191 posts tagged “asian”

Well, nothing to say here — just the plain glory of aloo gobi.

Haven't done this one in a long, long time. Part of the reason for that is that Thai green curry paste is so damn fiery — to the point that after my first encounter with it, I made my own paste... But this time around, I made a mistake, and ended up having to simmer things a bit, which mellowed the paste a lot. An accident that made the dish better — you don't see that too often. But it happens.

And yeah, the small kaffir lime leaf was for decoration. Of course, them things were used in the dish. They are fantastic.

A simple meal, served cold, for someone going on a long car journey — not heavy, but tasty. Salad with garden tomatoes, and breaded strips of chicken breasts, that were flavored with my own curry powder. I used no dressing on the salad, but in retrospect I think I could, or even should, have done something more to the salad part of it all. But you do what you can, with what you've got. Looks good, though.

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. These are meatballs that quite frankly weren't as good as I hoped for — the Thai peanut dipping sauce I made came from a meatball recipe that was much better.

It doesn't present very well either, in spite of a fancy-pants little dipping sauce cup on the plate.

The broccoli in oyster sauce (with some bean sprouts) don't present very well either, but oh well. I'm serving veggies, and that can't be bad.

The original recipe called for the use of coconut meat, which isn't very popular around here, so I just used coconut milk the last time around, but it ended up tasting very coconutt-y. This time, I decided to use toasted, ground cashew nuts instead. I don't know of anything that could replace coconut, but I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out really nice.

The cashew was mixed into a paste with the meat from three stripey Pete tomatoes that were skinned and seeded, and had most of its water removed. This mixture was thrown into the wok after I'd stir-fried some diced garlic, Jalapeño pepper, galangal and lemongrass paste over very high heat. Next, some brown sugar, turmeric (the color of this dish just screams turmeric, hehehe), lime juice and some torn kaffir lime leaves. After about 20 minutes of simmering, I buzzed it in a blender till smooth (galangal takes quite long to go soft) and returned it to the pan, pushing it through a sieve. Finally, I ended up adding some coconut milk, but let it simmer long enough to blend the flavors together.

I stirred in some cilantro towards the end, and served it over rice, garnished with more cilantro and a couple of very thin slices from a very hot Jalapeño. Very tasty. Would work very well chicken also, I think.

Strips of pork tenderloin sliced thin, marinated in a mixture of Szechuan chili, Hoisin, black bean and soy sauce, toasted sesame seed oil, toasted sesame seeds and Szechuan peppercorns (whole — bad idea), crushed black peppercorns, scallions and a non-seeded Jalapeño. Later, I adjusted the marinade with lemon juice, white wine vinegar and Shiraz sauce and some apricot jam.

This was then grilled on a very high heat coal barbecue, with a bunch of sliced onions. The flavors disappeared completely. I tested some of the pork halfway through the marination process, by sautéing it over very high heat in a non-stick pan, and the result was much better there: I got some brownage, and the flavors were preserved. Over the grill, I mostly got a steaming effect, in spite of having the coals actually touching the griddle.

Served with lettuce, cucumber, Roma tomatoes and bean sprouts, wrapped in a grilled tortilla. The whole thing was basically inspired by that Korean fire beef recipe, Bul Go Ki.

Quite good stuff. But plenty of things to consider, ponder, and improve.

Miso soup with shrimp and chicken stock, mushrooms, scallions and noodles.

A salad with garlic-rosemary croutons from homemade bread, Roma tomatoes and cucumber, with lettuce tossed in a Hoisin, soy and toasted sesame seed oil dressing.

This is a dish that I've gotten very close, and not so close, several times. This time, I nailed it — as often as not, by accident.

My main problem has been the balance of the sweet flavors of cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves, against everything else, but especially the green cardamom, which can turn things very nasty if you use just a little too much. I've been experimenting with whole and ground spices, roasted or not, using a tea steeper — and in particular, with removing the seeds from the cardamom pods (grinding them or not, before or after roasting them, if you do that at all) or just leaving them whole — and with whether or not to leave them whole in the stew, or in a tea steeper. And if you use a tea steeper, you have to use a lot more of the spices, because the stew just doesn't get to interact with the spices as much. Gah.

This time, I used whole cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and green cardamom pods in cheese cloth, a la bouquet garni. It gave me just the right flavors, and it allowed me to remove the spices, when I felt they had provided just the right amount of flavor.

The accidental thing was that I used far more ground cashews than the original recipe called for. This created a very rich, smooth and creamy flavor and texture.

Still, there was a lot of improvisation going on here. I ended up removing the chicken pieces towards the end, and running a stick blender through the sauce. That didn't break up the cashews enough, so I had to use a regular blender. But it worked.

It was damn good.

Grinding cashews into a paste, and using it in a sauce — bloody good idea. But don't even think about doing the same with peanuts. I was out of cashews one time when I made this, and tried this. Didn't work at all. I like peanuts in food — whole or otherwise. But for this, peanuts are worse than nothing.

"Yeehaw Murghi" — the name of this here fine blog — comes from a grilled beercan chicken with a tandoori style paste. I decided to try it with these Cornish game hens, and the results were quite good. Game hens have a lot more flavor than chicken, so I was a bit worried about how it'd all work out. Especially since I couldn't find the recipe for the tandoori paste I had originally used, and ended up with one made by Gordon Ramsay (for sautéed salmon) and I'm not sure it had the same flavor, nor that it was suited for slow, indirect grilling.

Also, I decided against removing the skin. This was an important part of the chicken recipe, since it allowed the paste to seep into the meat. Game hens are so small that I figured it'd be too much of a hassle, so I left it on. As a result, the paste just didn't penetrate much at all.

I think I'll stick with the original recipe. Balancing a chicken on a beer can is difficult, but it's easy, compared to doing it with a small V8 can and a game hen.

This dish normally makes use of bonito flakes to create the broth, but I had none. So I made one from discarded shrimp shells instead (I never throw that stuff away anymore; they go straight in the freezer). Also, I marinated the tofu in soy sauce and toasted sesame seed oil and sautéed them before adding them to the soup, along with noodles, scallions and cilantro.

Apart from making the broth (which was time-consuming, but very simple), this was very simple and easy. Mind you, if I'd try to serve this to Gun (from Tampopo), I'd probably get my arse kicked. So there's an awful lot of room for improvement. But it really is kind of satisfying to eat this with chopsticks, while slurping the soup from the bowl.