Category: Thailand

Deep fried fish in fresh herb salad

1. Put fish and tapioca flour in a bowl and coat fish with four. Add more flour if require but not too much. Put uncovered in fridge for 30 min (less if fish is already very dry)
2. Prepare the other ingredients while the fish is ‘sitting’ and set them aside (not mixed together)
3. In very hot oil carefully place the fish. Fry until he fish is golden brown
4. Once the fish has been removed from the oil and drained put it in a bowl.
5. Add pad thai sauce ginger, onion, chillies, lime, lemon grass, and mango (or apple). Mix together carefully
6. Serve and put cashews and kaffir lime leaves on tope for garnish

Stir fried rice noodles with chicken
(3 Portions)

1. In a bowl combine all the marinade ingredients and stir. Add chicken and (if you have time) leave covered in the fridge overnight. Ours’ was left for about 1 hour and it still kicked arse!
2. In a pot add chicken and cook until….. cooked
3. On a high heat in this order add vegetable oil, noodles (spread out) and garlic (on top of noodles). DON’T STIR. We are making a noodle omelette, allow it to brown but not stick. Move the oil under the noodles if it starts to stick. Add more oil if required
4. When the noodles are brown flip them and put the egg on top. Allow the egg to cook a little and then stir and chop up the egg and noodles
5. Once the egg has started to complete cooking add the pickled cabbage, soy, sugar and pepper. Keep stirring quickly and once combined serve
6. Serve on a coarsely chopped curly lettuce

Taple curry (Gaeng Te Pho)

1. Make the curry paste first. Put the white pepper corns in a mortar and pound until they are a fine powder
2. Add the dried chillies and the salt and pound until there aren’t any large pieces of chilli remaining (quite some time. Chop finely to reduce the time)
3. Add onion, kaffir lime skin (from curry paste section), garlic, ginger and garlic. Pound away until the lot is completely combined and no large pieces are obvious. Once finished put to one side
4. In a heavy bottomed pot off the heat add coconut cream, chicken stock and 2 tab of curry paste (from mortar). Heat on a medium heat until the mix starts boiling
5. Add pork and kaffir lime leaves. Allow the pot to return to the boil
6. Add tamarind paste, fish sauce and palm sugar. Heat until the sugar is dissolved. Taste and adjust
7. If you are using Thai morning glory quickly add these now and quickly add juice from ½ kaffir lime. Taste once more and adjust if necessary and take off the heat
8. If you are using bok choy add the kaffir lime, taste and adjust and then turn off heat and add bok choy.
9. If you have kept the Kaffir lime you can use this as a garnish (as in the photo)

I can’t thank the guys at the school enough. Everyone made me feel special and (don’t tell her I called her this) my Thai Mum went out and bought some really brilliant Thai cakes because ‘she knew Western people had cake for their birthday’. Kevin (my class mate) bought me a great Thai cook book (now all i have to do is cook the 200 recipes). They are really brilliant people. Here is a photo of Mum and the cake 🙂

Day 17 Menu
Thai ‘cup cakes’ (not sweet)
Crispy Thai Won Ton
Pumpkin in sugar syrup
Pumpkin in sugar syrup

Pumpkin in sugar syrup
I would never serve pumpkin as a dessert but this dessert with the very sweet pumpkin and the slightly salty coconut cream is really delicious. You need to try it. Also, the photo in the thumbnail here doesn’t do it justice, it’s not the most attractive but it tastes good.

1. In a large very heavy bottomed pan on a medium heat put the sugar and the water
2. When sugar is dissolved put pumpkin in water with the lime juice (for ‘shine’)
3. In another pan combine coconut cream salt and corn flour stir well over a low heat
4. When pumpkin is done serve.

Filled squid (Shoe shi)

I couldn’t work out a better way to photograph this.  I know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I’ll try anything once and eating with the tentacles is something I first tried in Portugal and it didn’t kill me so… On I go doing it ..  This is quite nice and can be done excluding the head etc.

