Thai week begins at Casa Seguin

We have long assumed that Raoul is a Mexican cat. All signs point to it- his tough guy attitude about spicy food, his obsessive interest in anything with beans, and he can roll every letter in his alphabet. Today, this assertion has been challenged.

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This week Matt and I went to a Thai cooking class. This was hugely fun, very casual and both inspiring and informative. The chef, Apple Knisley, explained where to get the ingredients, how to use them, and how to recombine them into further iterations for leftovers (since, you are going to have like a pound each of Spearmint, Queen of Siam Basil and Cilantro). Thoroughly moved, Matt and I headed to the Strip District to track down a Thai grocer and stock up on herbs, fish sauce and preserved cabbage. If you go purchase these things at the Thai grocer, it costs pennies, hardly dollars. We spent $25 on what will easily be a week's worth of food once we start assembling it.

We are starting with a recipe for garden noodle rolls- a kind of fresh roll. If it turns out, I'll share the recipe. I was assembling the sauce earlier, to give those tiny, brutal Thai peppers a chance to mellow a bit. Matt waltzed in and decided to check on the hotness of the peppers by popping an 1/8 of one in his mouth. Burnination! Silly man- he had to chug about two pints of milk to cool his mouth (and throat, and ears...).

Being Thai, this sauce calls for a dash of fish sauce (which is, by smell, the liquid contents of a long dead, salted anchovy). After the pepper indecent, Matt was being all whiny about what was going into this sauce, and to make a point grabs up a dribble of this stuff to smell. Since it smelled fouler then a slime-line on a hot day, he passed his rank finger tip off to the cat, who savored the sauce, with just a little bit of finger tip. He seemed so take in the sauce like it was replenishing his supply lines, as if this whole time we'd been neglecting this basal requirement for sustenance. And this is when I realized the Raoul may not be Mexican at all- I think he is Thai. Love of spicy food, unintelligible language, affinity for fish sauce? The pieces are all there.

If the Thai movement doesn't last in the house, at least we won't have to through out the rest of the liter of fish sauce.

**** UPDATE****
Ohmygoshness, these fresh rolls are the best thing that ever happened to my plates. I feel like God's gift to my kitchen. Seriously, I would not have believed I could make something so exotic and flavorful so easily in my own kitchen.