Keith's Blog

Steamed banana cake

1. Put the cake container in a steamer and start it steaming
2. In a bowl add the banana, rice flour, tapioca, sugar, salt, and coconut cream.
3. With your hands (gloved preferably) massage the mixture together. Allow some of the pumpkin texture to remain
4. Add and ½ cup coconut meat and mix with a spoon
5. Mix a little salt with the remaining meat so make it slightly salty (take the sweetness out of the coconut)
6. When well combined put some of the mix in the container in the steamer. We used little side dishes, the cake took 10 minutes to cook
7. In our case: after 3 minutes place some of the salted coconut meat to each of the cakes and recover and cook a further 7 minutes. At the end of cooking pierce with a cake tester and ensure no cake has stuck to the tester
8. Remove from the steamer and allow to cool a little. Remove from containers and serve

Fried banana pancake
This was an idea Kevyn had with regards to the steamed pancake mix.  The caramelisation of the sugar with the banana flavour produces a dessert that would be great with a heavy vanilla ice cream.  This dessert can have some of the salted coconut on top to help cut through some of the intense sweet flavours.

1. Put the cake container in a steamer and start it steaming
2. In a bowl add the banana, rice flour, tapioca, sugar, salt, and coconut cream.
3. With your hands (gloved preferably) massage the mixture together. Allow some of the pumpkin texture to remain
4. Add and ½ cup coconut meat and mix with a spoon
5. Mix a little salt with the remaining meat so make it slightly salty (take the sweetness out of the coconut)
6. Place vegetable oil in a non-stick frying pan and heat
7. On a medium heat pour in approximately 1 cup of mix (more for bigger pancakes) attempt to run a spatula under the pancake to prevent sticking and cook until large bubbles appear through the top of the mix.  Flip the pancake and cook until dark.

THAI NOODLES proper street food

Today’s menu revolves around doing the preparation in advance and then just the assembly of the Thai noodles very quickly as you would on the street.  The Thai noodles are made very quickly and thus you should have all of the seasonings prepared in advance and you can make individual serves based on tastes.   The seasonings are below the noodle recipes and likes are included in the recipes.  Ideally what you will do is have the seasoning required in little bowls in front of you with boiling water and hot stock and then you are ready to go.  In addition to the seasoning recipes you will need to get from your Asian supermarket (Thai or Vietnamese):

1. Thai pork balls
2. Thai fish balls
3. Thai pork sausage (just another presentation of the pork ball mix)

You should cut up some spring onion and celery as dressing and flavour.

Creamy Tom Yum Noodles with fish balls
Clear Tom Yum Noodles
Pork Noodles 2 ways

And for bothering to read this far.  A really quick and simple adult dessert.  Steamed pumpkin cake with salted coconut topping

Noodles – Creamy Tom Yum Noodles with fish balls (1 serve)

1. Place water in pot and bring to a boil
2. Place fish balls in the water
3. In another pot put milk and stock.  Bring to the boil
4. A chilli paste and stir until combined
5. Add sugar, chili powder and fish sauce. Taste and adjust
6. Turn off heat and add the juice from the lime.  Taste again and adjust. Put to one side
7. Place the noodles in a wire basket similar to this (we used a much cheaper version with a bamboo handle) and blanch the noodles in the water for approximately 30 seconds
8. Add the bean sprouts to the basket and blanch once again for 15 seconds
9. Once blanched put contents of the wire basket into a serving bowl
10. Put fish balls on noodles
11. Pour over the milk sauce over the noodles
12. Dress with roasted peanuts, Thai deep fried garlic , chilli slices and spring onion

Noodles – Clear Tom Yum Noodles (1 serve)

1. Place water in pot and bring to a boil
2. In the stock pot place pork balls and pork sausage pieces. When they start to float they are cooked but can be left to be added last to the noodles
3. Put spiced minced pork (about 2 tab per serve) in a bowl.  Put hot stock (approx 1/2 cup) in the bowl and blanch spiced minced pork until the stock cools.  Drain the stock from the bowl back into the stock pot and add more stock.  Continue doing this until the spiced minced pork is cooked. Drain once more and put to one side
4. Place the noodles in a wire basket similar to this (we used a much cheaper version with a bamboo handle) and blanch the noodles in the water for approximately 30 seconds
5. Add the morning glory and the bean sprouts to the basket and blanch once again for 15 seconds
6. Once blanched put contents of the wire basket into a serving bowl
7. Add Chilli powder to spiced minced pork mix
8. Put spiced minced pork mix over noodles
9. Put pork balls and pieces of sausage on noodles
10. Add 1 cup of stock to another bowl with fish sauce, lime juice and sugar.  Ensure sugar is dissolved and add to noodles .  Taste and adjust
11. Dress with roasted peanuts, chilli slices and pickled celery

Noodles – Pork noodles 2 ways (1 serve)

As I have said in the introduction to today prepare everything before you start and have in bowls ready to serve.  The combination of the ingredients to serve should be done as quickly as possible to stop the noodles getting too gluggy.

