Pear tomatoes from my mom's backyard and a handful of Thai-flavored cashews...

Chop up the cashews, toss with halved tomatoes, and let them rest for fifteen minutes in the fridge, and you have Thai cashew tomato salad. Work time? Two minutes. Juice from the tomatoes work as the liquid base for the dressing, for which the seasoning comes from the lime- and chili-flavored nuts. Brought to you by Trader Joe's spicy concoction, Thai Lime Chili Cashews. (Hey, I'm not getting commission from Joe or anything...)

It's probably been close to two weeks since we went to the crane-in-a-dumpster Greek restaurant out in Niles, for it was way before our move to the new apartment. ("Crane in a dumpster" is a Japanese expression meaning a gem in an unexpected place; "crane" here is that elegant, migratory bird, not the construction equipment that might be more closely associated with a dumpster.) Anyway, Mykonos on Golf Rd. is one of my favorite Greek restaurant in the area. Serving up consistently fresh seafood and good broiled meats at reasonable prices, Mykonos could very well be better than at least some of the mainstays in Greek Town.

Our visit on that day, though, was somewhat troubled: Mr. Waiter was a bit short on his English ability, and brought me a huge plate of fried calamari, instead of the baby squids grilled with a dash of lemon. The mustached guy, probably in his late forties or early fifties, looked more fitting to be fishing out in the blue Aegean Sea on his impeccable white boat--or maybe contemplating the next move on the chess board while sipping ouzo at a shady sidewalk table of a café--than waiting tables at a restaurant in the ocean-less Midwestern suburb. Since he was obviously doing his best, I didn't feel like sending the plate back to the kitchen. So I took the huge heap of fried calamari, which I was sure I wouldn't be able to finish in one sitting. Munching my way through the crunchy and tender, I was already starting to think what I would do with the leftover.

Somehow, by the end of the meal, my mind was set on transforming the Greek calamari into something Thai. (Don't ask me why.) The next day, I heated up the now-soggy calamari in the oven toaster till crisp again, and made some dressing by mixing equal parts of sweet chili sauce and lime juice. To accompany the fried calamari, I roasted a summer squash, sliced into medium-sized discs. With a handful of sliced red onion and a bunch of cilantro (both of which were added to the dressing, after being finely chopped) and another handful of Vietnamese pink mint, the Greek calamari successfully morphed into a refreshing Thai dish. (I have to admit, I felt a funny pride in this transformation.)

And even better yet, I finally got to use the antique (?) Japanese (?) tea cup we picked up at the Volo Antique Mall. Its orange trim looked quite nice against the otherwise ordinary, greenish glass plate!

Young garlic stalks bring us the sense of early summer. They are the tender stem of the flowering part of the garlic plants that grow exponentially in this season. Their season is so short that whenever I see them, I cannot resist buying them. They're tasty in stir-fries, but they can also be made into a refreshing ethnic salad. My mom gave me this recipe; I don't know where she got it, but it's most likely been handed to her by one of her friends who likes to experiment. It's a very simple recipe similar to the now-familiar cucumber salad, but the fresh, green flavor of the young garlic stalks seems to be more pronounced in this salad than in stir-fries.

Thai Garlic Stalk Salad(for two)

• 8 garlic stalks
• 1 tablespoon Thai sweet chili sauce
• 1/3 tablespoon Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce)
• 1 tablespoon chopped peanuts

Boil the garlic stalks until they're tender (but not mushy or soggy). Add a pinch of salt, if you like, to the boiling water to prevent discoloration. Rinse them under cold, running water. Meanwhile, mix Thai sweet chili sauce and Nam Pla in a bowl. Toss the garlic stalks in the sauce, place in individual bowls and sprinkle with chopped peanuts.

I've seen some Japanese cook bloggers make the sweet chili sauce from scratch. I don't think I can be that slow-foodesque (thus I have the category "cheat cuisine"), but I do admire their ambition. According to one of my favorite food bloggers (an older husband-and-wife collaboration with beautiful food porn shots and witty writing well-versed in Japanese traditional comedy), sweet chili sauce could be made with tamarind, sugar, Nam Pla, garlic and To Ban Djan (Chinese chili sauce). Wow. I might try this sometime, but for now, I'd just stick to the sauce out of a bottle...

I came home from the Writing Center work early today, and found Patrick working at his computer. It was about lunch time. Since I had a few Thai eggplants at hand, I decided to make Thai-flavored quick lunch for the two of us. (The small roundish veggies with beautiful green net pattern are the Thai eggplants, available in some ethnic groceries. We got ours at the H Mart.) To the ingredients in the photo, I added a bunch of cilantro, a bit of ginger and chicken thigh. I prefer chicken thigh in stewed dishes, because thighs have more flavor--I know that extra flavor comes from the extra fat, but, hey, if you eat meat, eat the tasty part, that's my philosophy.

So I cut up the veggies and the chicken, and heated the coconut oil (the part that separates from the solid white mass in a can of coconut milk) in a pot, then threw in the ginger bits. When the oil was hot, I sautéed the chicken, added the veggies and stir-fried them until they were slightly cooked. Then I added the remaining can of coconut milk (stirred) and a generous spoonful of green curry paste. It took about twenty minutes for the ingredients to cook, which was enough time to cook the jasmine rice and brown rice. I added a bit of brown rice, just because we were low on jasmine rice. Just before serving (and photographing, of course), I added a bit of nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and a pinch of sugar to boost the flavor.

The curry turned out fine, but there was a surprise. It was my first time to cook with Thai eggplants, so I figured I would use them just as I do with Japanese or Italian ones. When I bit into the soft flesh of the eggplant, though, I noticed that it was much more bitter than the ones I was used to. The bitterness almost felt biting. Could this be poisonous? I thought. Maybe there was a specific procedure to drain of it its poisonous content, like one need to do with some ingredients. Uh-oh, are we going to have horrible stomach aches later?

I ran to the computer and looked up the Thai eggplants before we ate too much of it. To my relief, none of the entries said anything about them being poisonous or requiring some esoteric procedure to tame them. Some Japanese people like to let their slices of eggplants swim in cold water for a while before cooking them (to release the bitterness), so I figured the Thai eggplants have more of that bitter stuff than the Japanese ones. In fact, once we got used to the bitterness, it became sort of addictive. It's been only a few hours since we ate all our eggplant curry, so it remains to be seen if we'll get sick or not, but I'm pretty certain we'll be fine.

If this blog suddenly gets abandoned, maybe that's when you know you should be careful about those Thai eggplants.