After building up the courage, I had a slice of the pie I had made last night.

And you know what…

It tastes great!  More like a spice pie as opposed to a pumpkin pie, but it was smackalicious. I had 2 slices.

Cannibal Jack-O-Lantern

On an unrelated note, Penny was all over my thuk kroeung. She was begging the whole time I was eating it, eventually putting her head on the table  and slowly sliding closer and closer.  Because she’s just so damn cute, I had to take a couple pics:

Penny eyes the bowl

How can you say no to that face?

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As I mentioned in the earlier post, I got a pumpkin at Ralphs tonight in order to make a jack-o-lantern. Because I got one of the smaller “sugar” pumpkins, I decided that I might as well make a pie with the pulp instead of throwing it away. Pumpkin pies are so delicious and I couldn’t wait to eat one made from fresh pumpkin!

I cut out the bottom from my pumpkin and began the longer-than-I-expected process of gutting it.  Boy, it took forever! How can one small pumpkin have so many seeds? Ugh!

I followed a well-reviewed pumpkin pie recipe from Libby’s, the popular food brand.  However, their recipe called for their canned pumpkin. I figured it would be simple enough and tastier to substitute my fresh pumpkin pulp. Not so. Two issues:

After removing all the seeds and scraping the inside clean, I had about 3/4 of a cup of pumpkin. That wasn’t as much as their 15 oz can of pumpkin.

Tim, who has made super yummy pumpkin pies from canned pumpkin, asked me about the stringiness of the pulp.  I quickly dismissed his concerns, thinking it would become softer and more uniform during cooking.

It was only until after I had filled the crust and put it in the oven that it hit me: maybe I should Google a recipe that uses fresh pumpkin.

I found several and… oh boy…

You’re supposed to cook the pumpkin before you make it into a pie!  You don’t use raw pumpkin pulp, like I did, but instead you use cooked pumpkin puree.  Most recipes called for either baking, boiling, or microwaving the pumpkin and the mashing and straining it before mixing it into the filling.  Actually, now that I think about it, what is now my jack-o-lantern is supposed to be my pumpkin filling!  Ugh, that’s what becomes all soft and custardy - the pumpkin “shell” not the stringy pulp! OMG! ::cries::

Well my pie is done and is cooling on the counter. It smells like cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, which I guess is what all pumpkin pies smell like, even the diaster ones. The pumpkin part can still be seen, stringy and in clusters. Great.  Ladies and gents, this is why I don’t cook very often!

Anyway, here are some pictures. By the way, I don’t have any candles that will fit into my jack-o-lantern so I rested him on top of one of my too-big candles. The candle is orange and is pumpkin pie scented; how appropriate. It kinda looks like he has a little body.

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Thuk Kroeung

Thuk kroeung (or thuk krung)is a popular Cambodia dish that is usually used as a dip for fresh, raw vegetables. Thuk means liquid in Khmer, though it can also mean water or wet. (Moik thuk means to take a shower and puhk thuk means to drink water while thuk dah co means milk or literally “liquid of cow breast.”)

I had been craving thuk kroeung for weeks now.  I haven’t had it in years, though it was a very common dish in our house when I was a child. I had no idea how to make it, and I did find a recipe on Khmer Krom Recipes but the picture of a watery dip was nothing like what I remember from my childhood.

I asked a Khmer friend if she knew how to make that “chunky fish dip we have with vegetables” and when she said “you mean like tuna salad but stinkier?” I knew she would be able to help!  So using our scattered IM-conversation mixed with a bit of improvisation, I was about to make thuk kroeung tonight, and you know what, I came very close to what my mother used to make!  My version is a bit saltier than what I remember and oops :-(  I forgot to pick out the bones from the prahok.  You would think my friend would have been wise enough to include all the little details for a novice like me but noooooooooo!

Anyway, the recipe:

• 1 can of mackerel, skin in, in natural oils, drained well
• several cloves of minced garlic
• minced hot chilies to taste
• a handful of diced mint leaves (optional)
• juice of 1 lime
• teaspoons of sugar to taste
• a big dollop of prahok mixed with boiling water, do not forget to pick out the bones
  - or - you can just use creamy style prahok from the store

1. Brown the mackerel with the garlic and chilies
2. In a big mortar, mash the mackerel mixture in with the prahok/water mixture
3. Mix in lime juice and mint leaves
4. Add sugar to taste
5. Mix in lime juice

Serve with fresh vegetables.  It’s usually better with harder vegetables such as cucumbers, broccoli, green eggplants, asparagus, etc.  Also, in my recipe above, people usually don’t add the mint leaves but I had some lying around so I figured “why not?” and people often add in MSG (which I don’t have) and some sort of bitter tasting veggie, usually this leafy vegetable called sadow or little baby eggplants that look almost like peas or some other type of roasted vegetable, all of which gets mashed into the mixture.

Anyway, I’m damn happy with my first attempt and look forward to making this more often. Yum!

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So tonight I’m going to attempt the thuk kroeung that I didn’t make yesterday and I stopped by Ralphs and got a little pumpkin to carve and decided to make something nice with the pulp…

Pumpkin Pie

Whipped cream and marshmallows not pictured.

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No matter how many times I bring it up (which, in fact, has only been once) my lovely roommate continues to throw his used dental floss into the toilet.  Our wastebasket is only about 18 inches away. Geez.

