The Cook's Broth.... HAS MOVED TO: andyoliverchef.com

NEW WEBSITE

2011-11-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

The Cook's Broth has moved to www.andyoliverchef.com

It's a new and improved version of this blog, focusing on Thai food.

No more posts will appear here (and this site will be shut down soon enough).

So please head over there and have a look, I hope you'll like what you find.

Andy

Secrett's Thai fest in Surrey

2011-08-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

Quick one to say am off to a Thai festival on a farm in Surrey tomorrow...

It's in aid of an amazing cause - stopping child prostitution in Thailand through education (causes don't get much better methinks).

See here http://www.muditatrust.com/amazing-thailand.html and here http://www.secretts.co.uk/events.htm

Come down, and if you can't, then perhaps have a look Mudita's website http://www.muditatrust.com

Andy

theloftproject

2011-08-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Firstly apologies for my awful lack of love for my blog of late....it's not that i've given up on it.

On the contrary: i'm actually in the process of pimping up my blog and website and bringing them together. So watch this space!

Anyway, in the meantime here's something i want to bang on about a bit: I'm going to be doing The Loft Project in late September, along with a mate - Mark (the sous chef at Nahm).

It's basically a special private dining space owned by Nuno Mendes of Viajante. Top chefs from all over the world cook - there doing multi course menus for a single table of 16 diners.

TheLoftProject

We are doing two nights - the 23rd and 24th of Sept.

The food will be at least 8 courses of Southeast Asian food, plus canapes and petit fours.

We're going to be finding the best & most interesting Asian ingredients. smuggling some things from Bangkok and combining it all with some of the best British meat & seafood.

I urge you to come! See here for more info and to book:

http://www.theloftproject.co.uk/whats-on/

We've been working on it for a few weeks already, coming up with ideas and testing dishes.

Here's our example menu:

*Canapes*

Kanom 'taco', grilled pork, pickled ginger flower & chilli jam

Powdered trout, crispy shallots, cold watermelon

*Menu*

Som saa cured scallop, lemongrass, orange chilli & mint

Grilled cured pork, crisp quail egg & white turmeric salad

Duck broth, green melon & chanterelles

Red curry, harlequin squash & green papaya

Salad of Thai herbs, snake-head fruit, tamarind & sesame

Lobster, grilled coconut relish, Thai basil

Braised beef cheek, bamboo & pickled Vietnamese vegetables

Warm perfumed coconut cream, tapioca pearls, jackfruit doughnut

*Petit fours*

Mango 'gnuan', teenage coconut

Lychee, iced jasmine and pandanus syrup

Final snaps from latest Thailand trip - assorted southern food

2011-07-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

roti mataba - delicious crisp roti with ground spiced beef, accompanied by a sweet - sour ajut

gaeng tai plaa - southern, very hot, very pungent curry which involves fish innards. served here with vegetables and kanom jeen noodles, it IS good, just in moderation!

brilliant example of khao yam - southern rice salad, including three types of rice, prawn floss, pomelo, lime leaves, toasted coconut, green mango, lemon grass...etc etc

khao yam from above, including amazing herb garnish to be picked at along side

fritters of whole shrimp - a common dish but this version - found in Trang evening market - was the best i've tried. served with a zingy nam jim. it was amazing

a lovely lady and her stand which specialises in a salad of pork skin, fermented pork and crispy rice balls. really good.

Trang is famous for it's moo yang (grilled pork) which is in fact more a marinated and roasted whole pig, often eaten with dim sum believe it or not (legacy of chinese communities which settled there)

southern curries - yellow curry of fish and pineapple, plus southern version of the famous massaman

gaeng gari gai (indian influenced chicken curry) with roti

khao mok gai - southern Thai style rice pilaf with chicken and sweet nam jim

an amazing muslim beef soup, using dried spices, soured from lime juice and tomatoes and sprinkled with crispy shallots

More snaps - market in Chumphon, Southern Thailand

2011-07-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Different grades of gapi (shrimp paste)

Boiled young jackfruit & banana blossom ready to be eaten with nam priks, put in curries soups or wot not

Not too sure on this one....a type of morning glory at a guess

Young tamarind leaves, and in the background grachai

Thai fern, and a Thai lady

Asian pennywort, a Thai herb, sometimes eaten with nam prik, also made in to a refreshing drink

