Dining, Recipes

Basil Garlic Mayonnaise

It’s been awhile since I posted a recipe for anything, so to get rolling on this, I’m starting with something easy.

Something about growing your own herbs in your own backyard makes for truly delightful home cooking. Basil has been the easiest to grow in our Texas climate, and I have 3 varieties of them in our herb garden: Sweet, Thai and Lime. With plenty of sun, good soil and regular watering, 2 basil plants is plenty enough for your summer menus. I usually harvest the leaves by trimming the tops, and the basil responds by putting out new growth within a couple of days.

Because we’ve been doing a lot of grilling lately, I’ve been kicking up my burgers with a basil-garlic-mayo concoction. Goes great with deli sandwiches, egg, and tuna salad too.

Handful of Sweet Basil (1/2 cup)
10-15 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small lemon (or lime), halved
1/2-2/3 cup of mayonnaise
ground black pepper
salt
sriracha sauce (optional)
1 tablespoon mustard (optional

Chop the garlic and basil, then place in food processor. Pulse until finely chopped, drizzle in olive oil and squeeze in juice from half a lemon. Continue to pulse-blend until a paste–or leave finely chopped if you would like some color and texture in your mayo spread. Pour basil-garlic paste into a bowl, mix in mayonnaise. Squeeze in the other half of lemon juice . Season with pepper and salt. For a little heat, add a squeeze of sriracha sauce.

For other variations, I’ve halved the amount of sweet basil and used lime basil to give this mayo more punch. Instead of lemon or lime, I’ve used mustard instead.

Dining, Reviews

Thai dining Irving and Carrollton

Coconut Thai Grill

2512 E Belt Line Rd
Carrollton, TX 75006
(972) 418-8424

The fiance and I took off for lunch at this Thai grill for a dining adventure. The restaurant resides in what appears to be a renovated Long John’s Silvers shack, done up in bright green paint. The interior was also refreshed with modern furniture and lively paint scheme to coordinate with their banana-and-coconut-themed paintings. Seeing the effort put into decorating the place made me confident in knowing that management intends to make this a successful venture.

On to the menu. We tackled the chicken satay for an appetizer, then I ordered the house special Coconut chicken while the fiance sampled their blackboard special of Yellow Curry. As is our experience with any skewered meat, the chicken satay went down in a few gulps–good stuff!–then we looked around hungrily for more. I had already regretted my omission of my typical Tom Kha chicken soup, and so pounced on the eggrolls that accompanied our meals. After making short work of the eggrolls, both of us dived into our meals with gusto. And what meals they were!

I haven’t had a coconut chicken dish like this in recent memory, but Coconut Thai’s fantastic rendition is worthy of praise. The marinated grilled chicken paired excellently with a slightly sweet and tangy sauce, and I confess to enjoying the mixed greens salad that went with it. The fiance also declared the Yellow curry special to be above-average and I had to check myself from saucing up the rest of his curry dregs on my rice. We were both so pleased with our lunches yet hungry enough to order a third dish, pad thai pork, just to see if they could serve up a capable noodle dish. I am entirely pleased to report that they mostly succeeded, except for their strange exclusion of crushed peanuts that is so indicative of pad thai dishes.

Coconut Thai Grill definitely surprised us and we will gladly return to try out more of their other menu specials.

My rating: 4.0 stars
****

Best Thai

7447 North MacArthur Boulevard
Irving, TX 75063
(972) 910-8846‎

I remember Best Thai from their original Addison location, though I’m not sure if this is the same restaurant that quadrupled their footprint in DFW or a totally different venture.

Armed with comfortable memories of the original “Best Thai” I convinced the fiance to try out this outpost in Irving, to see if lived up to my expectations.

Sadly, my impressions of Best Thai aren’t entirely positive. Best Thai seems to have capitulated to the practice of serving “neighborhood” quality food…fast, easy and convenient to the blocks of apartments and condos surrounding it. I can’t say that it is the “best” Thai food I’ve ever eaten, but in a pinch, it works.

The fiance and I ordered a bowl of their coconut chicken soup, a rendition that seemed devoid of the typical coconut creamy sweetness and citrusy tang of lemongrass that I’m used to. Best Thai complicates their version by adding onions and a heavier hand at the fish sauce. While it wasn’t a bad soup, it was too brothy to be considered a proper Tom Kha Gai.

I also feel disappointed with their Thai garlic chicken, a flavorful dish in which the vegetable-to-meat ratio measured nearly 10-to-1. I couldn’t help but feel cheated as I scrounged through the plate looking for pieces of chicken. My tongue also missed the 4-star heat advertised as hot, making me wish I had tried the 5-star very spicy option. My fiance fared much better however with his Bangkok Special, a chicken with broccoli plate nicely flavored with peanut sauce.

With one server bussing the dining room, which was quickly filling up with the Monday dinner crowd, we didn’t stay for dessert. I didn’t think they had a dessert menu anyway, and I am less inclined to return and find out.

My rating: 2.5 stars
**1/2

Dining, Reviews

Duncanville BBQ

Odom’s Bar-B-Que, Inc

810 Oriole Boulevard
Duncanville, TX 75116
(972) 572-7727‎

A good friend directed us over to Duncanville to try out Odom’s. First good sign: smoke perfumed the small lot next to the tiny shack of a restaurant. Second good sign: walking up to the register, a sign declared that no orders would be accepted while the customer is on the phone.

The fiance and I ordered 1 pound each of ribs and brisket (along with potato salad and beans, the only sides available)–our hostess exclaimed mightily that both of us could not possibly consume that much food. After a few minutes assuring her that we were serious about eating good grub, we grabbed our receipt and a booth.

A few minutes later, we received our tray and two plates of sauced meats, along with white bread and sides. Initially I paused, thinking we should have specified sauce on the side. But I dug in anyway, eager to prove our hostess that we were up to the task of consuming the entire meal. The sauce assaulted the tongue with a sharp and tangy edge, but it didn’t do any justice to the already-bland brisket. Sadly the brisket had no discernible smoke ring, no fat nor spicy crust; it had been sheared of its flavor and relegated to sandwich grade material. The pork ribs, on the other hand, had a sweetness that punched through the sauce, and both of us declared it the winner on the plate. I also enjoyed the potato salad, a mustard-mayo concoction that was both slightly sweet and sour. However the beans missed the mark–tasting canned, having that distinct bean chili flavor that recalled hotdogs on the cheap.

We hadn’t tasted the sausage so we missed out on that 3rd spoke of the bbq wheel, but we’ll be back next time we’re in town to enjoy more ribs and give the links a try.

My rating: 3.5 stars
***1/2

Email Posts

Testing blog by email

2 Comments

One little used feature that I haven’t gotten around to testing until now is WordPress’ post-by-email. It’s been around for as long as I’ve been using WordPress, yet I never did get used to the idea of opening a mail client and submitting blog posts in that manner. It requires an update process either through an activation URL or via Cron job. More info can be found in the WordPress Codex. For this blog, I installed and used the Postie plugin. Here’s to breaking new ground!