Saturday, September 26, 2009

Unnamed fusion... dish

This will sound weird, but...

To two handfuls of jasmine rice boiling in a little too much water, add

a generous (~3 tablespoons) helping of fish sauce
some (~1 tablespoon) soy sauce
1 bag of cooked salad shrimp
a decent amount (1/4 cup) of shredded sichuan preserved vegetable
~3-4 chopped birdseye peppers (chopped loosely, with seeds)

The sichuan preserved vegetable and the sauces will provide enough salt, no need to add more. boil this until the rice just barely starts to break down (20 minutes?), and then add some ripped-up pieces of high-quality beef cold cuts (like top round). Or if you don't have that, maybe some thumb-sized pieces of roast beef.

Then take it off the heat, let the beef soak up the flavors for a minute or two. it will thicken slightly as it cools.

This is really good. It's kind of like a congee, but the rice still has too much form to really call it porridge. But it is more soupy than a conventional rice dish. I don't know what to call it, but I like it.

I call it fusion because it takes inspiration from Thai, Sichuan, and American.

I think it would be even better w/some lemongrass.

I also think it would be classier to use dry-fried strips of flank steak, rather than the ripped-up cold cuts (ya think?), and just put them on top, pyramid-like, which would also add to the presentation.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Arthur Rackham

After discovering this man's work on the Wikipedia page for the word nicker, it occurred to me that his work would form an intensely rich and complex foundation for stained glass window designs.

Just google "arthur rackham", and look at the images that pop up.

You can even ignore the actual subject matter, and just focus on compositional aspects, like pallete and spatial organization.