A very sour little number...madang I think it's called

An abundance of stunningly fresh fish

Hor moks - steamed fish curries - being wrapped in banana leaves

The steamed hor mok...hot from the steamer,utterly delicious it was too

This is a lady laughing at me after seeing me eat three of these hor moks in a row

Friendly locals selling sadtor beans ('stinky' beans, which get stir fried with prawns and gapi, among other things)

Northern Thai style pork rib curry

2011-06-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a recipe for a Northern Thai style pork curry. It's something I've eaten in and around Chiang Mai, and, on my latest trip, had an especially good version at great restaurant a bit out of the city (where I was taken by Robyn and Dave, the v.knowledgeable and lovely people behind EatingAsia).

The version we had contained young jackfruit, which, when cooked until tender, is an absolutely delicious artichoke-like vegetable addition and works really well with the pork in this dish.

It's a red curry in that the paste is deep red due to the dried long red chillies pounded into it, but it's not like the red curry most people will be familiar with. Why? Well mainly because a) there's no coconut cream used, and b) the paste has much fewer ingredients in and is boiled, not fried.

So if you're craving that classic ubiquitous style of Thai red curry then this isn't it.

But if you want to try something different i.e a slightly spicy, pork and vegetable curry with clean flavours and a richness of good dried chilli, then give this one a go. To me it's a great introduction to the style of some Northern Thai dishes.

The day I made this wasn't a great shopping day for SEAsian ingredients in London; no young jackfruit nor cha-om (a slightly stinky herb that works really well in this dish). The veggies I used instead where: red shallots, bamboo, apple aubergine and cherry tomatoes, it still worked out pretty tasty and satisfying.

Ingredients (makes enough curry for 4):

400g of good quality pork ribs, cut through the bone into chunks
3-4 apple aubergines, cut into bite sized chunks
5 or 6 small Asian shallots, peeled
100g of bamboo shoots or boiled heart of bamboo, cut into bite sized chunks
10 - 12 cherry tomatoes
Seasoning: sea salt and perhaps a splash of fish sauce, plus possibly a pinch of white sugar

Paste:

5-6 long dried red chillies, de-seeded & soaked in water for 20mins
2 sticks of lemon grass, sliced (save the trims)
2 tablespoons of chopped galangal
3 small Asian shallots, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 good teaspoon of gapi (shrimp paste)

Method:

Make the paste by pounding the ingredients one by one in a pestle and mortar until fairly smooth (tips here are: start with a pinch of sea salt and the hardest ingredients - like galangal & lemongrass - first, and before pounding the dried chillies be sure to squeeze them dry and chop them up a bit).
Give your pork ribs a rinse and then put them in a pot with enough water or chicken stock to cover plus an inch or so. Add the shallots, plus a piece or two of lemongrass or galangal trimm and a good pinch of salt. Bring this to a gentle simmer and cook until the pork is tender (30 - 40 mins), skimming any scum so you have a nice clear broth.
Now fish out any trims of what not you've put in, turn up the heat to a boil and dissolve two generous tablespoons of the paste in boiling stock. Boil for a minute or so then turn back down to a simmer and add your apple aubergine, bamboo and cherry tomatoes. Season with sea salt and optionally a splash of fish sauce too, plus a pinch of white sugar if it needs it.
You're ready to serve once your tomatoes and aubergine are tender.

Eat with rice, and ideally as part of a Thai meal.

p.s if you dont like the idea of pork ribs then use chicken thighs or something (though on the bone is definitely better for the taste of the broth), other veg such as pumpkin or banana blossoms or green beans could also be used. Herbs you could use: cha-om, coriander, betel leaves or long leaf coriander (pak chii farang).

Food pics from my latest Thailand trip: Bangkok

2011-06-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm now back safe and sound from my SEAsia trip. I've actually been working part time back at Nahm London, in between private catering and other stuff, has been great.

So here's some long overdue snaps from eating my way around Thailand. More instalments to come.

These are a sample from Bangkok, I'll do some from down south, up north and around in subsequent posts...