1. Place water in pot and bring to a boil
2. In the stock pot place pork balls. When they start to float they are cooked but can be left to be added last to the noodles
3. Put spiced minced pork (about 1 tab per patty) in your hand and make a tight ball.  Flatten out the ball and put to one side.  Do this for 3 balls.  Put the patties in the stock until they float.  Don’t be too keen to take them out, ensure they are cooked by exposing the centre of one and making sure there isn’t any pink. I find it best to wait here until they are starting to float. Then….
4. Place the noodles in a wire basket similar to this (we used a much cheaper version with a bamboo handle) and blanch the noodles in the water for approximately 30 seconds
5. Add the morning glory and the bean sprouts to the basket and blanch once again for 30 seconds
6. Once blanched put contents of the wire basket into a serving bowl, remove the  pork balls and spiced minced pork patties from the stock and over noodles and place in bowl, dress with Thai deep fried garlic,  fresh and pickled celery and spring onions
7. Put stock on the noodles until they are just covered and serve

I’m not sure of its the army playing with things or my internet connection. Anyway I am not able to complete today’s upload of the noodle fest. I’ll have to finish the tomorrow when I’m locked up by the curfew.

Seasoning – Stock

1. In a large pot boil the water
2. Over a medium heat add all ingredients to the water
3. Constantly skim the fat and scum off the top of the stock
4. Allow stock to ‘mature’ over at least 1 hour (better more than 3 hours)
5. Taste and add more soy if required. Reduce the heat and keep hot until finished with noodles

White radish:

Seasoning – Spiced pork mince

1. Mix all of the above ingredients in a bowl and put to one side

Seasoning – Marinaded pork loin

1. In a bowl mix the pork, sugar, soy sauce and corn flour
2. Stir in the vegetable oil
3. Add water and put to one side for at least 30 minutes

Seasoning – Thai garlic deep fried

1. Smash garlic in a mortar breaking up the cloves (not looking to make a paste, just break up cloves)
   
2. In a wok put oil. Heat until oil is hot
3. Put garlic in oil
4. Stir constantly until garlic is golden brown. Place all wok contents in a bowl
5. Pour out of work and place pork fat in wok
6. Cook pork fat on a high heat stirring constantly until it is golden brown
7. Add all pork work contents to bowl

Steamed pumpkin cake (sticky and delicious)

1. Put the cake container in a steamer and start it steaming
2. In a bowl add the pumpkin meat, rice flour, tapioca, sugar, salt, and coconut cream.
3. With your hands (gloved preferably) massage the mixture together. Allow some of the pumpkin texture to remain
4. Add and ½ cup coconut meat and mix with a spoon
5. Mix a little salt with the remaining meat so make it slightly salty (take the sweetness out of the coconut)
6. When well combined put some of the mix in the container in the steamer. We used little side dishes, the cake took 10 minutes to cook
7. In our case: after 3 minutes place some of the salted coconut meat to each of the cakes and recover and cook a further 7 minutes. At the end of cooking pierce with a cake tester and ensure no cake has stuck to the tester
8. Remove from the steamer and allow to cool a little. Remove from containers and serve

The army has shut down all local tv broadcasts. I don’t know if they’ll hit the internet or mobile phones (both of which I need to update the blog). I will be updating tonight. I hope I get things done before any further actions take place.

Just for your entertainment… This is what you get on the local channels when you turn them on:

Everyone’s trying to get home. It’s 18:30 and there’s a 22:00 curfew (trains stop at 21:00) so I guess everyone is making sure they’re home.

Day 18 Menu

Golden bags
Stir fry blue crab with curry powder (Poo Phat Pong Karee)
Deep fried fish in fresh herb salad
Stir fried rice noodles with chicken
Taple curry (Gaeng Te Pho)

Seriously…. This one isn’t worth publishing.  I will put it up on the weekend but it is effectively just a bunch of cubed vegetables in a great little wrapper,  The wrapper looks good but there has to be a better way to fill it…  Here is the pic, I’ll  put the recipe up on the weekend, it’s all about the sauce on this one. I’m positive we can come up with a better filling for this one.

Stir fry blue crab with curry powder (Poo Phat Pong Karee)

1. In a small bowl, mix together; Egg, milk, chilli oil, sugar, soy sauce and oyster sauce and put to one side
2. To prepare the crab; pull off the top shell (it should just detach)
3. Take off the big pincers and bash with the back of a knife (to make them easier to eat when cooked)
4. Remove and discard the dark meat where the pincers meet the body
5. Cut the rest of the body into quarters. Put to one side
6. Put vegetable oil in a wok and bring to a high heat
7. Carefully put crab in oil. Fry until cooked
8. Turn heat to low and drain oil into another reciprocal leaving crab in the wok. Add curry powder and stir.
9. Add stock to the pan and boil. Scrape wok to ensure curry powder is included
10. Turn heat to high and add onion, garlic, and chilli. Cook until fragrant
11. Turn heat to high and put the mixture previously combined. Heat until boiling. Allow to reduce if required (shouldn’t be served too ‘wet’) varying the heat to prevent burning.

Fully prepared crab ready to use

The poor (dead) little buggers waiting to become lunch.

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