Aren’t low expectations grand? It always makes me nervous to step into a restaurant laden with five-star reviews (I know, I can’t help help peeking). Even a little disappointment is still disappointment. I’d rather go in expecting mediocrity and be pleasantly surprised.

Where am I going with this? Not into a restaurant at all. The other night, I warned Laurie that I would be making that thing she doesn’t like very much. She’s not a huge fan of ground meat other than in burger form, and that thing–_moo pad bai grapao_–is nothing more than a pile of stir-fried ground pork on a bed of rice, with a fried egg.

It’s a Thai dish, incredibly simple and made with ingredients you probably have lying around. If you don’t have holy basil, use regular basil. If you don’t have pork, use beef. Thai chiles? Serrano chiles. Fish sauce? Well, tough luck. In the end, every grain of rice becomes slick with egg yolk and saucy pork.

Here’s how you make it, courtesy of David Thompson’s Thai Street Food, the best book of 2010. His version calls for beef, not a bad idea at all, but I’m much more likely to have leftover pork.

Laurie was pleasantly surprised.

STIR-FRIED MINCED PORK WITH CHILES AND HOLY BASIL
Adapted from _Thai Street Food_
Serves 2

_The way this would be done in Thailand is to fry the eggs in the wok, either before or after cooking the rest of the dish. Whenever I fry an egg in a wok, however, I always break the yolk._

4 garlic cloves, chopped
4 to 10 Thai chiles, sliced
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons peanut oil
6 ounces ground pork
about 2 tablespoons fish sauce
pinch of sugar
1/4 cup chicken stock or water
2 large handfuls holy basil leaves
cooked jasmine rice
2 fried eggs

* Stir together the garlic, chiles, and salt. Heat a wok or skillet over high heat, add 1 tablespoon oil, and add the garlic, chiles, and salt. Stir-fry for a few seconds until fragrant, then add the pork. Continue to cook until the pork is cooked and starting to brown. Season to taste with fish sauce and sugar. Add the basil and stock or water and stir just until the basil is wilted. Remove from the heat.

* Meanwhile, fry the eggs in the other tablespoon oil in a skillet. The proper fried egg for this dish has a runny yolk but a browned and leathery underside. If you’re a [white-bottom](http://www.spilledmilkpodcast.com/2010/01/07/episode-1-fried-eggs/) fried egg purist, too bad.

* Top each bowl of rice with a scoop of pork and broth and a fried egg. Serve immediately. I like to squeeze a lime wedge over the top if I have one on hand. Oh, and please eat it with a spoon.

Every week since the Broadway Farmers Market opened, on Mother’s Day, we’ve been buying a bunch of asparagus. And every week, it has met the same fate: roasted, topped with a fried egg, and sprinkled with an immoderate dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

I’m sure the idea didn’t originate in the book [Cucina Simpatica](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060161191/?tag=mamstesgrubshack), but its recipe can’t be improved upon. Make this, quick, before asparagus season is over.

**ASPARAGUS IN BED**
Adapted from _Cucina Simpatica,_ by Johanne Killeen and George Germon
Serves 2

1 pound asparagus, trimmed
olive oil
salt
1 tablespoon butter
2 eggs
1 ounce grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Toss the asparagus with a light coating of olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast until tender, about 10 minutes (check it at 8 minutes).

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Fry the eggs sunny-side up, sprinkling with salt. Divide the asparagus between two heated plates and top each with a fried egg. Pour a little of the remaining butter from the pan onto each egg. Sprinkle the asparagus and egg all over with the cheese and serve with rustic bread such as Columbia City Bakery’s [Walnut Levain](http://orangette.blogspot.com/2006/03/best-final-resting-place-for-walnut.html).

This blog is not known for heart-laid-bare displays of emotion, and I doubt this post will change that, despite the fact that I want to write about how sad I am that my friend Scott died last week.

I’ve known Scott Simpson since 2001 or so, but the last time I wrote about him was when he opened his restaurant Fork in 2006 and I was sort of still writing about Seattle restaurants professionally. [What I said then](https://www.rootsandgrubs.com/2006/01/21/dining-with-dumble/), comparing him to Dumbledore:

> Scott Simpson is equal parts serious chef and funny chef. He’s serious in the sense that he can really cook: every mouthful at Fork was delicious and well thought out. But he also has an irrepressible sense of humor: there are lobster corn dogs on the menu.

“Fork seems to be doing well so far,” I added.

Like many irrepressibly creative people, however, Scott was also equal parts jolly guy and sad guy: he was bipolar. Fork was open for a couple of months before he hit a depressive episode, abruptly shuttered the place, and disappeared. There were rumors of his death. It was pretty theatrical.

Then I was walking around Capitol Hill one day and there he was, 200 pounds lighter and talking about opening a new place. Several new places, I think. The guy got wild ideas more often than most people go to the bathroom. Ah, I just remembered: he said he was going to open a molecular gastronomy breakfast joint called Unflappable Jack’s.

He didn’t. Instead, he opened a little burger shack in Ballard called Lunchbox Laboratory. There is no dearth of burger places in Seattle, but this one was always jammed. He made the best milkshakes in town (especially the Boston Cream), and the burgers were like a web page from 1995: constantly under construction. You couldn’t fall in love with any particular burger at Lunchbox, because next time your burger would be 404 and Scott would be on to the next experiment.

