Boereks by Sicut Cervus

Holiday appetizer: BOEREKS

(Turkish pastry, made every year by the thousands as a fundraiser, by the staff and parents of the nursery school all three of our kids went to. We usually buy four boxes of 2 dozen). They are made with fillo pastry, which you can buy frozen in l lb. boxes.

Read the instructions on the fillo box for how to defrost, handle and store fillo.

BOEREKS (50 boereks)

Filling:
6 oz. cream cheese
6 oz. feta cheese
2 eggs
2 - 3 T. milk
1 c. cottage cheese
2 T. Parmesan
1 c. parsley
2 T. dill
pinch salt

Mix all ingredients (a Cuisinart works fine)

To assemble: Use 1/2 lb. fillo, 1 stick butter. Melt the butter (microwave is safest and least messy).

Cut fillo sheets in quarters. Brush each sheet with butter; place a dab of filling about 1" from the near edge of each quarter, centered between left and right edges. Fold the right and left sides of the pastry sheet over the filling in thirds, resulting in a narrow shape 3 layers thick with the dab of filling tucked into the front end. Roll this up (neither very tightly nor very loosely) front to back. Place on a buttered baking sheet. Brush tops of rolls with melted butter.

May freeze at this point.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

If frozen, bake at 370 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

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Grilled Corn with Herbs and Lime Butter Sauce by Claire Carpenter

8 ears of corn in the husk 1/4 cup chopped mixed fresh herbs (chives, parsley, basil, sage, tarragon (I used basil)) 6 tablespoons lime butter sauce (to follow)

Prepare grill for cooking over moderate heat. Grill corn in husks on lightly oiled grill rack, turning, covered, until kernels are tender, 20 to 30 minutes. (You can skip the grilling and just boil the corn.) Remove corn from grill and let stand until cool enough to handle but still warm, about 10 minutes. Discard husks and stem ends from corn.Cut kernels off cobbs with a large knife and toss with herbs and lime butter sauce.

Lime Butter Sauce

1 large garlic clove, chopped 1/4 cup fresh lime juice 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp black pepper 1 stick unsalted butter

Puree garlic with lime juice, salt, and pepper in a blender until smooth. With motor running, add melted butter and blend until emulsified, about 30 seconds. This sauce can be used on just about anything - salmon, salad - you name it.

Thoughts on Thai Food by bookseller

My first thought was to say, Eeeps, if you're just starting to cook, don't start with Thai food -- the techniques and the flavors are so different from Western cooking. But then I thought about it, and I'm not at all sure it's a bad place to start. Making "authentic" Thai food might be a real bear, but if you're making curries, most of the time it's just making a particular kind of stew. You make the base -- which is a handful of chopped up ginger and shallot and lemongrass, sauteed in peanut oil or coconut oil -- you add some curry paste from a jar (no need to screw around making your own), and when it all smells really good you add in coconut milk and stock of some kind (fish stock, shrimp stock -- which you make by boiling up shrimp shells -- chicken stock, etc., all of which you can buy), let it cook together for a little bit, and then throw in pretty much any protein and veg you want, and let them simmer in this very flavorful liquid until they're cooked. And that's really it. You can tweak the hell out of it -- add more curry paste next time if you want it spicier, use more or less coconut milk, add tomatoes, more shallots, etc. Thai curries are traditionally very soupy, but I like a somewhat thicker sauce and less soup, so I usually add about four times as much protein and veg as a recipe calls for (upping the number of servings correspondingly), and sometimes I thicken it at the end by stirring in a teaspoon or two of cornstarch that has been dissolved in a couple of tablespoons of water or stock. Bring everything to a boil, while stirring, and the cornstarch will thicken the liquid into a nice glaze. It is SO not hard. My favorite version probably uses a ton of fish and seafood -- chunks of monkfish, maybe, and shrimp and clams and mussels and scallops -- and a ton of veggies, like snow peas and string beans and chunks of sweet potato or butternut squash and tomatoes and greens of some kind like cabbage or spinach. It's never the same and it's always good. Thai Kitchen makes a perfectly good jarred curry paste in three or four different "colors" -- red is traditionally used for meat, but try them out and see what you like. They're available even in crappy supermarkets in New York, so I bet you can find them easily. Serve the whole thing over rice or rice noodles, Boy can eat it, happy dinner.

Remember that different kinds of veg take different amounts of time to cook. For example, if you're using butternut squash and snow peas, you'll want to cut the squash relatively small, and add it to the stew well before the snow peas, because the squash will take much longer to cook, and if you add them both at the same time, the snow peas will be limp and overcooked by the time the squash is done. Lemongrass and ginger are both very fibrous, so you'll want to peel them and then mince them really fine. If you have something like a mini-chopper, it can come in very handy here. If you use mollusks like clams or mussels, remember that you'll need to wash them ahead of time (if they're farmed, a quick rinse will be fine), throw away any clams whose shells won't close even if you tap them. And once they're cooked, throw away any where the shells AREN'T open. Seafood in general takes a very brief time to cook; aim for undercooking rather than overcooking.