

I served my pork peanut curry with jasmine rice which I always use a rice cooker for. This small appliance is invaluable to me because I hate babysitting rice while it’s cooking. It’s tough to make a perfect pot of rice, believe it or not. All Asian people own a rice cooker and use it every day.

I also roasted some brussel sprouts and tossed them last minute with a bit of Thai sweet chili sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil and threw them back into the oven for a few minutes. They became caramelized and tasty.

Today we picked up a brisket that we found on sale when we went grocery shopping. The cupboards were pretty bare after being in isolation for ten days. We needed to do a big shop even though Sam picked up a few important essentials like milk and chocolate pudding cups for me. 😜

Since we will still be home from our farmers market tomorrow, we will fire up the smoker and make our first brisket of the year. We learned a lot about what not to do last year, so hopefully, it will turn out smokey, juicy, and delicious. I’ll report back. Smoking meats is no easy task, even though they make it look easy on tv.

Happy Friday! Enjoy your weekend, everyone. I will be doing some outdoor projects taking advantage of the nicer weather with sunshine in the forecast! 😎