Nam Sod is a wonderful Thai appetizer to accompany a traditional Thai meal or as a snack alone.  It can be prepared mild to Thai Hot.  We prefer Thai hot in our family but you may want to have it a little less hot. This recipe assumes a medium to hot, level of heat. Thai hot is extreme and is beyond hot.

If you have access to ground pork or can grind your own then this recipe is an easy one to put together.

Make your Nam Sod ahead of time and refrigerate it for several hours so the flavor sets.

From what I gather, Nam Sod is traditionally prepared using pork but in the last ten years we have begun to see chicken versions offered in some of our favorite Thai restaurants. Feel free to substitute chicken for the pork in the recipe below.

If you search for Nam Sod recipes on the internet you will find them with a variety of other ingredients added, like mint leaves and shallots.  I have created this recipe based upon my families’ taste buds and our experiences trying several different versions.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Ingredients

2 lbs of lean, double ground pork or white chicken meat
1 cup tap water
2 to 4 oz of fresh ginger chopped fine
2 medium gloves of garlic
1 big red onion 2 tablespoons fish sauce (Squid Brand is preferred)
3 teaspoons of salt
Juice of 3 limes
1 bunch of cilantro
1 cup of plain dry roasted peanuts (no salt, no added flavor)
1 or more tablespoons of dry chili pepper flakes (pizza pepper flakes)
1 tablespoon of fresh green and red Thai peppers in fish sauce (optional)
Large cabbage leaves

Preparation

1. Trim the fat and double grind the pork.  Ask your butcher to grind the meat if you don’t have a grinder. We use lean fresh pork loin, which is leaner than pork butt. We also love using chicken breasts.

2. Place meat and 1 teaspoon of salt in a saucepan and add the water. Cook over low to medium heat (blanching the meat) until the meat is cooked thoroughly, stirring occasionally.  While cooking use a spatula to break the meat into little pieces.

3. Drain the meat well (press the extra water out) and discard the water.  Place pork in a large bowl and set it aside to cool.

4. Prepare the onion and garlic by chopping the garlic fine and pulsing it in a food processor for a few seconds.  Slice the onion in half and then slice the halfs into ~1/8 inch slices.  Pulse the onion 1 to 3 times in the food processor with the garlic pieces.  Add the onion and garlic mixture to the meat and stir in.

5. Chop the ginger into fine pieces. For a stronger flavor, slice the ginger into fine strips about 1 inch long.  Adjust the amount of ginger to suit your taste.

6. Combine the lime juice with two tablespoons of fish sauce and the remaining salt.  Add to the meat and stir.

7. Chop the Cilantro bunch into smaller pieces and stir into the meat.

8. Measure out pepper flakes and add to the meat. Adjust to taste.  Add the fresh Thai peppers prepared in fish sauce if you want a much hotter flavor.

9. Stir well and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to let the flavor set.

10. Add lightly chopped peanuts right before serving.

Serve wrapped with Cabbage leaves for an amazing appetizer. You can garnish with some fresh cilantro if desired.

Makes 4 to 8 servings.

This is a continuation of a series of posts. The last two posts were about Shadows and Highlights and Drawing Negative Space.

In the previous two classes we worked on our self-portrait. Last night we had a little celebration and got the chance to spend a little about two hours on something we wanted to draw.  I spend 30 minutes putting some final touches on my self-portrait and then began drawing my youngest daughter’s portrait as a draft image. I wanted to experiment a little drawing her portrait before I jump in with better paper and maybe a change in tactics.  First about the self-portrait:

I’ll let you be the judge of the quality of my portrait. I did learn several important things to take care of in drawing this portrait.

I need to lighten the highlights a lot and darken the shadows. Basically add dynamic range.

I need to put an early image taped to the wall and step back to get perspective.  For example my beard is just not that full. Used to be when I was younger but I keep it short now.

Must keep my hands clean. I would erase an area to give it highlights, only to gray it up again as I moved my hands across the image.

Now for the draft portrait of my daughter. You notice cross hair erasure marks. This was intentional. I wanted to get this one very accurate in terms of proportion and perspective. But being a draft I’m not going to do any more with this image.

I’m going to draw this again 4 times at least.

1) With the typical prepared ground (dark) background like this one but on better and whitter paper.

