This was inspired by a Balinese curry recipe I found in Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. My dinner didn't end up resembling the original too much, it was pretty tasty though.
This does involve a fair bit of slicing and dicing, so maybe one for a quiet evening rather than when you're in a rush. It fed two for dinner with enough left over for lunchboxes the next day.
So, step one, thinly slice a purple onion and as much garlic as you like. Step two, dice two large or 4-5 ordinary tomatoes, a fat thumb of ginger and as much fresh chilli as you like. Step three, slice an aubergine into big bitesize peices.
Finally, step four, skin, de-bone and dice a couple of chicken legs (or buy pre-prepared chicken leg meat, or just breasts) and lightly coat with a little cornflour. That's it, all the tough prep work is done!
Get your rice on to cook - I can really recommend getting a ricebot (aka electric ricecooker, preferably with a delay timer function). My favourite rice for steaming is Japanese short grain.
Heat up a large frying pan on the hob with a little sesame or vegetable oil and fry the chicken peices until you can't see any pink on the outside, then add the aubergine and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through and the aubergine is softened but still has a little bite to it. Take them out of the pan and put to one side.
Reusing the same pan, add a little more oil and stir fry the onion and garlic until softened, then add the tomatoes, ginger and chilli along with a smidge of shrimp paste. Give it a couple of minutes before adding the chicken and aubergine back to the pan, along with a massive pinch of lime leaves, a big squeeze of lemon juice, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, a decent scraping of palm sugar and a splash of water.
Five more minutes in the pan at most and it should be ready, mix in a big handful of coriander and serve with a nice mound of steamed rice and, if you like it, some hot chilli sauce.
I've written a post about Pad Thai before, but this version is so quick and easy that I decided to post it anyway. This was a fab Sunday treat, fulfilling a need for spicy noodles, brought on by the atrocious weather and a shopping trip to Korea Foods.
So, first of all you need to soak some flat rice noodles in a bowl of cold water. There are loads of brands if you have an Asian supermarket nearby, otherwise you will probably be able to find a box of "Thai Taste" brand in most general supermarkets.
The other bit of prep you'll need to do, unless you've bought pre-made tamarind paste, is to cut off a peice of tamarind and soak it in a little water.
While the noodles are soaking, prepare the vegetables and meat. The essentials are the red chilli, beansprouts, spring onion and garlic, other than that any mix of veg, seafood and/or meat will do. I had some greens, mushrooms, boned chicken leg meat and king prawns. Once everything has been sliced and diced, sprinkle corn flour over the chicken until lightly coated.
Put a frying pan on the heat with some oil and let it get really hot, before popping the chicken in and the garlic. Cook until browned then chuck in the prawns.
When the prawns are cooked, throw in all the other veg along with several squirts of fish sauce (nam pla), a slosh or two of soy sauce, a couple of spoons of palm sugar and the strained tamarind juice. Adjust the amounts to your taste.
When the veg are almost cooked, add in the drained noodles. They won't be completely soft from the soaking but don't worry that they feel uncooked, a few minutes cooking in the pan and they'll be perfect. Finish up with some fresh coriander and chopped peanuts.
I ripped this recipe out of some food magazine ages ago; it was on an advert for Cauldron (the tofu brand) and had been stuffed between the pages of my Malaysian cookery book. I omitted their dessicated coconut but was otherwise reasonably true to the recipe: it was really tasty.
First of all assemble the "paste" ingredients: a couple of sliced lemongrass stalks, 2 chopped red chillies, a generous tablespoon of chopped ginger, a heaped teaspoon of turmeric, one of palm sugar and a pinch of salt. Also once sliced purple onion and a few cloves of garlic.
Heat up a pan with some oil and cook the garlic and onion until translucent, then add all of the other ingredients which you've already prepared. Cook for a minute or two before adding a can of coconut milk, 125ml water, 1 tsp tamarind paste (or more if, like me, you love the stuff), 4 star anise and a cinnamon stick. I also added a load of halved chestnut mushrooms and trimmed green beans.
Simmer on a low heat while you cook the rice. Then, while the rice is on the side having its final steam, pop the tofu in to cook through. I used plain tofu and I think it would have been even better if I'd drained it and fried it first, but it was still lovely au naturel. Serve over the rice and top with fresh coriander.
I got the idea for this from "Cook Malaysian" by Lee Sook Ching but, as usual, I had to tailor it to what was in our fridge. The peas are definitely not in the original recipe but they were perfect with it.
So, first put together a couple of diced purple onions (shallots would be better but I didn't have any), lots of sliced garlic, and a couple of tablespoons each of: chopped ginger, lemongrass and lime leaves.
