Homemade Horchata - Or: A Giant, Tangy Pain in My A**

Whole lotta talk about horchata these days. And I like to be food-trendy. I do. So I bit. Grind some rice, throw in some almonds, cinnamon, water... let sit. Simple enough. And yet...

Why so bubbly next day? Smells a bit yeasty fermenting or some nonsense. Google searches for "fermented horchata" and "Can horchata ferment?" and "dangerous fermentation horchata" find basically nothing. So I continue. Blend it all up with a bit of sugar, more water and a dash of vanilla.

Yeah, it looks good, eh? Do not be fooled.

Then you have to strain that crap, which no one tells you takes five hours and yields a sicko-looking watery cheese whey product along with sludgy rice goo all stuck up in your cheesecloth.

And after all that hassle, the junk tastes distinctly tangy and, who knows, maybe even dangerous. Shut up, Vampire Weekend.

Galician Roulette

Last week, the Crush team played; this week, I felt a bit masochistic and so played by myself, alongside nearly unbearable green curry leftovers. The padróns were no problem... the curry, yes.

To double your money on take-out Thai curry, simply don't drink the extra cup of wildly spicy green curry sauce that comes with your order. Eat your veggies, and your chicken if you like, but leave a good amount of sauce--only crazy, agita-adoring people don't have loads of this leftover from a standard order.

Buy an avocado squash at the greenmarket, along with a small Japanese eggplant, some purple Thai basil, and a few multi-colored carrots.

Quickly wok-fry the vegetables with leftover white meat from last week's fried chicken, then plunge into green curry sauce and pour over white rice.

Two carrots, one squash and one eggplant also yielded enough for lunch tomorrow--and there's still plenty of curry sauce to go. Triple your money, then! And I still have seven padróns left... thrilling.

Virgin Wok Burns

Fried my arms up right alongside these tomatoes and eggs. Thanks, Saveur for helping me make sure the wok was so hot that my eggs spattered scalding grease on my poor forearms. I am like a real Chinese person now, or what?

But it was really delicious, after all that. Plus, due to the extraordinary heat emanating from my extraordinarily large gas burner, this meal took exactly forty-eight seconds to cook.

Huge, huge thank yous to Frank Baldivino for my sick new giant wok.

Walk the Wok

Sarah's wok recently took a walk over to my place for a bit of Saveur-inspired velveted chicken. Let's say it again: velveted chicken. Salut, succulence! Now I know the secret to the tenderest, most velvety (ya!) chicken possible in a stir-fry.

I will also admit that the sight of so much celery made me cringe a bit, anticipating excess watery, well... celery flavor. But the fresh, crisp texture remained intact and that aromatic green essence infused the dish just enough; combined with julienned leeks and ginger, the whole thing was entirely too easy to be so outrageously delectable, especially when it was paired with a warm, heady coconut-milk-saturated turmeric rice.

Oh! And to help clean out a bit of the fridge, leftover asparagus spears were chopped up and stuffed into wonton wrappers for some first-course dumps... obviously.