Night time 'khao man gai' (poached chicken rice) seller, Chinatown

Huge fresh water prawns for sale 'Or Tor Kor' market

A dry red curry cooked with a crispy catfish 'pad prik king pla dook foo' - 'Or Tor Kor' market

'Thai berries' a type of tender, non-sour tamarind eaten raw (especially in Isarn) - 'Or Tor Kor' market


'Pad kee mao' ('drunk man's stir-fry'), Chinatown

'Kanom jeen nam prik' special rice noodles served with a sweet spicy & fragrant sauce, plus herbs, eggs and crispy fish skin accompaniments

Poached bananas with young coconut sorbet, MBK shopping mall

'Dtom Klong pla grop' (a herbal, smokey hot n sour soup with crisp fish), plus in the background: wing bean salad - Chote Chitr, Banglamphu

MBK food hall, hundreds of dishes, some good some not so good - 6th floor of MBK mall

'Pad si ew' a smokey stir fry with wide rice noodles and pork @ Nay Lao


Late night eating & drinking session with some friendsd at an Isarn food stall - don't ask me where we were!

Wanderlust article

2011-05-30T03:20:00.000-07:00

Apologies for lack of blogging last couple of weeks, will be posting some good stuff v.soon.

But in the meantime here's an article I've just written for Wanderlust online.

It's on regional Thai food.

Andy

Cha Ca, Hanoi

2011-05-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

Ok so....I did write and publish a big old post on this dish just a few days ago, but blogspot seems to have bloody lost it! Either that or I'm going mad.

Anyway here's a short version of what was previously here:

The pics are of 'cha ca thang long' in Hanoi, 'cha ca' for short - it's a delicious combination of turmeric marinated white fish (often 'snakehead' fish, or 'pla chorn' as it's known in Thai) along with fresh dill, chillies, peanuts, more herbs and some dipping sauce.

The dish is famous in Hanoi and there's loads of places to try it. I tried a few places, the best version I ate was here ...where the pics above are from.

Or make it at home, it's pretty straightforward, here's a good couple of recipes you might want to check out:

Great vid from Luke Nguyen: http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/lukenguyen/recipes/detail/recipe/11022

Nice version by the lovely people behind 'Ravenous Couple' (great sounding dipping sauce recipe there too): http://www.theravenouscouple.com/2009/06/cha-ca-thang-long-vietnamese-turmeric-fish-with-dill.html

Andy

Viet sweet stand, Hanoi

2011-05-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

My selection: eating my way to the bottom was quite an experience!

I know I said the Hanoi fish with turmeric & dill 'cha ca' would be my next post, but here's a quick sweet themed entry in the meantime...

Again location is Hanoi, but this time a dessert. Actually 'sweet snack' would probably be more accurate (as I believe the Vietnamese, like the Thais, don't do desserts really - they eat sweet stuff as a snack preferring to have just a little fruit after a meal).

The snaps below are of a little street stall, where you sit on the bench opposite and choose want sweet madness you want concocted. If, like me, you don't speak any Vietnamese beyond 'thanks', 'hello' and 'delicious' then this means smiling, bobbing your head, pointing and generally just fairly philosphical about what you end up with.

In the case what I ended up with included beans, tapioca pearls, palm seeds, taro, banana all in some form of syrup and the whole lot topped off with some sweet coconut cream and banana chips. There were probably serval other things in there too.

I've eaten this kind of thing a few times in Thailand, the key difference here seemed to be that more of the items were not just in syrup but in a kind of gelatinous syrupy gloop (sp?) which was so stretchy and viscous that the lady serving it was having a hard time getting it off the spoon and in to the glass!

Along with frogsspawn like tapioca pearls and other unusuals each spoonful is textural insanity.

But I ate the entire contents of my glass, and, I think, quite enjoyed it.

There were also some nice looking rice flour dumplings which I didn't have room for, I think sesame seed paste or suchlike would have been found inside.


Nice looking riceflour dumplings.

Ok so next post definitely is now cha ca, and it will be the last of my Vietnamese themed ones. After that: back to Thailand, where I have been for the last month or so.

Andy

Banh cuon, Hanoi

2011-04-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

So this is my second post from my time in Hanoi. The dish this time? Another Hanoi speciality: Banh cuon.

