Thai cold rice noodle salad with chicken, lime and peanut sauce

It has been really hot here.

The "36°C at 7:00pm in the evening" kind of hot.
The "I-feel-like-I-peed-in-my-pants-after-biking-home" kind of hot.
The "only wear very dark or very light tops to work" kind of hot.
The "my-thighs-just-got-stuck-to-the-waiting-room-faux-leather-sofa" kind of hot.
The "I-keep-finding-my-son's-discarded-diapers-around-the-house" kind of hot. (Yes, we tried potty training when that started but realized very quickly it was purely a desire to cool off his Netherlands, not a sign of wanting to use a toilet).
The "opening-the-fridge-just-to-cool-off" kind of hot.

Like many apartments in old Italian buildings, we do not have air conditioning. With a just-turned three-year old who loves looking out of the window, we pretty much have to keep either our windows or shutters closed to avoid accidents, unless we are in the room. We did buy universal window catches to protect our children, but it seems that our seemingly standard 1920s window frames somehow do not fit the definition of "universal". Last but not least, I don't think our landlady would appreciate us screwing white plastic guards into her grandmother's beautiful wood pannelled window frames. So that sort of rules out the possibility of exploiting our apartment's double exposure and the lovely current it creates.

As a result, we have been drinking a lot of water. We have been lying around in our underwear loungewear like dead leaves. The kids have been splashing around a lot in the bathtub. Luckily we have ceiling fans, although the pretty period molded ceilings are so high, we only catch a slight breeze at top speed.

So now you know why my most recent pinning has involved lots of salads, ice cream recipes and South East Asian influences recipes. Since I feel the need for fresh, cool and crunchy ingredients, a lot of those recipes will be coming your way in the near future.

Today's recipe is courtesy of Smitten Kitchen, who did the hard work of converting complicated, laborious restaurant food into something more accessible for home cooks. The preparation is actually much simpler than the list of ingredients and variety of steps would lead you to think, so read through it before you decide it is too much work. It really isn't, and if I say so you know it is true since I am the queen of simple and fast family-friendly recipes. The most laborious part was squeezing the limes (I used 8). Feel free to play around with the vegetables you prefer, just keep it crunchy.

Lemme just make sure it is al dente!

Green fusion couscous

I think the reason why I love my neighborhood is that it is culturally pretty diverse for Italian standards.

My daughter has been lucky enough to spend her first years with a tight-knit group of friends with parents from several continents, exposing her from the start to different religions and traditions. Just as an example, one of her oldest friends is half American, just like her. Our neighbors and good friends are from Argentina. Her favorite playmate is a girl from the Philippines and there are children from all over the world in both our children's classes.

This may be a given in many countries but it is still a novelty in Italy. This country only recently went from being a country of emigrants to one that welcomes large amounts of immigrants, making diversity a reasonably new concept here, especially in the more gentrified neighborhoods. Many children here are first generation Italians and some just moved recently and are still coming to terms with a new tradition and language.

Sometimes I hear things people say that make me cringe. I realize it is often more the result of not being accustomed or exposed to diversity than an actual feeling of superiority and more often than not the words are said totally unaware, without malice, but it makes me realize we still have a ways to go.

My children and I often talk about being different, because we/they are different. Their mother speaks to them in a foreign language, they do not take religion in school (how about teaching children about the religions of the world to help them understand them and be more tolerant than having an hour dedicated to the Catholic religion, that most children learn about in Sunday school anyway?), their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins live all over the world and speak a variety of languages.

We have a book full of fun and interesting drawings about different people, different colors and different shapes. Tall people, short, people, big people, thin people. Blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. Big noses, tiny noses, bumpy noses, freckly noses. Long hair, short hair, curly hair, frizzy hair. Blonde, brown, black, grey, white. Huge ears, wrinkly ears, hairy ears. Some of the men wear pants, others tunics or skirts. Some have short hair, some have long hair. Some wear earrings, some don't. Some women have bare chests, others are covered from head to toe, some have colorful tatoos and shaved heads, others have plates in their lips. 

We are different, different is good, different is important.

Yesterday my daughter told me she heard something someone said to a classmate of hers. It was not outright offensive but she grasped the fine line between funny and hurtful and felt bad for him. This made me happy, because now I know she has the sensitivity to think more about how she communicates with people.

If we all stop to think before we speak, we could avoid a lot of hurt. I do it, we all do it, every day, usually without noticing. We could avoid hurting those we love, our friends, our colleagues, our acquaintances and even and foremost strangers. 

Food is another powerful way to reach out to each other, cross borders and cultures, as Sasha reminds us every day. I try to expose my children to the world's incredible variety through the meals I prepare daily for my family.

This dish is definitely a result of globalization, an example of a fusion dish.

There are ingredients and inspirations from Maghreb, Thailand and Japan in this simple meal. It takes just a few minutes to throw together and is full of vitamins, it is light and extremely tasty. Once again I will be giving you general guidelines because how and what you use is really up to you and your personal taste. The dressing (which I found in an old Donna Hay book) has very little oil in it and to keep things even lighter and healthier I used less couscous (which you can buy whole wheat) and more veggies. Oh, and don't discard the tough stems, I have a recipe coming up for those too!

