If You Can't Stand the Heat...

Master can not stomach spicy food.

I live by the credo that spice is the variety of life, and take great pride in a spice pantry - no mere rack, this - fully stocked, from amchur powder to zingiber.

No one ever said this was going to be easy.

I suppose a Thai-inspired coconut sauce, to be served over Basmati rice and an assortment of lightly steamed vegetables, may not have been the most intuitive choice for Master's dinner. But I made every effort to curtail the heat, forgoing my usual (generous) splash of Sriracha, using only two of those insidious bird's eye chillies, and straining the sauce several times, to rid it of any potentially offensive seeds or fragments. I assure you, Sir, that my intentions were good.

This is a sauce I often prepare purely for the sensory delights of the mise en place. Rose-tinged curls of fragrant lemongrass. Little heaps of lime zest, grated ginger root and garlic clove, all glistening with their aromatic oils and juices. A mountain of diced pink shallots, red onion, and grass-green scallion. Cilantro and basil leaves off to the side, washed and waiting patiently. And those tiny, tapered chillies - so pretty, so potent. Only two tonight. Ordinarily there might be six or seven, eight when I'm feeling especially randy. Even before the mingling of flavors brought on by gentle heat, and the indescribable renderings of herbal aromatics, lashings of piquant citrus and white-hot peppery sparks against the rich, subtly sweet backdrop of the coconut milk, I'm intoxicated and enthralled.

4 or 5 shallots, diced
1 small red onion, diced
2 scallions, chopped (both the white and the green)
2-10 bird's eye chillies, chopped - remember to remove those hellishly hot seeds when cooking for Master!
2 med. garlic cloves, grated
1" or so ginger root, peeled and grated
1/3 lemongrass stalk, bruised with the back of a knife and coarsely chopped
juice and zest of half (1/2) a lime
1 (14 oz.) can coconut milk
a handful each of fresh cilantro and basil leaves, washed, dried and chopped

Heat pan and saute shallots, onion and scallions in a splash of olive oil. Add the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chillies, lime zest and a pinch of sea salt. When all but the lemongrass are soft, and your kitchen smells like Heaven, add coconut milk and lime. Stir and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until sauce is reduced in volume and of the desired consistency. Remove from heat and strain (at least once). Add cilantro and basil. Stir well. The residual heat will be enough to wilt, but not cook, these lovely herbs. Set sauce aside. A hearty schpritz of Sriracha can be added, to taste, but is strictly optional.

Sounds simple enough, and it is. But it would be helpful to have a strainer large enough for the task at hand. I did not, and so was reduced to doing the deed one spoonful at time, using a tea strainer. This made for a hilarious spectacle, should anyone have been watching, but I assure you that it was as frustrating, messy and inefficient as it sounds. We live, we learn. When he heard of my travails, Master was kind enough to buy me a large strainer. He is too good to me.


I prefer to use my own knives whenever possible, so I cut up the vegetables - carrots, zucchini, green beans, and red and yellow bell peppers - at home. The plan was to pack the sauce, the vegetables, and a quantity of uncooked Basmati rice for assembly in Master's tiny kitchen. This would also allow for the last-minute inclusion of chicken, if a viable prepared or frozen supply could be located. And so, like little Red, over the hill and through the woods I went, bag of goodies in hand.

My previous meals for Master - a spinach-and-mushroom lasagna; braised pork chops smothered in five-spiced apples; a Tuscan-style kale and sausage soup; bison and roasted root vegetable cottage pie - had been one-pot affairs, ported over piping hot and requiring no more than a serving spoon and plates. I had therefore overestimated the resources of Master's kitchen, which is fine for its usual service of toasting or nuking food but insufficient for anything more ambitious. A range with no working burners was not going to get the rice boiled. Before panic (mine, entirely) could ensue, Master dusted off a frightful-looking electric cooktop, which perched unsteadily atop the useless burners but proved to work well enough. A quick inventory of the refrigerator revealed a lemon-basil rotisserie chicken, nearly untouched, which was soon shredded. Things were looking up. Dinner would be happening, after all.

"Do you have any oil?"

It seemed an innocent question. Even if it's - ugh - corn oil, as I found at another non-cooking friend's apartment, who doesn't have some sort of cooking oil on hand? Forget such luxuries as garlic cloves, a quantity of edible oil would appear to be indispensable to even the most rudimentary of working kitchens. Nevertheless, there was no oil here. As I resigned myself to steaming the vegetables, and set about such business, Master produced a bottle of curiously high-end olive oil from the cluttered recesses of one cabinet. The bottle itself, unsealed and matted with a thick fuzz of dust, cat(?) hair and abject disregard, did not look promising, even when thoroughly rinsed. The price tag had gone yellow with age, practically trumpeting the rancidity of the contents. It was a trembling fingertip, moistened with a drop of the golden-green oil, that I lifted to my tongue for a taste test. Lo, it was good! The wondrous olive had done it again. Call it an early Hannukah miracle.

While the rice was simmering, and the other components merrily cooking, I popped the sauce in the microwave to reheat it. What emerged was still redolent of coconut and herbs. I may have swooned under its ambrosial spell, or perhaps with sheer relief. Places could be set, water glasses filled.

"Taste this," I said, offering Master the spoon with which I'd stirred the sauce. "Hopefully it isn't too hot for you. I barely put any chillies in it." Lies. There would be punishment for such insolence.

I don't know why I thought I could sneak those atomic Thai chillies past his sensitive tongue.

By my standards, the sauce was mild, if admittedly still too hot for the uninitiated. Master noted the afterburn lurking beneath the creamy coconut and declared it too intense for his liking. So much for subterfuge. I was crushed. But he was the Master. In future efforts, I would have to remember to tailor my offerings to his tastes, not to my own.

It was fortunate that I'd opted to keep the sauce separate from the other components of the meal. Between the rice and the vegetables and chicken, fortified with a few more handfuls of fresh basil and cilantro, dinner was perfectly fine without it. Delicious, even. Or so Master tells me. I ladled the sauce over my portion and reveled in its perfumed loveliness. It could have used more chillies, though.