Now, it seems like common sense to me that you shouldn’t flush dental floss down the toilet.  Unlike paper, dental floss isn’t going to dissolve and break down. In fact, its long, stringy and hard-to-break nature makes it seem like the last thing you’d want to put down the tubes.  Hair, which is much thinner and more fragile than floss, is often the culprit when it comes to clogs, so imagine what a daily build up of floss might do!  Not to mention, I’d hate to think of that floss ending up in the ocean somewhere, wrapping around some poor fish.

Anyway, rather than bring it up again because I hate repeating myself, I decided to send him some links to factual reasons as to why he shouldn’t throw floss down the toilet.  Men seem to do better listening to a third-party rather than the women in their lives, even if both sources are saying the same thing.

So I did a Google search, and I guess this is a more common issue than I thought!  I found several websites with wives ranting about husbands who throw their floss in the toilet.  Really? So is this like a male thing? What gives? Sheesh.

Anyway, I’m emailing him these two links:

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/169538
http://www.hgtvpro.com/hpro/ex_edg_homeowners/article/0,,HPRO_28918_5275186,00.html

As for the title of this blog, this little domestic squabble reminded me of one of my favorite websites/books:

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

At the end of the day, I know it’s just a little thing and it won’t change how I feel about him. (Which is blind, unbridled hatred, by the way.)

I made a trip to the Thai grocery store tonight. I like to call it the Asian store though cuz it has a lot more stuff than just Thai goods.

My main mission was to get ingredients to make a Khmer dish called “thuy kroeung.” It’s a fish-based thick dipping sauce for raw veggies.  Of course, while there I find it hard to resist to pick up a few side items, including some goodies for a friend.

Here’s a quick rundown:

Shrimp Paste (kapik)

Fermented shrimp paste. It’s gray and the texture I guess is like gritty peanut butter. It’s very pungent. I like mixing it with chopped chilies and using it as a dip for tart fruit like green mangoes and granny smith apples.

Pickled Fermented Fish (prahok)

Prahok is a staple of Khmer cuisine. It has a very strong, pungent fish smell. It takes some getting used to and some have even called it “Cambodian Cheese” because of the strong smell. It’s used in everything from curries to dipping sauces, marinades to soups.

Kimchi

I think most people know what kimchi is.  Native to Korea, kimchi is spicy, pickled veggies, usually cabbage.

Travel Size Fish Sauces and Ground Chili

I always have fish sauce in the house, but picked up a small bottle for my friend to try. I picked up a smaller bottle so I can always have some when I go out, and I also got a jar of ground pepper (Asian hot pepper!)

Asian Eggplant

About the size of tomatoes, these are eggplants but not the kind most people are used to.  I think they’re called Japanese eggplants technically, but I’m too lazy to look them up.  They have a nice crunch to them and are usually eaten raw sliced up into noodle soups or with thuy kroeung.

Lemongrass

I couoldn’t fit the entire lemongrass stalk into the picture, so this is just the bulb.  Diced up, it adds a nice herbal/citrusy flavor to soups, curries, marinades, rubs, and dipping sauces.

Dried Shrimp

For my friend since I always have some, these dried shrimps pack a strong burst of intense flavor and are great to toss into soups or eat with rice porridge

I also got some snacks.  FYI, many Asian snacks are salty or fishy, unlike Western snacks which tend to be sweet.

Shredded Cuttlefish

Dried and shredded cuttlefish has a fishy and spicy taste. Very savory!

Nam

This is nam, or a pickled pork sausage. Technically, the pork is raw but the pickling process is supposed to take care of that. It comes with a nice chilie to eat with. I always tear into this as soon as I check out.

Crispy Anchovies with Sesame

A jar of dried, crispy anchovies with sesame.  They are kinda sweet yet fishy, salty and sesame-y and very cruncy.  In essence, a yummy snack!

However, my favorite haul of the night was from their fresh fish department.  They have a sign up that, upon request, they will fry your fish for free.  I’ve never taken them up on this offer, but in the past while standing in line and smelling someone else’s fried fish, my mouth always watered.

They had a lot of fish to choose from such as mackerel, tilipia, red tilipia, milk fish, and a few other whose names escapes me.  I wasn’t sure what to get, and then I saw that the had one catfish left; it had been cleaned and gutted and was sitting on ice. And it was calling my name.

I picked up the slimy fish with a pair of metal tongs and placed it on a nearby metal tray. The guy told me 15 minutes, but as I aimlessly wandered the store, my nose told me when it was done.  I went back into the butcher’s area and saw a brown paper bag on the corner - it was my fried fish and the smell made me drool.  The price almost made me faint - only $3.47!!!!

I got it home and just had to take a look at it.  The paper bag was smartly vented to prevent the fish from getting soggy.  The fish itself was wrapped loosely in aluminum foil. I unwrapped it and was surprised by how much work went into it.  I expected the guy to just fry it, but he had also made conveniently slits in it. I couldn’t help myself and broke off a piece of the crispy tail.  Mmm!

I am dying to eat it now.  I’ve been home for an hour now and have another 40 minutes to go before Tim gets home and we can chow down! :-(  Ugh, you cannot begin to understand the amount of willpower I am exerting.  That’s why I decided to take pictures and blog instead, as a distraction.  But now I should make a dipping sauce to go with the catfish (lime juice, sugar, chilies, garlic, lemongrass, and fish sauce) and maybe make thuy kroeung, but it’s kinda late for that.  I’ll probably do that tomorrow.

Anywhere, here’s some pics of the catfish! Drool!

Fried Catfish

Catfish Detail

Flaky Catfish

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