Well there has not been much on this….So this is the week’s menus at Wednesday…so far!!
On Ingredients:
Most of what you need can be bought in Indian and Chinese shops.
If you are in London you can go to Hounslow or Southall, for Indian goods..spices etc. The best Chinese shops are those in Lisle Street to the S. of Gerard Street or the Supermarket Hoo Hing on the North Circular just N of the Hanger Lane/Park Royal roundabout…not difficult to miss: a corrugated iron warehouse with Chinese roof. The dry goods are cheap in both places. Obviously spices in the Indian shops and the Sauces in the Chinese ones!…and you can buy the vegetables including green ginger in both.
Thai shops are more of a problem. There is the one off the Chepstow Road W2..dirty and Talad Thai in Putney..better. I hear good things of Amaranth in Garrett Lane SW 18 but I have not been there…..there are obviously others I don’t know about. When we were in Wales we had weekly deliveries from Manchester.
You have to remember the basic Thai greeting is not: ‘Hello!‘ or ‘How are you?’ But ‘Have you eaten yet?!’
Coconut Milk is available either in cans or in packets as a hard block. If the latter simply melt in some milk. A number of recipes distinguish between thick and thin coconut milk. If you make it yourself, which is easy….buy packets of dessicated coconut: .then .for the thick milk, mix with milk and whiz in the blender, then for the thin milk, reserve the coconut pulp and add a bit more and mix with water and blend
It is difficult to get Coriander with the root on..but mostly it comes with it and the shops cut it off..find a guy who will reserve it! Difficult too to get Lime Leaf though Bart Spices do jars of dried leaves.In Spar if nowhere else...if you find frozen ones they are OK too. Quite a lot of supermarkets sell lemongrass! It is also quite easy to grow yourself! As is Coriander of course
Garlic. In the UK I use large cloves as they are easy to peel. Here there are not any and I have to use small ones. V. boring to peel..but tasty. The number of cloves realty refers to what you like..the more the better!
Chili. There are dozens of different chilis, of varying strength. The rule seems to be: the smaller, the hotter..Bird’s eye chilis are the smallest Avoid those rather gross looking green things like fat fingers that supermarkets sell..they are tasteless and bitter.
Oil. The Thais use Corn Oil or worse. I find Sunflower the best as it heats quickly and has little taste. As with French food even Thai food is improved by butter if eaten hot!
All that I cook would be improved by Red Wine, Dijon Mustard and Cream….but alas….!.
On no account be tempted to substitute Regency ie, Thai Brandy for Cognac!
Basically Thai Restaurant Food is in the same state as Indian Restaurant Food in the 1970s or Chinese Food in the same period ie. bears little or no resemblance to Thai Food, whatever that might be.
Bit by bit regional Chinese..Szechuan, Cantonese, Beijing Food and regional Indian Food has been revealed..this has not yet happened with Thai Food. Most of Thai restaurant Food and the Menus seem to be produced by ‘Restaurant Central’ in some factory in Park Royal.
But that the food is liked reveals that there is a whole cuisine hidden from restaurant eaters, and even from restaurant eaters in Thailand. Most Thais eat either at home or they eat street food and noodles.
Street food is mostly snacks-sausages, grilled and fried chicken, grilled squid, meatballs, sweet corn, sweets, sticky rice, doughnuts…
I find Thai sweets, which are mostly based on sticky rice and coconut disgusting,,, ,so you wont be hearing much about those!!
Noodles are either sen mee/bamee, sen yai or sen lek..ie according to size and colour..bamee are yellow, sen yai are thick rice noodles and sen lek like thin vermicelli…either dry or with soup. We go to eat wonderful noodles which are Nam Tok…the noodles are ordinary but the soup is a thick blood enriched broth of which you do not need much. It comes with pork scratchings which you melt in the broth, bean sprouts, cabbage and basil leaf.
Tamarind Chicken
Easy and quick!
Tablespoon Coriander Seeds
Tablespoon Cumin/Jeera Seeds
3 Cardamon pods
Cinnamon Stick
Tablespoon scant Black Pepper Corns
2 Star Anise
Salt
Tablespoon or so of dried Tamarind pulp
10-20 Cloves Garlic
Large Onion
2/3 Lime Leaves
Lemon Grass stalk
Inch cube of fresh ginger-or old ginger if you cannot get fresh
Bird’s Eye Chilis to taste-I use 6 or so
Tablespoon Sunflower Oil for initial frying
( More Oil if you are making the paste)
Not olive oil which is wasted in these dishes
Coconut Milk
Chicken or Mushroom Stock
4 Chicken Drumsticks and 4 Thighs
Coriander Leaves
Mint
Parsley
Grind the 6 spices ( take the cardamon seeds from their pods!) and the salt until you have a fine powder.