1. In a mortar put the pepper corns and pound until they are a fine consistency
2. Add chillies and salt. Pound until you can’t make out the large chilli pieces (the more you chop this at the start the easier this is)
3. Add the red chilli, lemon grass, garlic, shallots, galangal ginger and lime. Pound away until there are no more big pieces of chilli remaining
4. Take out of the mortar and put to one side
5. Put the fish meat, prawns and finger ginger into the mortar and carefully mix until the mix is sticky (no more discernible prawn is a good indicator)
6. Mix the fish mix with 2 Tab of the red curry mix and mix.
7. Cut a small hole in the end of the squid to allow water and air to escape as you fill the squid with the mix.
8. Steam the squid for about 30 minutes and serve with a red curry (paste from above with coconut cream, fish sauce and palm sugar. Fry the paste in oil, add coconut cream and boil until oil comes to the top. Add fish sauce and palm sugar and taste. Any of the red curry recipes below will give amounts)

Crispy Thai Won Ton

1. In a mortar pound garlic, coriander and pepper until well combined. Put to one side
2. Put pork in a bowl add soy, flour and mortar contents and mix thoroughly
3. This can be covered and put in a fridge overnight for the flavours to fully infuse or (as we did) left for about 1 hour.
4. Place a small ball in the middle of a wan ton wrapper
5. Fold the wrapper in ½ (corner to corner) so the corner faces you. Ensure the meat has plenty of wrapper around it
6. Turn the wrapper around so the long flat side faces you and pull the two opposing corners (along the long side) together so that the corner furthest away from you folds up. Use some water to hold the two corners together and press tightly together. Deep fry and serve with sweet chilli sauce

Thai cup cakes (not sweet)??? Crap Khon Tong

1. In a mortar pound the white pepper corns until they are more or less powder.
2. Add the garlic and coriander root and pound until well combined. Put to one side
3. In boiling water put carrots and potato and boil until just beyond al dente
4. In a wok add mortar contents with some oil and cook until fragrant
5. Add chicken, brown onion, chestnuts and corn and cook until the chicken is cooked
6. Add the carrots, potato, yellow (mild) curry powder and sugar. Taste and adjust if necessary
7. Take off heat and put in crunchy cases (as per photo). I can teach you how to make the cases but they are a bit of a pain in the arse and a lot easier to buy some

Cups

1. Mix water, flour, salt, oil and egg until it is a reasonably thin consistency
2. Sieve into another bowl to remove any lumps and add black sesame
3. Heat the brass mould in hot oil
4. Dab off any excess oil and then dip in mixture
5. Put mould in hot oil holding above the bottom for approx. 30 seconds and then let it settle. Leave until stops vigorously bubbling. Pull up and, using a skewer, remove any cases that don’t drop off. Allow to continue frying while you repeat for the next cases. Keep repeating until you have the correct number of cases

This is the casing tool

In case you haven’t seen a pomelo being peeled (or like me even seen a pomelo I have uploaded the following clip to YouTube.  I wouldn’t worry too much about the background noise but it does show peeling the sucker and what it looks like: Link to YouTube

The pomelo is used in a salad in the old style on Day 16 and in a salad on Day 2.

Day 16 – We revisited pamelo salad (an improvement), we discovered the reason Tarzan wore very little (with that fire in his belly, clothes became optional) and I found a great little seafood soup that will become a standard.

Pamelo salad (old style)
Jungle curry
Spicy seafood soup (Boh Daa)
Thai dumplings with coconut cream

Thai dumplings with coconut cream

1. Divide the rice flour into 3rds and place in bowls
2. Add the blue water to one
3. The pumpkin meat to another and;
4. 3 Tab Water to another
5. Mix each until it makes a good dough similar to one you would use for gnocchi (smooth and springy)
6. Once you have the three doughs create small balls and roll in tapioca flour (to stop them sticking together) then place in a bowl
7. Once all the dough is in small balls put to one side
8. Combine the Coconut cream, sugar, coconut juice, pandanas leaves and coconut meat in a pot and gently bring to the boil (to dissolve the sugar) and infuse the vanilla scent of the pandanas leaves. Take off the heat once the sugar is dissolved
9. Bring a large pot of water to the boil and place all the dough balls in the pot
10. When they float to the top place them in warm water to be put in the coconut ‘soup’ created previously.
11. When all balls are cooked divide the balls into servings and serve with coconut soup

Spicy seafood soup (Boh Daa)

The reality with this dish is it is quite light and any seafood can be used (I wouldn’t use a salmon or trout but white fish…)

1. Smack lemon grass with the back of a reasonably heavy knife. Put to one side
2. In a mortar smash chillies (don’t kill them, just expose the meat). Put to one side
3. In the mortar, smash the shallots (as above) and put to one side
4. Put stock in a pot and over a medium heat bring to the boil
5. Add lemon grass, ginger, mushrooms, kaffir lime and shallots
6. Add fish to the pot and (without stirring) bring to the boil
7. Add fish sauce and turn heat down. Taste and adjust
8. Add lime to taste and turn off heat.
9. Quickly add hot basil and serve

Jungle curry

This bad boy packs a punch. You have to take care when making this that you aren’t just focused on the fact that your head has just been cleared and you have realised that your job isn’t everything you have wished, your house isn’t big enough, your boys really should have done ballet.. focus on the flavour none of the LSD style induced flashbacks. With the correct balance this can be really flavour full with one hell of a kick. Great winter heart starter.