 

Short-cut Thai sticky rice

Yesterday, as I stood by the stove making dinner, I listened to my daughter speaking to her Daddy, who had just come home from work, in the other room.

 Daughter: "I hope we are grown up when you both die"

I don’t know what went through his head before answering but probably something along the lines of what I was thinking. That it is important to say the right thing, to help her understand that death is inevitable, that it is part of the cycle of life. That people die, sometimes unfortunately sooner than expected. But also to reassure her and comfort her, to let her know we will always be there for her, that she should not grow up being scared of losing us. That it is good to speak openly of death as a way of exorcising this fear but that is also important for a child to feel safe.

 

Daddy: "If we are lucky, God willing, we will die when we are much older than we are now and you will be all grown up".

After a moment of silence, during which she thought about what her father (the man who can do all and who knows everything) had said, she answered matter-of-factly:

 

"Or at least if you die before that, I hope you and Mommy have enough time to drop us off with a family".

I snorted from the kitchen. She had already figured it all out.

 

I think it is hilarious (if you can use that word for this subject) that in her 6-year old mind, Daddy and Mommy is a unit, a package deal. We go together like peanut butter and jelly, like Sandy and Danny, like rain and bad hair days. If Daddy goes, Mommy goes, same time, same day. Widow and widower are words that have not yet entered her lexicon. Thank goodness, might I add.

                            Source: flickr.com via Nuts on Pinterest

As children, I clearly remember my sister and I saying things like: "When you die can you leave me that ring/blouse/dress?"  this to my mother. She still gives us a hard time about it (rightly so).

I try to think back and recall what went through my mind when I said those things. I seem to remember there was no angst, no reasoning. It was a simple statement, a rational thought about something that you are no longer able to rationalize once you grasp the meaning, the implications of death. The pain, the loss, the emptiness, the grief.

I love the candidness of children, their lack of filters. I love how straightforward they are and I am grateful for the insight they give me, because their simple approach to things in life helps me make mine less complex, less convoluted. More often than not, keeping things simple is the best way to live.

                                         Source: google.com via Nuts on Pinterest

 

 Simplicity is sometimes a good thing in cooking too. It is often the humblest dishes that we love and crave the most. Also, talking about simplicity, sometimes we discover that something we thought was difficult or tedious to make is actually really, really easy.

Am I the only one who thought making sticky rice required several steps and age-old techinique?

I love everything about Thai food but whatever I order, I always get sticky rice to go with it. Perhaps it was the banana leaf it often comes in suggesting exotic ingredients and nimble hands wrapping the tiny glutinous kernels with special techniques that scared me off.

And then I found a big bag of glutinous rice at my local Asian supermarket and when I researched on line I found out I could make it in under thirty minutes in my own home whilst reading a book!

There are two ways to go: the traditional way, which requires a longer soaking (even overnight), a steamer (although a traditional bamboo steamer is not necessary) and more patience than I had at the time. And the microwave way (finally I have found a way to use my microwave, which helped me warm many a bottle in the past years but that I usually eye with suspicion), that is so simple I almost laughed out loud when I read it.

Now I’m sure that if you are Thai or you live in Thailand or you are an expert of all things Thai, you will notice a difference between the original method and this short cut and I don’t suggest you follow it. Although I may be wrong. But for all of those who enjoy recreating the vibrancy of flavors and colors of Thai food in their own home without being purists, this tasted totally authentic to me.

 

My source suggests that the microwave rice may turn out a little stickier, softer. The rice I made did not turn out soft at all, it was perfectly sticky and toothsome at the same time. Perhaps it is because I soaked it for longer than 10 minutes because I was distracted by the kids. Apparently if the rice is soaked longer it absorbs less during cooking and thus stays firmer. I, actually we all, thought it was delicious.

 

Ingredients

glutinous rice

water

glass bowl or microwave resistant container

Soak the rice for about 20 minutes in luke warm water. For every cup of rice pour in a little over a cup of water, so that the water level is just above the rice level. Cover and cook in the microwave at maximum power for three minutes. Uncover, stir and repeat this process until the rice is cooked and traslucent. Timing depends on how powerful your microwave is. I cooked and stirred three times for a total of 9 minutes.

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Wondee Siam, Thai to die

As you may have noticed, I usually do not post about restaurants and this is for two very simple reasons:

1) we don't go out as much as we did when we were a carefree couple without children, especially not to the kind of place you would be inspired to blog about, and when we do it is such a special occasion that we do not want to waste a precious moment.

2) the times I have been somewhere memorable and brought my camera it was a total failure. I try to avoid flash if possible (also, I hate disturbing other diners with the light) and when I do use it the results are of course terrible and the ones I take without are dark. Last but not least, I still feel uncomfortable constantly whipping out my camera in a nice restaurant. Any suggestions on how to get a better restaurant picture? Many of you do excellent jobs.

Wondee Siam, however, is a place that cannot go unmentioned or unphotographed.

It is nothing fancy and totally a place to go with the kids, although it isn't what you would call a family restaurant. If they hadn't recently redecorated I would still call it a hole in the wall, it is really small (keep in mind, if going with children, there is no room for a highchair or a stroller) and unpretentious. This is a place you go for the food, which is absolutely outstanding, so please promise me you will give it a try if you go to NY (but also promise to go to the original one, not the ones followed by numbers).