A Laos-y Feast: chicken baguette sandwiches with hot chile-garlic sauce, and turkey lemongrass lettuce wraps

When I lived in Los Angeles I had a ritual of ordering Thai yellow curry and Tom Yum soup every Sunday exactly at 5:00, when the Thai place down the street opened its doors. Even though that was years ago, I still find myself craving spicy Asian cuisine on Sunday afternoons.

This past Sunday, I decided to get exotic after reading an article in February's Food and Wine Magazine about the cuisine of Laos. I don't know much about Laos, but since it's wedged in between Thailand, Vietnam, and China, I figured the food there must be good. Almost all of the dishes in the article used a combination of some of my favorite ingredients, including lemongrass, cilantro, chiles, shallots, fresh lime juice, and garlic. The photos of the food and scenery were equally gorgeous, and while my weed-filled backyard doesn't quite compare to the plateaus, floodplains and thatched homes in Laos, I figured I could at least attempt to replicate some of the foods in the article.

Despite what the title may connote (I'm just a sucker for bad puns), this was actually a delicious meal. The first recipe I made was called "Ground Turkey Laap," which is a Laos-y name for lettuce wraps. These differ from the type of lettuce wraps you'd find at a Chinese restaurant (or the Cheesecake Factory for that matter) in that the sauce is herbal and fresh-tasting instead of covered in a sweet soy glaze. The laap was pretty simple to make, except for tracking down lemongrass. Usually it will be in the same area as the herbs, but not all grocery stores carry it. Even Whole Foods only had a few stalks which were shoved in an unlabeled bin.

Using lemongrass was an exciting experiment for me because I've never used it before, and it scared me a little. Turns out lemongrass isn't scary at all. If you want to use it to flavor soups or curries, you can chop up the stalk and let it simmer in the broth--just make sure you remove it before eating. The other way to use lemongrass is to peel the tough outer leaves until you find the tender white core in the middle (about the same diameter as a thin straw). Then you can finely chop or puree that core and mix it into just about anything.

Here is the recipe for Ground Turkey Laap (courtesy of Food and Wine). It makes a great appetizer or a light lunch; it's easy to store and reheat later too.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp long-grain white rice
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 lb ground turkey
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp chicken stock
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp Asian fish sauce
salt & pepper
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 large stalks of lemongrass--tender inner core only, minced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 medium shallot, thinly sliced and separated into rings
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup chopped mint
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
small romaine or Belgian endive leaves, for serving

Directions:

In a small skillet, toast the rice over high heat, shaking the skillet a few times, until the rice is golden brown. Transfer to a spice grinder (or coffee grinder) and let cool completely. Grind the rice into a fine powder.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and cook the turkey over medium heat, breaking up the meat evenly, until no pink remains. Add the stock and cook, stirring, until bubbling. Remove from heat and stir in fish sauce. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the lime juice. Let stand for 5 minutes, then stir in the lemongrass, scallions, shallots, cilantro, mint, crushed red pepper, and rice powder.

Arrange the lettuce leaves on a platter, and spoon the turkey mixture on top.

Lao-Style Chicken Baguette Sandwiches  (courtesy of Food and Wine Magazine)

While my husband and his friend lapped up the laap (see - I can't help myself!), I got to work on the main course: the baguette sandwiches. Food and Wine named this dish "Lao-Style Chicken Baguette Sandwiches with Watercress," but unfortunately I wasn't able to find any watercress. I just used plain old green leaf lettuce, which worked perfectly fine.

At first glance this looks like any old chicken sandwich: sliced chicken breast, tomato, carrot, mayo and lettuce on a baguette...the key ingredient that makes it Laos-y is the chile-garlic sauce. I have to admit, I was tempted to just buy the jar of chile-garlic sauce I saw at the store when I was hunting down the ingredients for my recipe. But I decided to take on the challenge of making an Asian condiment on my own. I'm really glad I did--the sauce was definitely a little labor intensive, but the flavors were well worth the work.

Chile-Garlic Sauce

1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large shallot, thinly sliced and separated into rings
3 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 1/2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
1/4 cup Korean coarse red pepper powder*
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tbsp Asian fish sauce

*I couldn't find Korean coarse red pepper powder at the store, so I found the closest thing to it: some sort of Indonesian chile powder. If you live near an Asian grocery store, you could probably find the Korean stuff there. But my substitute seemed to work perfectly fine so you can also experiment with any other type of powdered chiles or red peppers.

In a small skillet, heat 1/4 cup, plus 2 tbsp of oil. Add the shallot rings and cook over moderate heat, stirring a few times, until golden brown and crisp. With a slotted spoon, transfer shallot rings to a bowl. Add the garlic to the oil, and cook over moderately low heat until golden. Transfer the garlic to the bowl. Add the ginger to the skillet and cook until fragrant, about 2 minute. Add red pepper powder and sugar and cook, stirring for 30 seconds. Scrape the sauce into the bowl. Stir in the fish sauce and the remaining tbsp of oil.