1. For the chilli paste. In a mortar but the Coriander seed, cumin seed and white pepper corns.
2. Pound until it is a fine powder
3. Add garlic, and onion. Pound until combined
4. Add lemon grass coriander root and Kaffer lime. Pound into paste
5. Add chillies and pound until there are not many obvious large pieces of chilli and basil flowers
6. Add shrimp paste and put to one side
7. For the fish balls. In a mortar combine the fish until it is more like a dough. Put to one side
8. For the curry. In a pot bring the stock to the boil
9. At a medium heat. Mix in 2 table spoons of curry paste
10. Once back to the boil add the beans, corn, pepper corns, eggplants and ginger
11. Turn down the heat
12. Using a hot spoon dig off small fish balls and put into the curry
13. Add the fish sauce and taste. Adjust if necessary
14. Add remaining ingredients and turn off heat. Serve

Pomelo salad (old style)

I know I have made this before (here is the link) but this version is even more tasty and a little more complex.

1. Off the heat combine chicken, chilli paste and coconut cream in a pot and stir until the chicken is broken up
2. Place pot on a medium heat and stir. If mix starts to dry out add chicken stock
3. Add 1 Tab of Pad Thai sauce and taste, add more if required
4. If the pomelo is not too sweet you add the palm sugar, dissolve and taste, if the pomelo is very sweet you don’t have to add the palm sugar. I added ½ the palm sugar in mine this time. Keep on a low heat
5. Boil prawns for 1 minute in stock until they are pink and put to one side
6. Take the sauce off the heat when the oil starts to come to the top, taste and if too sweet add a little lime until the mix is to your liking
7. Cool the sauce before putting in a bowl add pomelo, coconut meat, shallots and garlic. Combine carefully, add prawns, give it a little stir and serve. Use peanuts, coconut, some shallots and garlic to garnish

I’m guessing the crane comes from the US or Europe where the safety message is printed on it by default because what I have seen, they’re not that keen on safety.

Sun’s going down, I have some reinforcing I need to hit with a hammer, I know just lean out there and do it.

Start the day with a touch of welding. Only 4 floors, probably won’t kill me.

First things first…. They work on Saturday….. That surprised me as, from what I had read etc, the last things the Thai’s would do is extend themselves to the weekend.  When you get here the first thing that grabs you is the mess of wires (literally) hanging from the poles.  I couldn’t imagine how this happens except for some dodgy DIY structured cabling methodology.  As it turns out….

Check this out.  This  guy is running in a new (I assume) telephone cable.  It is a broom stick with a bent coat hanger to guide the cable as the other guy rolls it out.

The traffic is traveling under his new cable that’s only been held up by his stick and the tension the guy with the roll is adding.  When it bounced out of the stick and fell in front of a motorcycle everyone had a heart attack.  You could see the cabling guys thinking “shit, we’ll have to run a new one” and the motor cyclist thinking “WTF is that and why am I getting tangled up and… oops nearly came off”

First things first.  I’m sorry about quality of the photos and the video.  I used the Olympus point and shoot instead of the Hasselblad rather than fully exposing myself to ridicule through poor artistic ability.

Due to my really poor showing here I have been avoiding putting something up.  To pass your’ ‘real’ chef’s course in Thailand you have to do a fruit/vegetable carving exam that  takes 4 hours to complete and you end up with a stack of carved fruit and vegetables that would make up the pride of place in a hotel buffet that all the tourists (including me in the past) would duly ignore.  No longer will I ignore this, this carving is such an art and takes so long (around 1 hour for a water melon) that I will stand in wonder and appreciation of the artist’s work before pigging out on all the standard wishy washy food of the hotel buffet.

With a very hard mango you basically just cut ‘v’s into the skin slightly higher than the previous ‘v’ but at the same angle to look like the cone is tucked under the previous piece and cut away some flesh to leave a little green.  Here is a quick look at the chef doing it.

This is fairly simple once you understand you want the ‘v’s to be up a little.  you can do the same thing on a carrot (no dodgy comments Jono!!)