They are very thin steamed rice flour pancakes which get rolled around a filling of minced pork & cloud ear mushroom (the dried type which is also used in all sorts of spring rolls, soups etc), and are finished with final topping of crispy shallots.

I found the vendor in question on a great food alley just off Hanoi's central market; there must have been 60 different dishes on offer in this poky little street.

The business of steaming the super-thin pancakes, getting them off in one piece and rolling them up is clearly pretty skillful.

Though this guy was making it look easy, knocking out plate after plate:

A mushroom cloud of steam as our man lifts the lid and whips off another delicate pancake

Here's the plate he sent in my direction:

My plate of banh cuon,along with basket of greens and bowl of sauce

It came with a sweet-watery-vinegary dipping sauce, probably a version of nuoc cham but not the standard one I was used to. I also got some Vietnamese pork cake thing floating in there, and some herbage alongside.

Dipping sauce (with spongy pork cake & deep fried shallots floating around in it)

If you ask me Banh cuon is a nice dish. But you do have to like the slightly chewy, slippery texture of steamed rice noodle. Works for me, though I can see how it wouldn't be everyone's cup o tea.

Next post will be Hanoi's famous 'cha ca' - one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes.

Bun Cha, Hanoi

2011-04-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

Lunch in Hanoi: Bun Cha.

My Vietnamese food trail has now reached the Northern capital: Hanoi. I really liked it up there, despite the weather reminding me a little too much of England. The small streets and old town made it a great place to explore and 'progress' seems ten years behind the southern capital Saigon, in a good way.

Here's the first of a few posts I'm going to do on what I ate in the city. I only had two days there, which was just enough time to tick off the classic Hanoi dishes (and probably not all of them). The first being Bun Cha...

There are no surprises here, this dish is made up of the classic Vietnamese elements:grilled meat, basket of herbs, plate of rice noodles and broth. Plus nouc cham dipping sauce, of course.

The meat is pork: minced pork patties seasoned with fish sauce sugar and garlic, and also strips of pork belly, marinated similarly. These are sandwiched inside one of those wire racks the Vietnamese love (which i now consider essential BBQ kit) and then grilled over charcoal, often with the aid of a nearby electric fan. The result is as you'd hope: charred, caramelised smokey pork, moist on the inside.

These go in to a clear broth, sometimes with a few veggies in.

If you go to Hanoi don't miss Bun Cha. It's not hard to spot: just look for those grills, fans and wire racks.

That's about it really. Oh and the herbs: in the basket above I had perilla (red & green), some lettuce type stuff, sweet (or 'Thai') basil, and mint. All spanking fresh.

More Hanoi posts shortly.

Mystery grilled chicken sticks, Hoi An

2011-04-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

Here's another of the many delicious things I ate in Hoi An: marinated chicken strips, expertly grilled to smoky carmelised perfection over charcoal and served with fresh rice papers, herbs, lettuce, cucumber etc and an interesting chilli sauce:

Grilled chicken - ready to be doused with sauce, garnished with greens and rolled in rice paper.

Unfortunately I can't tell you much about this dish as a) I'd never eaten it before, and b) my Vietnamese doesn't go much beyond 'hello' and 'thank you', and the lady who made it for me could speak even less English.

The best I can do is guess.... I think the marinade had lemongrass, garlic, sugar, fish sauce & fresh turmeric in, and probably a few more things besides, and I have a feeling the 'interesting' sauce was given it's meaty body by chicken livers. It was very tasty indeed, and nice to have a break from the ubiquitous nuoc cham too, much as I like the stuff.

Please do chip in if anyone knows the name or can add a little more detail here; it was really delicious and I'd like to have a go at knocking up my own version when I'm back in Blighty.

Smokey charcoal-grilled morsels.... in all their glory.

A squatting maestro at work. If my Vietnamese wasn't so crap I might have got the recipe.

Thai banquet cookery class - 28th June

2011-04-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

Quick post to mention I'm doing a Thai cookery class with Divertimenti cookery school in London on 28th of June.

There's still a few places left, so see this link if you're interested.