This lot goes into a big frying pan with some oil and a chopped, red chilli. Fry these up for a minute or two, until the aromatic smells start to fill the kitchen, then add a can of coconut milk, a tablespoon or two (depending on your tastes) of tamarind paste, one or two of palm sugar (again according to taste) and a big teaspoon of shrimp paste.
Stir together and bring up to a simmer, then lower the heat and leave it to cook for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes. Taste it, I added fish sauce because I love it, but whether you do is up to you.
I shelled a load of peas because I had fresh but frozen would have done just as well. Throw them in the sauce and let them cook almost through before adding whatever white fish you have; I had whiting fillets.
Cook the fish through but take care not to overcook it. Finally stir in a load of coriander, fresh is best but I didn't have any and the frozen kind is really very good. Spoon over a bowl of rice (instructions for perfect rice here) and sprinkle a sliced spring onion on the top.
I've been dying to try this recipe out, ever since I first saw it in Keith Floyd's Thai Food. Just the image of this rich, dark broth makes me salivate.
We had crispy duck with Chinese pancakes for dinner on Friday night and, as usual, I saved the carcass, bones and giblets from the duck to use in another dish. As an aside, crispy duck is so easy to make - you just roast it on a rack at 170 degrees for 4 hours, then 30 mins at 220 degrees. Job done, thanks Nigella!
This stock is very different to my usual rough home stock, the ingredients are much more exotic and the liquid is incredibly flavourful almost right from the start.
First, pop two star anise and a cinnamon stick on the heat in a large, dry pan for half a minute or so. Then add all of your duck, five fat (or ten small) crushed cloves of garlic and four pints of water (about 2 litres). Stir in 2 tbsp of palm sugar * (or brown sugar) and 6 tbsp each of dark soy sauce and nam pla (fish sauce).
A handful of chopped ginger next, along with one of the more unusual ingredients: 5 bruised coriander roots. I headed out to the garden and pulled up a clump of coriander that was going to seed, you could do the same with a wilting pot from the supermarket.
I separated out the roots to wash and then hung the stalks, with their seeds attached, upside down to dry. I put the roots I wasn't going to use out to dry in the sun on a teatowel.
When the broth came to a boil, I popped a lid on, turned the heat down and left it to simmer for an hour and a half.
In the meantime I tore up some lettuce leaves, washed and spun them dry. I didn't have any beansprouts so I cut a fresh carrot into thin strips to lend that crunchy texture. I also sliced up some spring onions and a red chilli.
I put a small sliced green chilli into a little bowl, covered it with vinegar and left it to steep. I had run out of cider vinegar so I used white wine vinegar instead; I can't say the difference was particularly noticeable.
When the soup was ready it was just a matter of draining it through a colander into a fresh pan and keeping it warm while I cooked some flat noodles from the cupboard. I had Japanese style dried udon, so that's what I used.
The noodles go in the bowl first, followed by the lettuce, sping onion, carrots (or beansprouts) and red chilli. The small amount of leftover duck meat I had went on top, along with a drizzle of garlic oil. Then a few generous ladlefuls of soup, fresh coriander leaves and a few teaspoons of the chilli vinegar.
It was as good as I'd dreamed it would be from looking at that photo in the book. I would definitely make this again.
A note on palm sugar:
Please don't confuse palm sugar with palm oil (or the oil palm). I've read and heard a few people saying how we shouldn't use "palm sugar/oil" because of the environmental impacts of producing it.
Palm oil plantations have been directly linked with deforestation and thus the endangerment of orangutangs and many other animals, as well as destroying the lives of the people living nearby. Palm oil comes from the oil palm, whereas palm sugar comes from the palmyra palm (or date palm or coconut palm) - these are all completely different plants.
I strongly suspect that the palm sugar industry isn't all roses and light either, however I don't think it deserves to be boycotted due to a misunderstanding about its name.
Palm oil presents a much greater threat and I'd encourage you to examine products you buy with palm oil in them and at least check the sustainability rating of the supplier.
Interestingly, palm sugar tapping could possibly present a part of the solution to the palm oil problem. I haven't been able to get hold of Masarang palm sugar yet (see below), but I'm on the look out for it.
Palm Oil
Palm Oil Wiki
Palm Oil article by Greenpeace
Palm Oil article in the Independent (2009)
Palm Oil usage list from Panorama
Palm Oil article by the Rainforest Action Network
Interesting article about sustainable palm oil from The Ecologist
Friends of the Earth: Greasy Palms expose
Palm Sugar
In depth look at non-wood forest products, including palm sweeteners, as a sustainable source of income for forest and near-forest communities (FAO/UN)
Palm Sugar Wiki
Treehugger article on palm sugar tapping as an alternative industry to palm oil
IPS article on the impact of producing palm sugar vs palm oil
Sugar Palm Tree - The Masarang Foundation
Earth Day: Saving the World's Orangutangs
Ashoka.org - Willie Smits