You may ask, “how many leaves does one person need”… Apparently in Thailand, quite a few.  Here is the Thai eggplant leaf.  The most difficult part of this was getting the leaf shape right.  The rest was the 90deg and 45deg knife work with fluid motions.

This is the second easiest thing to do. With a sharp knife you skin the tomato taking care to have roughly the same width all the way through. once you have the skin off you roll it (starting with a tight roll, to become the centre of the flower) and then finish off by having the circle at the end of the roll under the flower. Done.

By far the most laborious task was carving this melon. You carve the pine cone shape into the top (which I majorly stuffed up) and then leaves around the bottom with the pine cone between them. I have put some videos up of the chef doing it (no one has the time to watch me do it).

(links below open new windows. turn down the sound as there is a lot of background noise.)

Here is a link on youtube (the blog software won’t allow me to put up wmv files)
Here is the chef once he had marked out the leaves and was starting on the pine ‘leaves’.

My dodgy one on the right, chef’s on the left

By far the easiest and actually looks ok for a salad or similar.  You find a spring onion with a bit of a flat look (the leaves are next to each other) and you basically split the leaves into as many curls as you want (at different levels) and you split the leaves.  You then run the back of the knife down the leaf in more or less (with a lot less pressure) the same way you do for curling ribbon.  Put them in cold water and they curl up in tight little curls.  Done.

I’ve just split the leaves in two here

The carrots were the simplest.  Cutting the carrot into a long piece about 2mm thick you cut out the leaf shape and then using the knife at a 90degree angle to the carrot (straight down) you cut part way through the carrot the two lines of the spine. Then cut a line parallel (1/2 – 1 mm away) to one of the spines at a 45deg angle to the carrot, pull out the piece of carrot that should now just pull out.  Cut the other spine in the same way and pull out the carrot.    Now cut the tear drops into the carrot with a straight knife (90 deg to the carrot).  Complete with the little serrations along the edges and you’re done.

Thai omelette soup
Deep fried cat fish
Deep fried pork with sesame
Custard pumpkin

Thai omelette soup

1. Stock, garlic, onion, shallots and spring onion in a pot and simmer (about 30 minutes)
2. Beat eggs and add sesbania, sweet vegetable, basil, garlic and chillies.
3. Heat oil in a wok on a high heat until hot.
4. Pour egg mixture into oil quickly heat until bottom is brown and then turn over
5. When both sides are brown drain and put to one side
6. Strain soup into a bowl add soy (taste and adjust), cut omelette into 5cm strips and add to soup

Deep fried cat fish

1. Strip the fish of the white meat carefully to avoid including bones
2. Put meat in a mortar
3. Pound until it is a course paste and put to one side
4. To make the dipping source pound the garlic and chilli in a mortar until rough consistency
5. Mix in shallots, spring onion, lime and fish sauce
6. In a deep frier put the fish meat in stir to ensure it’s not clumped.  Fry until it is golden then bunch into a ‘clump’ and take out of the fryer.
7. Put on a bed of lettuce with dipping sauce, place the remainder for the mango and carrot on top with cashews .  If you are hilarious and the chef you could try the presentation below.  The head and tail are included on the plate. If you click on the image and get the full sized you can see the teeth of the fish.

This is how we got the fish:

Deep fried pork with sesame

1. Place coriander, garlic and pepper in a mortar and pound to a paste (lots of the wrong sort of pounding done on this holiday)
2. Mix all ingredients (except pork) in a bowl and combine. Place pork in bowl and ensure covered with marinade. Leave pork covered to one side for at least 1 hour. If overnight refrigerate.
3. Deep fry in very hot oil until deep brown. Take care as it will spit.

Custard pumpkin

1. Cut the steam out of the pumpkin but cutting around the steam at about 5 cm with a sharp knife at about an 45 degree angle (photo below)
2. Remove all pips and surplus meat.
3. Mix together eggs, shallots, padanas leaves and sugar.
4. Using your hands (we had gloves on) massage the padanas leaves and sugar to dissolve the sugar.
5. Once the sugar is dissolved strain the mix into another bowl. Add mix to empty pumpkins (up to about the bottom of the meat in the top (if that makes sense)
6. Put pumpkins in a steamer and cook until the custard is cooked. (about 45 minutes for the 20cm pumpkins we used). Test with a skewer, the skewer should be clean when removed.
7. The recipe is good, it’s very unusual but I am definitely going to play around with this.