Thai Odyssey Part 4 – Mussel and Ginger Soup and Squid Salad
Given the success of last time’s soup and salad combination, we decided to give it another try. Normally on Sundays we have some sort of roast and Thai Monday happens on… Monday. But as I’m out tomorrow evening, we decided to have Thai Sunday instead.
This time, the salad was squid salad, aka yam pla meuk. As with many Thai salads, a “squid salad” contains mostly just squid, and the other ingredients are just there to complement the squid and are secondary to the squid itself. Often Western salads contain many different leaves and other vegetables, meaning any meat or fish in it is an addition to it rather than the main ingredient. Not so with this salad.
We had cooked squid before in a Vietnamese recipe and it hadn’t been a huge success, so we were a bit concerned because this recipe from David Thompson’s “Thai Food” also required poaching the squid. This recipe looked more promising though.
We started by poaching the squid briefly until it was just cooked and still soft. We then mixed it with 3 red shallots, 2 lime leaves, a stalk of lemongrass, some mint leaves and some coriander leaves. Then we immediately dressed it with a dressing made from 2 birds eye chillies, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, 2 tablespoons of lime juice and 2 tablespoons of fish sauce and tossed it to coat all the ingredients.
This worked well; the crisp lemongrass and shallots complemented the soft squid well and the dressing held it together nicely.
Soup was mussel and ginger soup, aka tom som hoi malaeng puu. We started with a paste from coriander root, salt, garlic, shallots, ginger, shrimp paste and white peppercorns. We fried the paste and then added palm sugar, tamarind water and fish sauce. Then added chicken stock and grated ginger. Once it reached the boil, we added the mussels and cooked until they were all open. After that, more ginger and spring onions before serving it up with a sprinkle of coriander leaves and ground white pepper.
According to the recipe, in the northern regions, people often use krachai instead of ginger. As we had quite a lot left over from our jungle curry, we decided to use some in the soup. We put some into the paste instead of the ginger, but then we needed half a cup of grated krachai / ginger to put into the soup and I really didn’t fancy peeling and grating that much krachai. So ginger it was.
The soup had promise, but unfortunately had a rather bitter taste. Probably due to the fact that I’d been rather inattentive while frying the paste and had burnt it a bit. Or due to our strange half krachai, half ginger combination. So the squid was a success but not the soup; we could try it again and be more careful with the paste in case it was that, but there are loads of other interesting things to try that it’ll be a while before we get back to it. Or maybe it was just that having Thai Monday on a Sunday caused cosmic culinary disturbances 🙂
Leek, Pesto and Parmesan Tart and Slow Cooked Shoulder of Pork
We had friends over for dinner last night and took the opportunity to go through our recipe file and cook some of the dishes we hadn’t done before. We started with roasted nuts which is from Nigella’s “How To Eat” and is based on the nuts she ate at the Union Square Cafe in New York. I’d been wanting to do these for a while and it was a great way to use up the half-eaten packets of nuts that we’ve used for various dishes in the past.
We took a selection of nuts and roasted them in the oven for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile we took some melted butter and mixed it with two tablespoons of chopped rosemary, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, two teaspoons of dark sugar and two teaspoons of salt.
Once the nuts were toasted, we mixed them into the spiced butter and served them. They were really tasty, a good combination of sweet and hot.
We then moved onto the tart which was really just a quick assembly job, some ready rolled pastry scored around the edges and cooked for 12 minutes. It puffs up like a pillow so you need to knock the middle back with a fork before spreading it with a mixture of creme-fraiche and pesto. Then the briefly fried leeks are arranged on the pastry and topped with parmesan and black pepper. The tart then goes back into the oven for 15 minutes.
I enjoyed the combination of flavours but I think it would have been better with some salad to balance the inevitable richness of the cheese and pesto. Individual tarts would have looked prettier on the plate too.
Having enjoyed the slow cooked lamb so much recently we were both keen to try the same method with a different cut of meat, a recipe from the River Cafe Easy book using pork looked like exactly what we needed. Half a pork shoulder, browned all over before adding garlic, sage, wine and lemon peel. The heat is reduced and the pork cooks slowly on the hob for three and a half hours with more wine added slowly to prevent it from drying out. Once all the wine has evaporated, 250ml of milk is added which thickens during the last half hour of cooking.
The outsides of the pork char slightly and become coated in the juices from the pan and the garlic and sage which provides a lovely flavour, unfortunately the insides had dried out a little and the flavours hadn’t penetrated the meat all the way through which was a shame.