2) Without any grounding. I will add the shadows and background effect after I get the general features placed on the page.

3 and 4) Using painter X on a Mac laptop with a grounded background and starting plain as well.

I’ll post them on this blog when done.

Summary

This class has been one of the best experiences I have had in exploring my own creative abilities. My drawings before this class were typical stick figured and embarrassing. As I stated in an earlier post, I had always felt that I had artist within me and yet, was yearning to express himself.  I’ve been able to create many things in my life like profitable companies, web sites, high performing teams and and more. But none of these activities felt artistic to me. Now I both know a little about the artist within, I also have a greater appreciation for my other talents that I have been able to exercise through the years.

I will be continuing to practice drawing and may, someday, move to paiting with color or at least electronic painting with Corel Painter and more.

Thanks for all the kind comments (mostly provided privately) that have offered words of encourangment and hope as I made my way through this fantastic journey.  Over the holiday break, I will probably add an epilogue post to this series with final throught. But for now a big thanks to Betty Edwards for her great book - Drwaing on the Right Side of the Brain, and to Nancy our wonderful instructor.

Pecan Dreams

My mother Inez, took delight in making cookies during the holiday season.  She made the usual decorated sugar cookies, the best tollhouse chocolate chip cookies (recipe right on the toll house chip bag) that she had to hid from my brother, and many other types of cookies. But one cookie stands out and was sought after by my friends, my parents friends and all our neighbors, Pecan Dreams.  If you search the web you will find many recipes for cookies with this name. But this is the only one that I have tried that has the flavor and texture that I remember from my youth. And no milk solids which is important in my family. Butter is okay (okay ,so not really given, the saturated fat but we can tolerate butter) but milk solids are a no-no!

My whole family enjoys making these cookies and giving them as gifts to friends and family!

I hope you enjoy these wonderful cookies.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups sifted (2+ times) all purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar 4x or finer
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup lightly chopped pecans
Extra powdered sugar

Preparation

Soften butter at room temperature. Do not try to hasten softening.  The butter should be soft but not melted.

Using a mixer, cream the butter well with the flour. Add the flour gradually to avoid lumps.

Continue mixing and add the powdered sugar gradually. Continue mixing till you cannot feel the sugar between your fingers.

Combine the vanilla and water and add this to the butter, flour, sugar mixture while continuing mixing.  Continue mixing until all the ingredients are uniformly combined.

Remove from the mixer, spoon in, and hand mix the pecans into the batter.

Cover with foil and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours.  Having a cool mixture is very important so don’t skip this step.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. If using a convection oven, preheat to 375 degrees F.

Using a teaspoon or bread dough knife, grab some batter and shape in your hands till it is about the size and shape of a date.  We prefer the bread dough knife, shaping the dough in our hands and then a final roll on a cutting board.

Cook these cookies on a non-stick cookie sheet or on a cookie sheet lined with foil.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until very light brown on the bottom.  Remove and cool on a cooling rack, if available, or a clean dish towel.

When the cookies are just a little warmer than room temperature, roll them in powdered sugar.  They are ready to eat.  They store nicely for up to about 5 days and freeze nicely.  But they won’t last that long in your house will they?

Pecan Dreams freeze well if you want to make then ahead of time. Before freezing them, let them cool to room temperature. Place them in an airtight container and separate layers with waxed paper.

Enjoy these very wonderful cookies.

Just something to make you stand up and go DUH!

This post is an update to a series of articles on using Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain techniques (search for the Book with the same name in Amazon). The previous article was update 10.

Back in October we learned to see the negative space (the space that surrounds an object) as a way to use the right brain.  During those exercises we drew a hard plastic and metal chair over two classes.  My drawing is below. As this one developed I began to see my style and how different my style is from the other class members. I have an engineering background so I wanted to capture the hard lines. One of the class drawings had this chair become much softer. The great part was, all of the negative space chairs turned out wonderful in their own way.

This is when we all knew that we were learning these techniques and had some inherent talent hidden in us for all these years.

Next week I’ll post my self portrait, the final image from the class. Still needs a little work and I’m half pleased with it. My classmates think it is wonderful. I have my doubts. But maybe with a little more work on it I’ll learn to love it.

Update 12 shows my final Self-Portrait and a draft drawing of one of my daughters.