This is a good recipe for any whole fish, but these small little pomfrets are well-suited to soak up all the flavors.

Marinade/Crust

• 2 stalks lemongrass
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 3 thai bird chilies
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Black pepper

Cut off the green fibrous ends of the lemongrass, and slice thin then mince as fine as possible. Combine with garlic, chilies, fish sauce, sugar, and pepper.

Score the pomfrets on a bias (this helps the flavor to seep into the flesh). Coat with marinade, and allow to sit for half hour or more.

Heat neutral vegetable (i.e. peanut) oil in pan, and fry the pomfrets on each side, 3-4 minutes per side.

The skin become crisp and really holds a lot of flavor. This is great with plain, steamed jasmine rice. I’ll even scrape the pan of the leftover, browned bits of the crust (and oil) and eat that alongside the fish and rice.

This can also be adapted for a skinless filet (like halibut, above), but really works well with a whole fish.

I like kebabs. I particularly enjoy the Kefta kebab, which is ground meat formed around a skewer in kebab-like fashion. I like saying the word kefta. It’s one of those words, like película and Kofi Annan, that you never grow tired of saying. I remember when Congress a couple years ago was debating the merits of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, I secretly wished the debate would draw out into a longer, more contentious debate than it had at the time, just because I enjoyed all the talking heads uttering the acronym “CAFTA” (which was close enough for me). Each time I watched the news I’d get hungry.

You can make this with beef or beef and lamb as well. New Seasons sells ground lamb, though keep in mind it is very fatty and will imbue quite a gamy scent into the atmosphere for some time. My wife was all bothered and stuff, but the deliciousness factor made her harangues worth it.

Kefta Kebab

• 1 and one-half pounds ground beef or lamb (or both!)
• 1 bunch chopped fresh Italian parsley, reserve a couple tablespoons (to cook with rice)
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup bread crumbs
• 3 or 4 garlic cloves, forced through a press
• 1 white onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• Ground pepper
• Salt to your taste

Combine everything in a large mixing bowl and mix together with your hands. I like to use long, flat broad metal skewers — mold the meat around the length of the skewer and pat to form an elongated, rectangular patty.

Heat a grill pan over medium-high and brown skewers on each of the 4 ends, 2 minutes or so each side. Remove and let sit for a few minutes.

You can eat this skewers by themselves. But c’mon, man, don’t be such freak.

Rice Pilaf

• Olive oil or butter (2 tablespoons)
• 2 cups basmati rice
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 chopped tomato
• Pinch of saffron
• Salt

Preheat oven to 325 F. Rinse and soak rice in water for half hour. Drain. Heat oil or butter in a medium saucepan (with a tight fitting lid) over medium heat. Add onions and sweat for a couple minutes, then add garlic, rice and saffron and sautee for a couple minutes. Add tomatoes, salt, and broth. Bring to boil, cover, and place in oven for 20 minutes. Allow the rice to sit on stovetop for 10 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Sumac Onions

• 1 white onion, halved and sliced
• Ground sumac
• Olive oil

Sautee onions in oil. Hit with sumac when they start to caramelize, and serve over kebabs.

I like to squeeze lemon over the kebab, onions, and rice.

This is a Vietnamese dish my mother bestowed upon me. I’m sure it has a proper Vietnamese taxonomy consisting of 3 or 4 (or more) constructors, but I call it Coco-Rico Pork due to the soda that helps fill out the braising liquid.

During a recent visit to 82nd Avenue, I picked up over a pound of freshly roasted pig at Good Taste. Good Taste sells sections of whole roasted pig for $7.95/lb, on the bone, complete with crackling. I think the portion I used was from the lower back? Hard to say, as, while I’m generally quite saavy in playing “Know Your Cuts of Meat” on Late Night with David Letterman, I’m definitely not an expert of the flesh. I don’t think it was shoulder (butt), as it was leaner. Maybe picnic shoulder? Leg? Did I cover every part of the pig yet?

The butcher at Good Taste will ask if you’d like the portion cut down into manageable pieces, but in this case we chopped it ourselves, bone and all. The key in this dish is to use the crackling, it helps lend an unctuous richness to the dish. This is like a fat bomb, oh yeah, and I would compare the texture to that of really good carnitas. When you plate it all atop steaming hot jasmine rice, there is that serendipitous moment when you fork in a bite that simultaneously combines shreds of the pork, a sliver of braised pig skin, a firm section of egg white and a crumble of yolk — all married together with the braising juice — that really allows one to experience a true Calgon moment.

Coco-Rico Braised Pork

• 1 1/2 pound of whole Chinese-style roast pig, cut into 2 inch (or so) chunks, bone and skin intact
• 7 eggs
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoon waters
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• Half white onion, sliced
• Small knob ginger, peeled and sliced into sheets and fine julienne
• 2 chopped green onions
• Juice of one fresh coconut (not coconut milk)
• 1 can Coco Rico soda (available at Fubonn/Vietnamese markets)
• Ground pepper (tablespoon? you tell me)
• Fish sauce

First, soft the boil eggs — place in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and cover. Bring to a boil and remove from heat, and let stand for 6 minutes (or so). Shock in ice bath and peel, taking care not to tear the egg whites.

In a large saucepan, over medium heat, add sugar, stir for a few seconds, and then add water and stir for a minute or so to create a caramel of sorts. Add garlic, onion, ginger and green onions, stir “fry” for a minute or two, and then pork, coconut juice, and soda.

For those who aren’t familiar with Coco Rico soda, here’s a photo. As you can probably guess from the nomenclature, it’s a sickly sweet coconut flavored soda popular with…who knows. I guess people drink this piss – I can’t stand it, but it really works here. Bring the concoction up to a low boil, and reduce to low and simmer for 30 minutes, covered.

