Child Labor

We were waiting on a service call this morning and were told they would arrive between 8am and noon (they didn't arrive until 1:30pm). Since we began Labor Day weekend stuck at the house, what better to do than force our 22 month old to do some hard labor?

I recently went on a spice buying binge at World Spice near the Pike Place Market. I've always wanted a mortar and pestle and they had this unique set displayed by Fresco. I decided to use my Amazon gift certificates and finally splurge on one.

The night it arrived we were flipping through TV and Tom Douglas was the guest on Simply Ming with Ming Tsai. I sort of have a man-crush on both those guys, so we watched the whole episode. They cooked four dishes, each using both buttermilk and Thai red curry paste. A curried crab and rice noodle dish, curried clams in a buttermilk broth, fried chicken (soaked in curried buttermilk), and Tom's dish: Mac and Cheese Salad with Red Curry Buttermilk Dressing. It had grated hard ricotta, garlic, shallots - very reminiscent of his Oodles of Noodles at Dahlia Lounge, another favorite of ours.

It was one of those episodes where we were drooling over every recipe so I decided to break in my mortar and pestle by making a batch of Thai red curry paste. Audrey was a big help.

We didn't get pictures of her making snickerdoodles, but she did a great job. Though, whoever was measuring may have put 4 times as much salt in as the recipe called for. Oops!