To make the sandwiches:

Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper, and saute in some oil until no longer pink inside. Let rest on a cutting board for a few minutes; then slice crosswise into 1/4 inch strips.

Spread the chile-garlic sauce on both halves of a sliced baguette. (How much you slather on will depend on your tolerance for spice). Then spread mayo on top of the chile-garlic sauce. Add a layer of chicken, thinly sliced tomato, lettuce, and shredded carrot, and close the sandwich. Enjoy!

Make sure you use the best, freshest baguette you can find...as my husband loves to say: A sandwich is only as good as the quality of the bread.

Spicy (or not) soba noodles with shrimp & veggies

One thing I love about Asian cooking is that it brings out the best in veggies. I never eat broccoli with as much enthusiasm as I do when it's doused in black bean or kung pao sauce. I gobble up green and red peppers, snap peas, and bamboo shoots when they're coated in Thai curry. And I have never met a spinach dish I love more than an Indian saag.

I'm sure there are veggie purists who would turn up their noses at this proclamation - arguing that the sauces mask the true vegetable flavors and destroy the natural deliciousness of the vegetables themselves. But as someone who is still working up to loving veggies for veggies' sake, I am doing what I can to make them super-tasty so that I'll actually eat them instead of pushing them around my plate like a 5-year-old.

Last night I impressed myself with my take on Asian soba noodles. We've had Asian noodle dishes often (usually courtesy of P.F. Chang's or Pei Wei Asian Diner), but this was my first attempt at making them at home. And I can't believe it's taken me this long!

The dish I made was really simple, using almost exclusively pantry ingredients with the exception of some shrimp, green onion, veggies and, perhaps, ginger. Here's what I did:

1) Boil some soba noodles until soft, but al dente. Drain.

2) Chop up some green onion (I used mostly the green part), and some veggies of choice. Some thinly sliced or julienned carrots work best in my opinion, but you could also do broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, or whatever you prefer best in Asian dishes.

3) Create a sauce out of soy sauce, rice vinegar, freshly grated ginger, sesame oil, and hot chili oil. The hot chili oil was something I just picked up for fun at the grocery store the other day. Like all the other ingredients in the sauce (except the ginger), it can be found in the Asian food aisle of almost any grocery store. If you don't like spiciness, or you want to make a kid-friendly version, just leave out the chili oil.

To create the sauce, I started with a few splashes of each ingredient I mentioned, with some extra splashes of soy sauce. From that point, I just tasted it and fiddled with it until it had the right balance of spice/saltiness/acidity.

4) Cook shrimp (or other protein if you prefer), and veggies in frying pan with a little canola oil. Add sauce and let it absorb into the shrimp and veggies. Then add the cooked noodles and stir everything together until it's hot and evenly coated with sauce. Enjoy!

Now that I know how simple this is, I will be making versions of this dish at home much more often. It's just so much better than take-out in that I can control the amount of oil/sodium, make sure I'm using quality meats/seafood, and also add a lot more vegetables than a typical restaurant portion would include.

Semi-homemade restaurant-quality Thai curry

I loooooooooove Thai food. If I could eat it every day, I would. While I've yet to meet a Thai dish I don't like, I am partial to curries, especially the green and yellow curries. They are the ultimate comfort food - warm, spicy and soupy, yet fresh-tasting.

I was always scared off from cooking Thai curries myself because of the quantity and rarity of ingredients involved (how many grocery stores stock galangal?). I've tried a few different store bought sauces, but none of them could compare to the restaurant sauces in terms of spice level and overall flavor.

Then I discovered Thai Kitchen's curry pastes - these cute little 4-inch jars that contain all of those unusual, but amazing Thai chiles and herbs that make curries taste delicious, smashed into a flavorful paste. They come in green and red (sadly there's no yellow), and both are delicious. Each one comes with a recipe on the jar, which just involves mixing the paste with a few ingredients which are readily available in the Asian food section of any major grocery store: fish sauce, coconut milk, canned bamboo shoots, and brown sugar.

Add some cooked chicken or shrimp, some veggies if you like, and steamed rice and you've got an amazing meal. The veggies that pair best with the curries are sliced red or green peppers, cooked onions, peas, and zucchini.

The nice part about making curry this way is that it's simple, but you can adjust the spice/sweet/salt level yourself to make it taste perfect. If it's too salty/spicy, add a little more brown sugar or coconut milk. If it needs more salt/tang, add some more fish sauce. If it needs more heat, add more of the curry paste.

To add extra flavor or flair, I also recommend adding some chopped cilantro at the end, or some Thai basil (which I love, but have a really hard time finding). I also think it's worth the extra step to serve it with Jasmine rice versus plain old Uncle Ben's. So yummy!