Put the tamarind in a mug and add good measure of boiling water to cover. About a cupful. Leave for 5 minutes, then crush the tamarind into the water and leave a further 5-10 minutes
Either:
Crush and peel the garlic, chop the onion, tear the lime leaves, slice the lemon grass into inch long lengths discarding any tough bits.; chop chilis finely-for a milder version split and de-seed the chilis discard the seeds; if the ginger is old, ie brown not green and white, peel it and chop finely, otherwise just chop finely. Set aside
Or;
Crush garlic etc. as above and put all those ingredients in a blender and whiz with enough oil to make a thick paste.
Dry roast the spices. Take care they do not catch or burn.
Heat the oil and add either the chopped garlic mixture or the paste. Cook until, in the case of the paste, the oil starts to seep out at the edges of the mixture-about 5 minutes. Add the roast spices and the chicken. Turn and cook until the chicken is well coated and coloured on the outside.
Add the strained tamarind juice, coconut milk, and stock.
Cook gently until chicken is done, ie about 40 minutes. Check the stock does not reduce too far and catch. Check for salt and chilis-if you think too hot add some more coconut milk!
If when the chicken is done the sauce is still watery, remove the chicken and reduce the sauce. You are looking to achieve a liquid paste.
Put in a dish to serve and garnish with the chopped herbs.
This is not a Thai dish. It owes something to Indonesia with the tamarind and something to India with the paste. But with the lemon grass, lime leaves and coriander it has a distinctly Thai taste.
Coriander Chicken Liver
Quick, cheap and easy again
Large Onion
20 cloves of Garlic
Large bunch of Coriander, preferably with the root. I mean a bunch about 4” in diameter, not the miffy stuff you buy in supermarkets, even in pots.
6+ Bird’s eye chilis
Two tubs or about 400 g of Chicken Livers*
250 ml thick Coconut Milk
750 ml Chicken or Vegetable Stock
Salt
Tablespoon Sunflower Oil
Chop the onion finely; crush and peel the garlic, chop the chilis…. de-seed them if you don’t want this over hot.
Scrape any stringy bits off the roots from the coriander, then cut off the cleaned root, , then scrape to shred the root with a sharp knife.
Heat the oil
Add the garlic, onion, chilis and coriander root.
Cook for about 3 minutes until the garlic starts to colour.
Add the chicken livers and cook until they are only just done.. they should be very pink still in the middle.
Remove the livers and set aside, leaving as much of the other mixture in the pan as you can. The blood will seep from the livers when set aside so you will know you have got it about right. If nothing comes out you have overcooked them! In which case at the end just put them in the liquid and serve without waiting!
Add most of the Coriander leaves, chopped, the Coconut Milk and the stock.
Cook, checking the seasoning, until all is reduced to a thickish liquid.
Remove from the heat; add the chicken livers and leave for 5 minutes or so.
Add the rest of the coriander leaves for garnish
Serve quickly so that the livers don’t go grey and tough!
* Now here, when I buy chicken livers, I buy the liver, the gizzard, the heart all together. This improves both appearance and flavour, but I guess cannot be bought in Europe/US
Again not a Thai dish, but with the strong coriander flavour, might as well be!
Prawn Chowder
Onion
20 Cloves of Garlic
3 Tomatoes
Celery Leaves
3 Lime leaves
Stick of Lemon Grass
8 Bird’s Eye Chilis to taste!
Tablespoon Sunflower Oil (plus 20z butter better)
1 litre Fish stock
500g baby octopus or cuttlefish heads; Squid if you must!
a ‘White’Fish, about 400g eg. Sole, Sea Bream, John Dory, Red Snapper, Cod, Haddock
I use Barracuda or Red Snapper!
250g cockles
1kg prawns
Large potato ie. 300g
250g Mushrooms
Pinch ie. two or three threads of saffron*
Juice of 2 limes
Another Litre fish stock
Chop the onions, crush and skin the garlic. Heat pan with oil and add onion and garlic. Cook 5 minutes. Add Sliced tomatoes, Lime Leaves, Celery Leaves and Chilis.
Add octopus and the fish sliced into 1 inch thick slices.#
Brown a little.
Add fish stock and cover. Simmer gently for one hour.
Strain liquid into another pan. Discard remainder.
Bring liquid back to the boil. Turn down heat. Add potato diced into inch inch cubes. Simmer until potato cooked. Add cockles, saffron and lime juice. Cook for I minute.
Remove potato and cockles.
Add further litre of fish stock. Boil until reduced to about 1 litre.
Return potatoes and cockles to stock.
Add Prawns
Simmer until prawns are cooked.only about 2 minutes
Again Thais would not recognise this. I use the white salt water prawns.. Most of the large prawns here are farmed fresh water ones. When you cook them some peculiar red liquid emerges. I think it is because of the rubbish they are fed. Also explains why land used for prawn farming is useless for anything else afterwards; so avoid Thai Tiger Prawns at £25 a kilo
*Saffron is an oddity. You can buy big cheap bags! of what they are calling ‘saffron’ in the so-called ‘hill tribe villages’ north of Chiang Mai. It looks like crocus but has no taste that is of saffron
Have yet to discover its botanical origins, but not saffron! If you can be bothered to roast it first, and then soak a little, it is better but it burns easily!