As ever if you'd like to do a cookery lesson but this date doesn't work for you, or if you're interested in me cooking a dinner party for you, then drop me an email: oliverandyj@googlemail.com

Andy

Cau Lau, Hoi An

2011-04-11T02:33:00.000-07:00

In terms of the food, Hoi An was probably my favourite stop on my whitsle-stop eating tour of Vietnam.

Here's a dish the town is famous for: Cau Lau.

A lunchtime noodle dish with thinly sliced bbq/roasted pork, a thin porky gravy-like sauce, various greens and herbs, and finally it's topped with crisp-fried squares of noodle dough for added texture.

The noodles are worth a special mention; they're supposed to be made using the water from one or two particular Hoi An wells. Don't ask me why. But they are made differently...the result is a light brown noodle, which has an almost nutty flavour and is pleasingly chewy and satisfying.

Served with some tasty condiments, and eaten squatting on a miniscule plastic stool, it makes an ideal lunch:

My dining partner was clearly loving her bowl just as much:

Thai & SEAsian dinner parties, private catering & cookery teaching.

2011-04-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

So, a quick note to say that, this summer, I'm going to be available to do some private catering and cookery teaching...

I'm back from my stint in Thailand & Vietnam in early May and I'm going to be doing some dinner party catering and a cookery teaching.

I'll be focusing on my passion: Thai and Southeast Asian food.

So, if you're interested in a Thai or SEAsian dinner party, canapé event or alike then please get in touch.

As far as cookery teaching goes I am going to doing some cookery school work (e.g in June I'll be doing a 'Thai banquet' class with the London cookery school Divertimenti), but I'm also happy to do private lessons. So, again, just get in touch.

The best way to contact me is by email: oliverandyj@googlemail.com

Thanks

Andy

'Bun Nem Nuong'

2011-03-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

'Nem nuong' are Vietnamese grilled pork patties. The ones pictured below I ate at some stall right next to Binh Tay market in Saigon...when I walked past I wasn't hungry, but they looked and smelt so good it would have been foolish not to sample.

I'm glad I did. I honestly don't think I can remember eating nicer pieces grilled pork.

Observe the juicy slow-grilled porky goodness:

I think the pork mix is pretty simple: nice fatty pork, minced garlic, a little salt, sugar and fish sauce. As well as the patties there was some skewered pork (shoulder, I think), which was equally tasty.

This was 'bun nem nuong', the 'bun' meaning they are served with rice vermicelli. You also get a bunch of herbs mixed through, some pickled carrot & diakon, plus roasted peanuts with some nuoc cham drizzled over. It's one delicious plate; Vietnamese food at it's best.

As well as the noodle version you also sometimes see the meatballs served with rice papers, when it's called 'nem nuong cuon'. Then you use the rice papers to roll up chunks of meat along with things like sliced sour star fruit and green banana plus lots of herbs, dip and eat. Funnily enough I actually first ate this in Laos (there's fair bit of Vietnamese food to be found there).... see snap here.

The stall also did fresh-pressed sugar cane juice (that's the beaker of yellow stuff in above shot). Delicious, but it was bit sweet to go with the sweet grilled pork and dipping sauce. My blood sugar was off the chart by time I'd finished.

A beer would work better. I'll know for next time.

Seafood BBQ, Mui Ne

2011-03-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

Al fresco seafood BBQ, Mui Ne: the unlucky prawns, crabs, fish, lobster, turtle (yes turtle) etc.... are kept live in tanks of sea water.

You point, and the nice Vietnamese people slap it on the grill.

They're good at it too; I went back two nights running and everything I ate was perfectly cooked (which isn't as easy as it sounds).

A few snaps:

Crabs and lobster are grilled plain, then served with lime, white pepper & salt:

Little sweet tasting scallops get a brushing with spring onion oil:

...& tiger prawns get a simple garlic marinade:

Then you just buy a few beers, and perhaps a french bagette or two, and you're set.

(I didn't try the turtle).

Seafood 'hot pot', Mui Ne

2011-03-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a seafood hot pot I ate on the beach in Mui Ne (a small beach town in the South of Vietnam).

I'm normally a bit suspicious of something with a name like 'Seafood hot pot': can mean anything really...perhaps there's no recipe but the kitchen just boil up some seafood odds 'n' ends with a token vegetable or two.

Not so this one!

