Meatstroke
Every year I always say I'm not going to host a cookout in the intolerable heat of the summer here in central North Carolina, and then almost every year I inevitably end up doing just that. This year I blame a rainy spring that had me holding on starting up The Meatwave season weekend after weekend, leaving me little choice than to either scale back my ambitions, or suffer through the heat. I chose the later when I decided to move forward with the aptly named Meatstroke, which ended up not really being that much of an exercise in heat endurance thanks to lower humidity levels that day, which made it easier to fully enjoy the menu of Thai-influenced offerings that I had grilled up.
It's corn season, and I enjoy taking full advantage of this veggie when it's in its prime. My first inclination for this corn was to do a take on Mexican street corn with Thai ingredients, but then I saw a recipe passed along by Andy Ricker, of Pok Pok fame, that brushed grilled corn with pandan infused coconut cream. This is definitely not something I would have come up with on my own, but I felt like having a more neutral and sweet side would be welcomed among the rest of the dishes that were mostly spicy, so I gave it whirl. For my tastes, the coconut cream and pandan were a bit too understated, but it was still really good grilled corn that had a nice added richness to it that was noticeably different than the standard butter.
Of the various Thai curries, panang is my favorite—the extra spices and peanuts mashed into the paste give it even more of a depth than its brethren. For this Meatwave I made a large portion of panang paste and divided it between two recipes. The first of those were these panang wings, which are an evolution of some red curry wings I made some years back, but I think I've made some great improvements to the sauce beyond the switch of curry paste alone.
For a vegetarian starter option, I tried out tofu satay. The last time I made satay was before I became more well versed in Thai cooking, so I knew I could make some strides over past recipes. I did this mainly by utilizing my mortar and pestle to make the marinade, which gave it a better texture and stronger flavor than my previous satay recipes. It also helped that the tofus is such a blank slate that the marinade really popped more than in my beef or chicken incarnations.
The recipe with the most effort put into it this day was this sai ua, Northern Thai sausage. I sampled this encased meat in the markets in Chang Mai about five years ago and it's been on my to-cook list ever since. I'm happy to say that my recipe brought back fond memories of that deeply seasoned and spicy sausage, but mine was so flavorful I wondered if maybe I pushed my recipe a little too far, but it was also so delicious I don't think that would really be considered a negative.
The other item that panang paste went into were these cauliflower salad sandwiches. I had grilled cauliflower and then assembled it into a chicken salad-like form by creating a dressing of mayo and panang curry as the base, along with some other seasonings and plenty of fresh herbs. On its own, it was one mighty fine salad, but the intensity of flavor found a proper home in sandwich form where there were also the added benefits of the crackling and chewy baguette.
The piece de resistance of this Meatwave was this pork belly nam tok salad. My wife saw a pork belly nam tok on a show she was watching years ago and asked me to make it, so I did, and we've been eating this dish regularly for years now. It's basically the same thing as the more common beef nam tok, but with the steak swapped out for crispy, fried pork belly. Normally I boil and then fry the belly, but I gave smoking a try for the first step and it was mighty fine. Knowing how much we both love this dish, I knew it was going to be a hit, and it was, disappearing quickly after I set it out.
Besides my own distaste for the extreme heat, another reason I don't like to host in the dead of summer is I assume no one else will want to be outside too. However, at least at this cookout, a good portion of my friends all made it out and we had about thirty folks total join in. Here we have Evan, Jenny, Bryan, Meredith, Kim, Benji, and Juliana.
At the next table we find Ryan, Sandra, Chris, Steve, and Sue.
And the third table area had a gathering including Kristin, Kelly, Cat, Christina, and Chelsea.
And I captured this lot on their way out—Leslie, Kareena, Brooks, Lindsey, Kai, and a couple of friends from school.
The wee ones left us with some incredible artwork to admire at the end of the day. All reminders of the good times that were had and a reminder to myself that, as much as I say I don't want to host anything in the heat, it's not always that bad and I have the best friends who will come out and support my craziness no matter what!