We served some new potatoes and green beans with the pork as well as Jamie’s creamy butternut squash. The butternut is coated in a mix of coriander seeds, chilli and thyme before roasting in the oven for 40 minutes. It’s then topped with wine, cream, nutmeg and parmesan before roasting for another 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, the cream mixture seemed to curdle and separate which meant the dish looked rather unattractive. It tasted ok though and the sweetness complimented the pork well.
So, not a particularly successful evening food-wise. We haven’t had many dishes turn out badly recently and it’s a shame that it happens when other people are eating with you. Perhaps next time we should stick to tried-and-tested dishes rather than attempting to cook lots of new things.
Leek and Potato Soup
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately, mostly due to us both having busy weeks. We’ve got some interesting things planned for this weekend though so stay tuned.
This was a quick soup inspired by the lonely looking leeks languishing at the bottom of the fridge and some potatoes I bought last night but we ended up not using.
Soften some onion and garlic in oil then add the leeks, potatoes thyme, s&p and bay. Cover with vegetable stock, bring to the boil then simmer for 15 minutes. REMOVE THE BAY LEAF (I forgot) then blitz.
I intend to eat this for lunch next week, I hope the blitzed bay leaf doesn’t render it inedible.
Lamb Chops with Garlic and Spinach Pilaf
This came from a recent edition of Delicious magazine and jumped out at me when I was looking through my recipe file for things to cook this week. Quite why I was so excited about it I’m not sure as the pilaf uses cumin and coriander which I’m not that keen on. Stephen likes that mix of spicing though so I continued with the recipe anyway and it turned out well. The spices weren’t that strong and actually provided a good contrast to the sweetness of the lamb chops. We were both very full afterwards too which is always a good thing.
The recipe inexplicably serves three people. We made the whole amount and Stephen has taken the leftover pilaf for lunch today.
1 whole head garlic, split into cloves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon of coriander
1 teaspoon of cumin
Pinch of hot chilli powder
225g basmati rice, rinsed and drained (we used brown because that’s all we had…if you use brown then you’ll need to cook it longer)
450ml chicken stock
1 bay leaf
3 medium tomatoes, chopped and de-seeded (I never bother to de-seed tomatoes)
225g spinach
Handful of chopped parsley
Lamb chops
Boil the garlic cloves in water for three to four minutes, drain and rinse under cold water. Peel.
Heat oil in a large pan (we used a wok) and when hot add the spices and fry for one minute.
Add the rice, stock, garlic, tomatoes, bay and seasoning. Cover the pan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 13-15 minutes.
In a seperate pan, wilt the spinach and remove to a bowl.
When the rice is tender and has absorbed most of the liquid, stir in the spinach and parsley. Turn off the heat and cover with a damp tea-towel for 10 minutes.
Fry the seasoned chops to your liking and serve.
Thai Odyssey Part 3 – Jungle Curry of Duck
Jungle Curry. About twelve or thirteen years ago I tasted jungle curry for the first time. At the time I thought it mind-bendingly hot and ate it at about one spoonful per minute, sweating furiously all the time and drinking gallons of water between mouthfuls. However, a week later I found myself craving it again. This masochism mystified me somewhat, but there was just something about jungle curry that I couldn’t quite place, but that something made it irresistible. Something apart from just a chilli rush; something wild; something unmistakeably “jungle”.
Having grown up and read cook books since then, I have realised what that “something” is: krachai. David Thompson’s “Thai Food” book that I have been cooking from over the past few weeks describes it as “wild ginger”. At first I thought this was just a name for want of a name, but having tried raw krachai, it is a little reminiscent of ginger; a very earthy, nutty, wild version of ginger.
Jungle curry is a very hot curry and, unlike many other Thai curries, contains no coconut milk. It also contains several kinds of vegetables and is often cooked by people who live outside of major towns in Thailand because the ingredients are easily available.
So, finally cooking jungle curry myself rather excited me. Armed with far more krachai than I actually needed, more bird’s eye chillies than one should be allowed to possess without a license and sundry other ingredients, I set to work. Apart from the main curry paste which included many ingredients, the recipe also included another simpler paste containing only garlic, chilli and krachai.