It was a perfect seaside bowl of food: a very tasty broth sweetened by the chunks of juicy pineapple, soured with fresh tamarind (the seeds from the pods were in the bottom of the bowl once I’d slurped it dry). Floating temptingly about in it were big pieces of v.fresh veg: tomato, okra and spongy-juicy taro stem – a perfect soup vegetable, and one which I’ve only come across in Vietnam.

Plus of course seafood: squid, chunks of white fish and prawns (the Vietnamese tend to eat the small ones shell and all, which works for me). I think the recipe was based on a soup which comes from the Mekong region called 'Canh chua cá'.

Delicious. Plus the kind of dish that you can feel doing you good; swim in the sea everyday and eat this...you'd live past 100. Guaranteed.

Banh Xeo, Saigon style

2011-03-20T05:06:00.001-07:00

Banh xeo are Vietnamese savoury stuffed crisp pancake things. I've eaten them before in London based Viet restaurants but, not surprisingly, it turns out they taste much better in Vietnam.

They're made from a rice flour batter. Egg?....nope, no egg. Powdered turmeric gives them the shocking yellow colour and they tend to come with pork, prawns and beansprouts inside. The one below was also dotted with cooked mung beans, no complaints from me. They're light, crispy and delicious, at least good ones are anyway (I imagine the shit ones are heavy, soggy and 'orrible!).

Alongside you get, in true Vietnamese style, a small hedgerow of harvested greens. With mine I spotted mustard leaves, lettuce, Asian/Thai basil, mint, perilla and betel leaves.

You're also furnished with a bowl of nuoc cham, which is the ubiquitous dipping sauce over here. It's basically made from sweetened fish sauce, with some lime juice and/or vinegar, a little water and v.often has some garlic & chilli floating round in it. Very nice it is too.

The idea is that you get stuck in and sort of fill your palm with a bed of greens n herbs, tear off a chunk of your pancake, place it ontop and then roll the whole lot up as best you can. Finally you dunk this tasty parcel in the nuoc cham and down the hatch it goes.

I went to a streetside place called Banh Xeo 46a (see here) which, according to the people in the know (like the guy who writes www.noodlepie.com), is supposed to be the place to go in Saigon for them. Far as I could tell they were bang on the money, but then what would I know?

Having never cooked one myself I wouldn't dream of offering up a recipe, but this looks like a good one

See pics below.

p.s this is the Saigon version but apparently there are Banh Xeo variations galore as you head North (which I am currently doing).... so will report back.

Saigon style Banh xeo (nuoc cham and mountain of herbaciousness in the background):

I gobbled it down in record time, and then ate another:

Rice noodle factory, Mekong Delta

2011-03-20T03:06:00.000-07:00

,
Just come back to Saigon after a few days in the Mekong Delta. Above's a snap of small noodle factory I poked my snout into down there....

Looks like they're making rice papers at first glance but it's actually noodles. Not the fresh no-need-to-cook type you eat so often in Vietnam (which are made from cooked rice), this method uses raw broken rice grains and produces a large rice paper sort o thing.

These they dry in the sun for few hours, before running them through a big pasta cutter type machine.

Out come fine dry-ish noodles, which are bagged up and driven to market on the back of a motorbike (this being the only option, as there's just a dust track leading out from the place).

The whole operation was v.rustic - mud floor, chickens clucking around etc, but all pretty skillful and efficient too. Just like so many things in Asia.

Seafood bonanza (errr...somewhere near Bangkok)

2011-03-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

Ok so, despite posting something every other day (more or less), I'm already getting bit behind in terms of writing up the interesting stuff I've eaten / want to blog about.

Hence I'm currently in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam) but am posting a meal I ate back in Thailand.

Will get back toi Vietnam after this entry but first wanted to stick up few pics of a really good Thai meal I had a few days ago with Bo an Dylan (of Bo.Lan restaurant, Bangkok).

The restaurant was a fairly posh Thai for fairly well-off Thais place about an hour outside Bangkok. I can't claim to have sniffed it out mysleft, Bo had been there before and it was a favourite of her parents who, like most Thais, are pretty into Their food.

Here's what we ate, in no particular order...

Thai oysters served with crispy shallots, chilli jam and some fern-like vegetable i've forgotten the name of.