Naturally, you could choose from approximately fifty kajillion homemade toppings. He invented the Dork burger, a mixture of duck and pork, and kept playing around with the beef mixture for the regular burger. It really was a laboratory. Tater tots were also served. I think my favorite burger creation of his was the Bobcat Baby, with green chiles, lots of onions, and BBQ sauce.

I just googled the Bobcat Baby, because I couldn’t remember what was on it, and found [this photo](http://www.flickr.com/photos/suomynona/3226632507/) of the Shroomville USA burger by loyal customer and Flickr guy suomynona. Sample comment: “Also, call me a bad parent… but… I’d trade my first born for one of Scott’s burgers…” Hear that, Iris?

Scott was not the kind of tortured artist who is hard to be around. He was warm, charismatic, and drew people to wherever he was cooking. If he had opened a diner where every dish was served in flames, or a milkshake speakeasy, or a lobster corn dog cart, people would have flocked to it.

Last week, after Scott’s death, the Amster-Burtons went to the new location of Lunchbox Laboratory, which opened a few months ago in South Lake Union (and is still open for business). I didn’t enjoy eating there, even though the milkshakes are still excellent. Seeing Scott in his element was a big part of going to Lunchbox Lab, and it’s hard to imagine looking forward to going back if he’s not going to be there. Maybe (and this, I assure you, is the kind of joke Scott would want people to tell) they should stuff him and use him as a Big Boy-style mascot.

**Update 4/8/11:** Just in case it wasn’t clear here, I think the new Lunchbox Lab is a great restaurant and everyone who has the means should eat there. I meant that it made me sad to eat there after Scott’s death, not that there was anything wrong with the restaurant, and I hope and expect it will thrive for a long time.

What else can I say? I hate lessons and morals even more now than when I was a kid. Scott Simpson was a great cook and a sweet guy, haunted by fucked-up brain chemistry.

Last night I was listening to Elliott Smith’s _Figure 8._ Whenever I listen to Elliott Smith, which is often, I sing along with gusto, and I think, “You know what? It’s bullshit that this guy is dead.” That’s the word that comes to mind, every time. Elliott Smith, no longer writing songs? That’s bullshit. Scott Simpson, no longer flipping burgers and coming up with lunatic restaurant concepts? That’s bullshit.

Jerome Groopman, MD, had a [great article](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_groopman) about childhood food allergies recently in the New Yorker. (The full text is, sadly, not available online for free.)

In the piece, Groopman reminds us that the best current evidence is that there is no reason for pregnant or breastfeeding women to avoid peanuts, eggs, shellfish, and the rest, and no reason for babies to do so, either. You could have learned that (self-aggrandizement alert) from my book. But there were some great tidbits I didn’t know:

1. A small but significant proportion of American parents pre-masticate their food for their infants. I knew this was common practice in premodern societies, but I had never heard of anyone doing it in the US. I look down on and make fun of people who think public breastfeeding is gross, but maybe I am not as openminded as I think.

2. Groopman mentions that the most popular baby food in Israel is a peanut-based snack called Bamba that babies chew on nonstop, and perhaps this is why peanut allergies are rare in Israel. This made me want some Bamba immediately. I considered ordering it online, but then I went into Broadway QFC and there was a big display of chocolate-hazelnut Bamba on sale for $1.25. Let me tell you, Bamba is great. I want to be reincarnated as an Israeli baby and eat Bamba all day. It looks like those Combos snacks, but the shell is made mostly of melt-in-your-mouth ground peanuts. Highly recommended.

In our CSA box this week was a note that read, approximately: “We were unable to supply green cabbage this week. We have replaced it with savoy cabbage.” Every time I get one of these notes, I amuse myself by imagining the person who gets really upset by produce substitutions. “Savoy cabbage? My week is RUINED.” Then he punches an eggplant.

Last week’s New York Times food section featured a mouthwatering [article about Chinese noodles](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/dining/26noodles.html?_r=1&ref=dining&pagewanted=all), featuring Grace Young, the wok doctor, queen of the stir-fry, and author of [Breath of a Wok](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743238273/?tag=mamstesgrubshack). You’ll want to read the whole article, but I was particularly struck by this part:

> Like Ms. Young, [Susur Lee] adds soy sauce to the wok only at the end of cooking, swirling it around the hot rim of the pan where it evaporates and then gets sucked, smoky flavor and all, into the noodles.

(Incidentally, if you happen to be a food writer and have never had the pleasure of interviewing Susur Lee, contrive a reason to do it, because he has an authoritative baritone you’ll want to listen to all day, and he’s quotable as heck.)

As for the savoy cabbage, I knew I wanted to infuse it with the smoky essence of soy sauce. So I heated up my wok, whose patina is coming along nicely (thanks, Grace!). Really heated it, I mean: over high heat until smoke was rising from the dry pan. I poured in some peanut oil and then half the head of cabbage, chopped. The cabbage in contact with the pan started to smoke and blacken immediately. Had I ruined the dish? Not hardly. I sprinkled in some salt and kept cooking, stirring occasionally (one of the keys to home stir-frying is less stirring, more frying). When the cabbage seemed almost done (crisp-tender), I added some minced scallions and garlic, stirred until fragrant, then drizzled soy sauce around the edge of the wok as instructed. It steamed and hissed. The dish was done.

There are only two types of people who should make this dish: those who are victims of a cabbage substitution, and those who are not. I’m starting a list of ingredients that are at their best when you char the hell out of them. So far I’ve got:

* Cabbage
* Octopus
* Wild mushrooms

What else?