a perfect day

woke up around 7:30 AM with a full night's rest. hit the gym and caught up on the news. went to sunrise mart in the east village to pick up some japanese goodies and then trader joes where i got tilapia (price finally went back down), greek yogurt, chicken, walnuts, and crumbled blue cheese. . . hmm, i'm already thinking of the salad i can make with the last three ingredients!

got home and took care of some odds and ends and started working on my wall of food photos- an idea which i've been visualizing since january!! around 4 i headed down to midtown to my company's headquarters for an event. had a promising conversation with my director about my future at the company and where i wanted to be.

headed home and tried to make "mom's catfish in claypot" or ca kho for a second time. the recipe is from a vietnamese/thai cookbook and a linke is available on the epicurious website (though the omit the instructions for making the caramel sauce).

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/232438

funny thing about cooking. . there are so many dishes my mom makes that i would love to emulate (she really is an excellent cook) but she never taught me growing up. . every time i tried to learn, it would be, V, go study, don't worry about cooking! so now, i'm strugglin to learn how to make all her dishes while i can. it's difficult b/c she doesn't follow recipes and does everything to taste.

ca kho is a staple dish, we eat it a lot with kanh chu, sour soup. in any case, i tried this recipe out a couple weeks ago but was annoyed by the inconvenience of making the caramel. . i don't think i simmered the sugar and water long enough to get it to the "caramel" stage, more just a supersaturated sugar/water liquid. the dish came out ok, a little too sweet. this time i modified it, added sugar directly to taste and used tilapia instead of catfish. it came out well. reminscent of my mom's cooking.

it seems that vietnamese "flavour" boils down to fish sauce and sugar!