A lon (which is a sort of coconut cream based relish, almost a curry at times) of lobster and minced pork

Crisp soft shell crab stir fried with curry powder, chilli and spring onion.

Raw mantis shrimps marinated ceviche stlye in lime, chilli & garlic

A sour curry ('gaang som') of seafood, mainly lobster as far as i could tell!

A type of red curry called 'gaang krua' with snails (freshwater, I think) and bamboo shoots.

And, yep, the food was all really good. The rich and delicious lon, crispy & spicy crab and the oysters were the highlights.

It all got the thumbs up from Bo and Dylan, which is high praise as far as I'm concerned.

All that food was arguably a little excessive for three people....but wtf...twas just the job to put some meat back on my skinny chef bones!

Breakfast in Ho Chi Minh City

2011-03-17T02:14:00.000-07:00

Breakfast in HCM City: the first of many bowls of Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) i will be eating on my whistle-stop trip from South to North.

Palm Sugar

2011-03-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

So, as mentioned, I've been working at the top Bangkok restaurant Bo.Lan the last few days.

But! On Monday's the place is closed and the owners Bo and Dylan (hence the name of the place) kindly invited me to come with them to visit their palm sugar supplier in the countryside outside Bangkok.

It was fascinating. The suppliers Bo & Dylan have tracked down make top quality stuff - totally unadulterated (unlike much of the stuff produced nowadays, which often has other sugars or chemicals added), soft, buttery and delicious.

The family who produce it live on the plantation and make the stuff by hand, the same way it's been done for generations...cue pic of wise old palm sugar dude:

I'm no expert on the process, but from what I could gather, and what Dylan told me, I believe it goes like this....

The trees (coconut palms) are tapped for sap by chopping the where the coconuts would grow, and twice a day the farmers shimmy up the trees and collect the containers.

Check out the rustic ladders they use:

Then the palm nectar is boiled down....

Until thick....

Then passed through muslin....

And now it's stirred & worked with this special palm sugar wand thingo.

Here's the old dude again, giving us a masterclass:

When it firms up, and the right consistency is achieved, it's ready. The warm sugar is then either poured into 40kg containers or set in molds into 1kg blocks.

This finished product, ready for market....or, in our case, for Bo & Dylan, who left with a good 100kg of the stuff in the back of their car.

The whole thing was a privilege to watch. The family were also ridiculously nice people - feeding us fruit and chopping down various things they grow on the farm & trying to persuade us to take them.

So nice to see how Bo & Dylan's passion for great produce, and willingness to pay a bit extra for it, helps to allow their suppliers to keep doing things in the time honored fashion instead of caving in to the pressure to produce something cheaper and quicker, but not as good.

Next post from Ho Chi Minh City!

Thai Wafers, Chinatown

2011-03-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

These are a sweet street snack common all over Thailand. a crisp wafer made from various flours: rice flour, ground toasted lentils and mung beans - at least that's how we made them at Nahm London, where we had a version of them on as a dessert.

The fillings are pretty varied but usually include meringue, often golden sweetened egg strands and sometimes even sweetened shredded dried shrimp. Tasty crisp little morsels, Thais go mad for them.

p.s working at Bo.Lan at the moment, stunning food, will write about it soon.

First shift at Nahm Bangkok!

2011-03-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

Did an earlier-than-planned first shift at Nahm Bangkok last night!...

Went to say hello to David Thompson and, as they were crazy-busy that night (104 booked), he talked me into working.

I didn't put up much of a fight; I've been gagging to get in to that kitchen ever since I first heard murmurings of it opening. Plus I earned myself dinner for two in the process. Happy days!

I'll be writing about it plenty at a later date but suffice to say it was absolutely fascinating, and, surprise surprise, the food is amazing. Already looking forward to my next shift.

But!

First I've got my 4 days at Bo.Lan, starting today.

Andy

Produce @ Lamai market, Samui

2011-03-07T21:00:00.001-08:00

So I'm now back in Bangkok, about to start a few days working at the restaurant Bo.Lan. More on that soon.

In meantime here's a few snaps of produce from the local market in Lamai - a town on Ko Samui, the island I've just come from. Not a big place but jammed with interesting & v.fresh stuff.

