"chez pim" news and stories

She might call this an ugly salad, but the Yum Neua (Thai beef salad) recipe that Pim posted about yesterday looks so very delicious -- the crinkle of the salad, the pink burst of the watermelon radish, and most importantly, the juicy red hue of a tasty piece of steak. These days, we're living in a world where lunch places think dry and grey is a good hue for roast beef, so this salad is making my inner foodie whimper.

Think about a dressing of limes, sugar, fish sauce, chili powder, shallots, and rice powder. Sounds good, doesn't it? And this mysterious rice powder -- it is utter simplicity. Pim says you just dry toast some rice grains until they're "brown and toasty." After they're cool, grind them up in your grinder of choice. It lasts as long as it takes you to eat it.

Now my brain is scheming up a million uses for rice powder...

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Pim, of Chez Pim, is not exaggerating when she says that Pad Thai is one of the most popular and well-know Thai dishes out there. But despite its popularity, the noodle dish is often simply eaten in restaurants, picked up from takeout places or even cooked from a mix instead of being cooked from scratch at home. Pim has generously provided her readers with a complete and detailed how-to guide for making Pad Thai at home. She guarantees that it is just about foolproof if you follow her specific directions, and since she has a photo to go along with every step in the recipe, doing so should not be difficult in the least.

Pim also mentions several common Pad Thai mistakes that you should avoid, just to ensure you get perfect results, and reassures readers that the sauce can be made in advance, which provides a shortcut for later preparations of the dish.

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If you follow the goings-on of the food blogging world (which, we assume, you do, since you're here with us at Slashfood!), then you know about Menu for Hope, a now-annual "virtual" fundraising auction.

Now, if you don't know about Menu for Hope, well listen up! For the past two years, food blogger Chez Pim has headed this campaign to raise money for charitable organizations, with the help of food bloggers, around the world. This year, the proceeds from the Menu for Hope program will benefit the UN World Food Programme. Food bloggers, restaurateurs, chefs, authors, and good-hearted people have donated all kinds of things -- everything from cookbooks to a coffee date with chef Thomas Keller. The sampling above is a mere taste of the kinds of things that are up for auction. (You can click on any of the individual items to see what I have to say.)

If you'd like to participate, head on over to the post on Chez Pim to check out the offering of prizes, figure out how to donate, and get ready to part with $10. That's small change to you, but to someone else, it's big.

Last fall, the UK Observer christened her Queen of the Bloggers in their monthly food section, and today, food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit, who blogs at Chez Pim, was featured in the Style section of the New York Times. There is a short and sweet blurb about her blog and love of Thai cooking, followed by four of her recipes: Khao Soi, Shrimp Tiles With Cucumber Ajaad, Lychee and Orange Loy Gaew, Kanom Jeen Nam-Prik.

Recipes? Food blogging? You might ask yourself why this is in the Style section. The answer is that Pim loves fashion nearly as much as she loves food and is prominently featured in a slide show in which she (and people who are presumably her friends) are noshing Thai food in designer clothes.

[Photo NYT]

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As of Friday at midnight, Chez Pim's Menu for Hope had raised "twenty one thousand four hundred eighty six dollars and thirty two cents" for UNICEF to support the Kashmir earthquake victims. Thanks to everyone who donated money or prizes for the benefit - food bloggers are a pretty generous lot, hmmm?

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