Pork and Marrow Soup
500g Belly Pork
500g Pork Spare Ribs
6 Spring Onions
Handful Coriander Leaf
10 Cloves Garlic
1 large marrow or 6 large courgettes-the kind you could not use for much else, or 2 butternut squash, or a pumpkin. Here we use white pumpkin, but have not seen in UK
Tablespoon Sunflower Oil
1 litre vegetable stock
I tablespoon Oyster Sauce
I Tablespoon Soy Sauce
One scant dessertspoon Black Sauce! (You can buy this in Chinese shops, but it tends to have no English on the label..actually it is just a kind of more liquid treacle or molasses..which will do as well)
Chop Onions and Coriander leaf.
Crush and Peel garlic
Chop Belly Pork and Spare Ribs into 1 inch slices
Chop vegetable into large pieces ie at least 2 inch square
Put Pork, Onions, Coriander Leaf and Garlic into a pan with the oil and cook gently for 3 or four minutes.
Add vegetables and stock and simmer for an hour or so until pork nearly cooked. It should be falling off the rib bones.
Add the spoonfuls of sauces.
Cook another 15 minutes or so until meat is melting.
A super winter soup.
And Thais would recognise it
Kaeng Neua Nua Wan or Northern Sweet Beef Curry
Thais eat little or no beef, except in the Muslim areas of the South. So this is a bit of an oddity.Thoughh there was a restaurant we used to go to in Bangkok which gave its name to the street Soi Steak Lao..was not wonderful!
In my experience Northern beef tough as a boot..also have tried it with water buffalo steak ..even tougher….never mind two hours even 4 sometimes not enough..and sometimes..Never!
Nb. This is HOT! But the Red Peppers render it just pleasantly sweet
Tablespoon Coriander Seeds,
also tablespoons of black jeera/cumin, cardamon, turmeric, black pepper, teaspoon of grated nutmeg, 6 large dried chilis.
All blended to a fine powder in a blender or mortar.
This is quite a lot of cardamon and maybe not to everyone’s taste..a teaspoon will do. Also you can substitute white jeera/cumin.
Large Onion
30 cloves of Garlic, crushed and peeled
4 Red Peppers, cut in half, de-seeded and then roasted or grilled so that the blackened skins can be removed…save a few finely shredded slivers to garnish at the end.
6 Tomatoes, skins removed by placing in bowl, pouring boiling water over, waiting 5 minutes then remove skins and chop tomatoes.
500 g of Scented Mushrooms..these are a little like ceps. You can buy them dried in the Chinese shop. Take about 250g and soak in hot water for an hour until ‘pliable’!
50 ml Coconut milk ie very little-just for taste
Generous Litre Beef stock…you will find that if you have to cook longer you will need to top up the stock
750g of good beef steak, cut into 2 inch squares. Chuck will do as will shin or brisket as it is going to cook for a long time. For me the more fat the better.
Simple:
Fry Onion and Garlic
Add Beef, cook to colour
Add spices. Stir to coat beef.
Add Red Peppers and Tomatoes. Stir a bit more.
Add Coconut Milk and Stock. Bring to a boil.
Add mushrooms.
Return to boil.
Reduce heat so that liquid barely simmers.
Cook on ring on v. low heat until Beef done…2 hours very good as everything will be melting and infused with the spices and the Red Pepper…
What we also ate…but not you!!
Take 2 slices of salted fish. Fry until nearly burned to death. Eat with a relish made from garlic, chilis, fish sauce, lime juice and basil leaves.
Also take 6 watermelons about the size of an orange..exactly..E very fond of this..boil until tender. Also some broccoli, okra and cabbage similarly boiled. Serve and eat with a relish made from crushed garlic and chilli, lime juice, roasted peppers, fried stag beetles and fermented fish.
Also fried green jackfruit with lime leaf, red curry paste!
All: Yum!
All the dishes eaten with a mixture of 1 part red rice to two parts jasmine rice. I eat mixed brown rice and red rice. Almost no-one will touch brown rice! Whereas jasmine rice is sold loose and in 10 kilo+ sacks brown rice appears in 250g bags! At a price.
I also eat green salads-mainly made with Pak Choi and Chinese leaf with various other as yet unnamed leaves tossed in. Again treated with disbelief by Thais for whom a ‘Salad’ more resembles a fruit salad ie mainly melon, pineapple, orange, kidney or other beans and some cucumber with a measly bit of wet lettuce; all this then covered with a dressing which appears to be made of a teaspoon of oil, one of mayonnaise and 4 tablespoons of sugar. It has taken me years to track down a jar of mayonnaise that has no sugar..now have one but contains for no apparent reason chopped plastic ham!