After 30 minutes, add the eggs and ground pepper. Be careful not to break the flesh of the eggs — you want them to remain intact and pick up a nice brown sheen from the braising liquid.

Continue to simmer 2 hours, covered, on low. Stir in fish sauce to taste.

Here’s a close up shot.

And an example of the texture of the pork. Very much like carnitas. Rich, sweet and savory.

Now that football season is in full swing, it’s time for chicken wings. Actually, any time or occasion is a good time or occasion for chicken wings. Including hockey preseason, the fortnight between Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing events, proms, quicieneras, and the occasional bris.

A couple years ago I was invited to a Super Bowl party (Patriots v. Eagles) hosted by one of my wife’s co-workers and her boyfriend. The theme was chicken wings, and apparently it was a contest*. The following is my favorite spicy Thai-style wing recipe – for this event I “kicked it up a notch” (remind me to kill myself for using that phrase) and added a “wet” component, but these wings are plenty flavorful without the final steps. Here are a couple photos of these delicious wings:

*I placed second in the wing contest. However, I was early to the party. And apparently everybody brought their wings raw to be cooked there either in the oven or on the grill. I was not aware of this custom. And so my plated, ready-to-eat wings were quicky devoured by the early party guests. The host’s boyfriend, who I was quite certain was stoned at the time, kept remarking how “fucking” good the wings were as he downed close to a dozen himself. Therefore when balloting happened, many of the party guests DIDN’T EVEN GET A CHANCE TO TASTE MY WINGS and of course did not rate them on the ballot. Thus, I firmly believe I actually won the wing contest. However, since there was no real prize for winning outside of the personal satisfaction of knowing you’ve won, I didn’t contest the results.

Thai chicken wings

• 1 lbs chicken wings
• 6 garlic cloves
• 1 small knob ginger (approx. 2 inches, peeled and sliced in thin sheets ~ 2 tablespoons)
• 2 thin slices of a decent sized, peeled galanga (1 tablespoon?)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 7 thai bird chilies
• 2 lemon grass stalks, stems and ends trimmed, finely minced
• 2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon Maggi or soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons honey
• Juice of a lime

Optional Enhancement

• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tablespoon ketchup
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey

In your large stone mortar (What, you don’t have one? Go buy one.) combine garlic, ginger, galanga, chilies and salt. Pound the living shit out of the contents.

Scrape your mash into a large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix well, and chill overnight or at least 4 hours.

Grill over hoat coals.

2nd place enhancement option. Here’s the extra step for a bootstrapped special flavor upgrade with added presentational flair. This is what I did when I captured 2nd place at the aforementioned Super Bowl party.

Reserve marinade after placing wings on grill. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Add 1/2 cup water to reserved marinade, 1 tablespoon ketchup, and 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar, and additional tablespoon honey. Simmer until reduced to a glaze. Toss glaze with wings once they are removed from the grill, spread on sheet pan, and bake for 3-4 minutes. Platter and top with finely diced chives.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to increasingly appreciate lamb. When I was quite young and discovering all the deliciousness that existed in the world of food, lamb was slightly gamey for my virgin tastes. This pretty much all changed when I was seventeen and worked as a server at a spa resort in northeast Tucson. Every 10th day was lamb chop day, and we would serve each nutritionally apportioned lamb entree with 2 frenched rib chops per plate – topped with a herbed dijon “sludge”. Since we would have anywhere from 200-325 guests showing up for dinner on any given day, the kitchen would make enough chops to serve the high end number of potential house covers.

The result is that at the end of the night there were pans and pans of uneaten lamb chops – sometimes enough for a greedy starving teenager to eat as much as a dozen and take a few home as well. I would scape off the sludge, which left behind a subtle dijon and herb essence, and top the chops with low sodium Kikkoman. I did this for 2 years. And this wasn’t only lamb chops either – this applied to nearly everything. The spa was pretty posh and had a clientele of east coast stock brokers and the Hollywood elite. So while the menu was definitely geared towards lean and healthy preparations (we would memorize the calories, fat and sodium stats for every item each shift — they gave us cheat sheets we taped inside of our books), the ingredients were top shelf. In college, although we were broke (and often resorted to scraping together change to attend “silver coin drink night” at the local college binge drink warehouse) my roommate and I often ate lobster tail in our Maruchan and Top Ramen.

There is hardly anything has delicious as the lamb loin chop, which is the T-bone steak of lamb. The only drawback is that the chops I encounter are quite spartan in terms of flesh preponderance. There’s only a few bites of meat you can negotiate with a knife and fork before you pick up the chop and go full on neanderthal on the bone — this act being one of life’s unrivaled joys.

Here’s a quick and simple preparation that doesn’t do too much – you don’t want to mask the loin chop’s natural flavor. It’s almost imperative that you use a cast iron pan to really get a good char – if not grill these on a high flame.

Lamb Loin Chops with Tamari, Black Vinegar, Garlic Chives and Fried Shallots

• 3 lamb loin chops. You could trim the fat, but lamb fat really does taste delicious.
• 1 Tablespoon tamari
• 1 Tablespoon Chinese Black Vinegar
• Kosher salt and coarse cracked pepper
• Fried shallots
• Chopped garlic chives

Pre-heat a cast iron frying pan over medium to medium high heat for five minutes.

Sprinkle both side of the chops with salt and pepper. Sear the chops, about 4-6 minutes per side. Remove and let rest for 3 minutes.

Top with tamari and vinegar. Sprinkle on chives and fried shallots (you can fry the shallots yourself and keep them around – or you can buy pre-fried shallots from an Asian store). Eat.