Starting with the curry paste of course, which included everything in the picture below:
Namely green bird’s eye chillies, a long green chilli, galangal, lemongrass, krachai, shallots, garlic and salt. When this had been bashed into a suitable paste, we did the simpler paste, which was a lot quicker:
Just the garlic, chilli and krachai as mentioned above. (The strange bunch of mutant carrots on the left is the krachai for those that are interested.) This paste smelled really nutty from the garlic and krachai when it had been made; most intriguing.
We started off by frying the garlic, chilli and krachai paste for a while until golden. Then added the curry paste and fried it until it made us sneeze. I found it curious that there were two separate pastes when one paste contained only a subset of the ingredients of the other one. Perhaps for a precise flavour we need some of the garlic, chilli and krachai to be cooked more than the rest? Not sure; especially as the “Jungle Curry of Fish with Breadfruit” on the next page only contains the normal curry paste.
Anyway, having done that, we seasoned the paste with two tablespoons of fish sauce before adding 500ml chicken stock. The recipe says to make stock from duck bones, but we were sadly lacking in both duck bones and in time.
Once the duckchicken stock was boiling, we added two sliced duck breasts, some quartered baby aubergines and also half a cup of pea aubergines. After a few minutes, we added the rest of the ingredients, which were: green beans, baby corn, julienned krachai, chopped long green chillies, lime leaves, holy basil leaves and green peppercorns. A few minutes of simmering and it was done.
I tasted a spoonful of the curry and it was really good, just what I had been hoping for. However, when we started eating it, it didn’t taste as good. Kerri pointed out that we should leave it to cool a bit, so we did that and then the flavours developed a lot better. That will teach us not to be so greedy and to wait a bit before eating.
This worked out well in the end, although it could have done with a little more salt. Next time we would make it with fewer pea aubergines and peppercorns too, as these seemed to get in the way of other ingredients and prevent the tastes from working together so well.
We served it with rice of course, and also some pickled vegetables:
If anyone is a fan of jungle curry, I would definitely recommend getting hold of some krachai (aka grachai) and trying to make it yourself.
Bouillabaisse
I had some really good bouillabaisse at my local pub recently and wanted to try making it myself. Stephen found a recipe and after we’d bought some fish (gurnard, sea bass, clams and langoustines) we started to put it all together.
Firstly I made the rouille which is garlic, salt, chilli, bread and oil. This is served on toasted French bread with the bouillabaisse. It was very garlicky but good nonetheless.
We made the bouillabaisse by sweating off some onions, leek, garlic and tomatoes. Next we added tomatoes, fish stock, tomato puree, bouquet garni and saffron. Once this had cooked for a while we added the fish and cooked it through. The fish is then removed and the seasoning adjusted to taste.
It’s a relatively quick dish to make and doesn’t require much preparation, the end dish though was sadly lacking in flavour and quite watery. I think I’d like to try it again, perhaps with a different recipe and a different selection of fish.
Pizza
We used to cook pizza quite often but haven’t done so for a while. We recently bought an electric whisk which came with dough hooks so we were keen to try them out and see if they made the dough preparation any easier; I tried them today and they didn’t…I ended up kneading the dough by hand, rather unsuccessfully. Stephen managed to save the day though and we put together one rather large pizza that included all the toppings I’d bought for two: chorizo, Parma ham, roasted red peppers, red onions, mushrooms, basil and mozarella.
The result was good, a slightly thicker base than normal but lots of flavour from the interesting toppings. Some of the peppers were slightly charred due to a situation with the wine we were opening but this actually added another, different flavour. All in all, a good Friday night dinner.
Spaghetti with Bacon and Cabbage
When I arrived home this evening, I arrived to the wonderful smell of lardons frying. Kerri was making spaghetti with lardons and cabbage. When the lardons had fried for a while, we added sliced red onion and crushed garlic with a good grind of pepper. We cooked these until the onion had softened, then added a splash of wine and let it cook until the alcohol had evaporated. Then we added shredded cabbage to the pan, stirred it up a bit and put on the lid, allowing the cabbage to steam.
While that was all happening, we cooked some spaghetti, then drained it and added the cabbage and lardons to it. The result was tasty, but could do with a bit more sauce to coat the pasta; some cream would go well if added to the lardons, onions and garlic to soak up the flavours and spread them around.
Halibut with Capers, Olives and Tomatoes
Stephen found a recipe online which we loosely followed to create this dish: fried halibut with a caper, olive and tomato sauce. The sauce was made up of the following:
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon chilli powder
2 tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup chopped pitted Kalamata olives
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon drained capers
1/3 cup bottled fish stock
1/4 cup dry sherry
The halibut was dusted with seasoned flour and fried. Meanwhile, the sauce was made by sweating off the onion and chilli for a few minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients and cooking for a further five minutes.
