19 posts tagged “thai”

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.

This dish, I really love. Dead simple, and extremely tasty. MPW says there's no such thing as a perfect dish — there are always things that can be done to it. Not that there has to be anything wrong with the dish per se, but tastes and traditions do change. I agree with that. I just can't think of anything to improve this one.

Whenever summer arrives, I get kinda antsy about all the great winter food that I should have cooked. We've had a couple of 90°F+ days, but it's eased off a bit now, and today was extremely windy, so I went with a soup. I've been hankering for a split pea soup with ham hocks, that I had great results with. But that requires a bit of planning, so I went with this curry soup instead.

This was a real spur of the moment thing, but it turned out great. Making soup isn't exactly rocket science, but I'm still pretty pleased with this.

First off, I wanted to make my own curry powder. I've never had much luck with that (and I have a couple of pre-made ones from the Indian store), but this time I got it right.

Curry powder:
1 tsp each of cumin, fenugreek, mustard and fennel seeds, and black pepper corns, 1 tbsp coriander seeds toasted. 3 birdseye chilies and 1/2 stick of cinnamon — all ground up and mixed with 1 tsp turmeric.

Curry soup:
Sauté one diced onion, half a dozen gloves garlic and 2" garlic. When softened, mix in 3 tsp curry powder, 5 diced potatoes, 1 can coconut milk, two cans vegetable broth, half a dozen torn kaffir lime leaves and a bay leaf. Simmer till the taters are soft, remove bay leaf and hit the soup with a stick blender.

Garnish with cilantro and a dash of sour cream. I didn't do the latter this time, but instead — well, I try to be reasonably frugal, so whenever I can make use of things that would otherwise go to waste, I'm always happy. In this case, I had an old loaf of French bread that was hard as a rock. So I threw that into the soup.

May it sounds kinda trashy to some people, but there are plenty of examples of this sort of things from classic Italian and French cookery.

This was a little scary, since the commercial curry paste I use for this is extremely hot. I made my own paste once upon a time, but that stuff is all gone at this point. Mind you, making your own paste, or spice mix is pretty cool, though.

Tasty and simple — very simple:

1. Add thinly sliced lamb, chopped garlic and ginger to a hot wok and stir-fry it until the lamb is browned (2-3 minutes). 2. Stir in 2-3 tsp green curry paste (very hot), a can of coconut milk (making sure to include all the thick stuff also), and the grated zest and juice of one lime.
3. Reduce temperature and simmer vigorously (to reduce) for 15 minutes.
4. Add chopped cilantro and serve over rice, garnished with extra cilantro.

Also added were some leftover asparagus, which worked quite well. Next time though, I think I'll sauté a chopped onion (to add more depth), and also some torn kaffir lime leaves (to add another level of zesty-ness to the lime juice and grated rind — it stood out a bit, this time). Also, I think I'll let the coconut mixture reduce a bit more, to thicken it up — but that'll mean I'll have to increase the aromatics, because they mellow noticeably when cooked for longer periods.

Good stuff, this. The hardest part was to find the appropriate cut of meat — ended up with a freakin' leg of lamb, which I obviously only used a very small part of. So I guess I've got a roasted leg of lamb coming up in the future. Yeah! Oh yeah; hell yeah — with roasted taters and all. Man, that'll be gooooood!

First time I've cooked tofu. This was very simple: split the tofu block in half horizontally, and place it on a flat surface, with a flat surface on top, leaving a couple of cans of broth on top of that for weight — this helps to press water from it. Then, soak rice noodles in water. Both of these should stand for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, thinly slice three shallots, and chop 1 Jalapeños (more if you like it hot), half a dozen cloves of garlic, and about 1.5" of ginger — set it aside. Separate one head of broccoli into florets and set aside. (I place these items in bowls; the whole mise en place thing is pretty important for stir-frying.)

When the tofu is drained, cut it into bite size pieces and stir fry them until they are brown, or speckled all around. Remove and set aside.

Add the shallot mixture and stir fry for about three minutes. Add broccoli, tofu and noodles, three tablespoon soy sauce and two tablespoon fish sauce (I normally add a little extra, but that depends strongly on the potency of your fish sauce, and your threshold for saltiness).

Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan when serving it up, as the sauce and the aromatics are down there.

Fresh basil for garnish is listed as an option, but I strongly disagree — if you can get your hands on it, it would make a serious difference. I say "would," because basil can't be had for love or money around here right now.

Well, I'm happy. Oh, and the picture was very lucky — the steam coming off it created a very slight soft focus-effect.

Oh yeah, forgot about the noodles. Those are the rice noodle type, that you soak in water. Me no likey. They have an odd taste, texture, and look that just doesn't do anything for me. It's almost as if it is some weird "fake" pasta made of an artificial plastic-like material. I think I'll stay away from that stuff from now.

Gaaaah... Well, I've set a record: that's three bad meals in a row. I had no coconut milk — that stuff is what I consider a staple, so I've always got a bunch of cans of it. But I just discovered that I was out, as I started the meal. So I tried using milk, and a bit of cream, and a cornstarch slurry to thicken it. Well, for some reason, milk and cream curdles, while coconut milk doesn't.

Also, the last chilies in the garden were just too old, and not usable. So no pretty red strips for garnish. And finally, the kaffir lemon leaves have completely lost that beautiful, deep green color, as well as a lot of their flavor. But I adjusted accordingly, so it actually tasted very nice.

It just looks like hell.

Oh well, that'll teach me to be casual about checking the ingredients. There's always a lesson to be learned.

As I always say, a recipe has to be pretty special before I consider deep frying anything. And this is one of those recipes. I've only done this one once before, but it was clearly worth it. The original recipe didn't use any breading at all, but I tried adding some and that turned out great. I was going to do the same here, except with Japanese panko breadcrumbs, instead of the regular, Western stuff. But at the last moment I decided I wanted to try create a tempura type batter.

The results were great. Incredibly crispy things. I took the recipe for the (very liquid-y) dipping sauce, and created that white sour cream-and-yogurt sauce you see there, along with some chopped salad mix, thinly sliced red onions, and some thinly sliced apple. That last bit was pretty inspired, I don't mind saying. The freshness of the apple created a really wonderful, fresh, sweet contrast to the spicy, fishy taste of the fish cakes.

I was very happy with this.

And yeah, I carved a pumpkin, too:

It's kinda tricky to carve a pumpkin that looks good lit up by an internal candle at night, while also looking good in broad daylight. I think I got it, on this one:

A dead easy dish. I don't know why it is called Shrimp Satay — satay generally tends to mean some sort of skewered meat, like a kebab. But this recipe has all sorts of goodies in it, so I don't care what it is supposed to be called.