It worked out well, it was quick and easy and the sweet, sharp sauce (similar to Puttanesca) complemented the meaty fish. There was rather too little sauce though unfortunately.
Thai Odyssey Part 2 – Hot and Sour Soup of Shredded Chicken and Lemongrass…
… accompanied by Vermicelli Salad.
Phew, rather a long title for two relatively simple (but delicious) dishes.
I really love this picture that Kerri took of the soup; the coriander leaves floating on the surface look a little like lilly pads on the surface of a pond:
This picture of the salad turned out well, but I think it needs some carved vegetables around the edge to complete it; we’ll have to get practising this weekend:
The soup recipe is from the pink Thai Food book that started off our Thai Odyssey and is translated as “tom jiw gai”. Only after we had decided to cook it did I notice that the translation wasn’t “tom yam gai” as I had expected. I started worrying that it wouldn’t turn out as hoped since I had really wanted to cook tom yam, but checking the ingredients put my mind at rest, as it contained the main tom yam components of chillies, fish sauce, lime juice, lime leaves and lemongrass. The pink book is usually very good at providing interesting facts, but it was uncharacteristically silent on the reason for the difference in the name; perhaps there is something in the method that differentiates it.
We started with some chicken stock, but only had half the required amount of home made stock so had to make it up with shop stock. Brought it to the boil and added a pinch each of salt and palm sugar. (We have loads of palm sugar after I was let loose in a Thai supermarket and I’m doubting we’ll ever use it up unless we start to make lots of desserts). In the stock we simmered a couple of whole peeled shallots, a couple of lemongrass stalks, a couple of torn up lime leaves and a few slices of rather sad-looking galangal which still managed to add a bit of flavour.
After a few minutes, we added three sliced chicken thighs and simmered until they were done. We drained the stock, discarded the aromatics and kept and shredded the chicken. Into a bowl (sadly we don’t have a real Thai soup dish) we put four bruised birds eye chillis and a few tablespoons each of lime juice and fish sauce. We added the shredded chicken to the bowl and then poured over the hot stock. Into this we added finely sliced lemongrass, shallots and lime leaves before topping with some coriander leaves.
The result was a lovely hot, salty and sour soup, made very aromatic by the addition of the lime leaves and the lemongrass. I found it very interesting that three ingredients were present both in flavouring the stock and also added raw at the end: lemongrass, lime leaves and shallots. Mixing in the lime juice at the end and not cooking it keeps it fresh and the lime leaves and lemongrass add a wonderfully zesty perfume. The texture of the crunchy bits of finely sliced raw lemongrass was really good too.
The soup reminded both of us of a light, non-coconutty version of green curry. Some tom yam recipes add chilli paste which gives the top of the soup a red sheen; this one didn’t, but then it wasn’t called tom yam anyway. The verdict from both us was that the soup really good, especially as it is relatively quick to make and doesn’t require lengthly pounding of ingredients to make pastes as some Thai recipes do.
We were a bit remiss in taking ingredients pictures this time, so here is just one including the bruised chillis and the finely sliced shallots, lime leaves and lemongrass, ready for adding to the soup at the end:
After the soup we had vermicelli salad, which was from the cookbook released by the Blue Elephant restaurant. We had been there last week and eaten something similar and decided to try it ourselves.
After soaking bean vermicelli in cold water for 15 minutes, we drained them and cut them into 10cm lengths before briefly cooking in boiling water and draining again. To the vermicelli we added a long red chilli and a garlic clove that had been pounded together. Then we mixed in grated carrot, finely chopped celery, red onion and shallots and some cashew nuts and crushed peanuts. Over this we poured a couple of tablespoons of light soy sauce and a tablespoon of oil in which a sliced clove of garlic had been fried (along with the fried garlic itself). Mixed it all up, served it on some lettuce leaves and topped with coriander.
Although the salad contained chilli, it was not as hot as the soup and was good for cooling down our mouths. The chopped vegetables and nuts all mixed in well with each other and hid away in between the vermicelli to provide nice crunchy bits. The Blue Elephant book concentrates mostly on recipes rather than history and culture, so doesn’t give much in the way of history and context for this dish. I assume that as it contains noodles, it originated from Chinese influence. Also successful and relatively easy to make, so we’ll make sure we always have some vermicelli in our store cupboard in case we fancy it again soon.