Only 6 pics but could have taken a hundred...

Lunch on Ko Samui: kanom jeen nahm ya

2011-03-07T20:51:00.001-08:00

Currently on Ko Samui, not necessarily my Thai-island-of-choice (I came to meet a friend).

But! a) there are some nice beaches to be found and, just as important, b) there's some interesting eats to be sniffed out too.

Looking for interesting local food is, strangely, sometimes easier in the more touristy spots. Sounds stupid? Yes it does. But more tourists = more Thai people (giving them massages, hiring them scooters and selling various tat etc...), and these Thai people tend to want to eat some decent grub come dinner time. So if you can find where they eat, then you're away.

For example: in my case I'm staying near Lamai - a pretty busy beach on Samui. There's loads of 'farang' (westerners) tanning their bellies, eating spaghetti bolognese & bombing around on scooters. But this, somewhat ugly, beach town does have a nice central market with tasty local grub on offer, and some really good looking fresh produce (will stick some pics up in my next post).

Yesterday I had lunch at said market & ate 'kanom jeen nahm ya'. "WTF is kanom jeen nahm ya?!" I hear you cry. Well kanom jeen are old style Thai fermented rice noodles and they tend to be eaten as a brunch/lunch dish accompanied by some variety of curry sauce / nahm prik, plus fresh vegetables and herbs. Far as i can tell there are hundreds of variations.

This particular one 'nahm ya' has fresh white fish pounded into a sauce made from, among other things, dried red chillies, grachai and galangal. The lady on the stall gave me a big old bag of fresh cucumber, cabbage, snake beans, fried dry red chillies & pickled mustard greens to eat with it, plus a big old twig of both Thai sweet basil and lemon basil:

The whole lot cost 35 Baht....about 70p!

First 24hrs in Bangkok

2011-03-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

So i've arrived in Bangkok.

Pleased to say it doesn't seem to have changed all that much, staying in the same guesthouse I did last trip and nearby alleys of street stalls are still doing a roaring trade. I even recognise some of the characters cooking up the good stuff. All very reassuring!

Busy sorting stuff out, planning the next few weeks. But made time for a massage, obviously, and to head to Chinatown for dinner ... the place is buzzing like always:

Much more (& hopefully some videos....yes videos!) to come soon.

St John

2011-03-02T05:48:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I fly to Bangkok for a 2 months eating & cooking S-E Asian food (see previous post)...and so, last night, by way of a final treat (& in contrast to all the Asian grub I'll soon be scoffing) the girlfriend and I had dinner at St John.

Anyone who knows anything about restaurants in London knows this restaurant, and the towering reputation of it's chef-founder Fergus Henderson.

It didn't disappoint. We ate, amongst other things,...brown shrimps with white cabbage, pigeon & trotter pie (for 2) and ginger cake with vanilla ice cream & butterscotch sauce.

The dishes read almost too simple; you're not entirely sure how they'll be delicious ("errr is it just cabbage and shrimp then...?") but, at St John, they always are.

And they were: the brown shrimp came in a pile of finely shredded dressed cabbage, dotted with delicious little capers, the pie was deep, savoury and moreish; the dessert was in the style of your granny's but with a taste about 10 notches up - the sauce like velvet with just the perfect amount of burnt sugar bitterness tempering the sweetness.

As much as the food, the thing I like about St John is the restaurant's philosophy & atmosphere. It's one of London's most successful and admired restaurants, but it's not pretentious. The food is amazingly simple but utterly delicious. The dishes are the result of finding amazing ingredients and doing just enough to show them off, and nothing more. Everything on the plate is there for the eating, not to impress the eye, and if that means a dish of just four ingredients, then so be it.

It seems to me the people who eat at St John are real foodies. Not the flash types you get at Royal Hospital road, but a fairly bohemian mix of people who happen to know good food. The food is not cheap, but £83 for three courses, a shared dessert and a bottle of red isn't that pricey either...you can get some very shit meals in London for that money.

If I was going to open a restaurant then it would definitely be in the style of places like St John, Moro, Trullo etc - small & regularly changing menu, interesting simple food, relaxed atmosphere...

...just perhaps with bowls of rice instead of baskets of sourdough.

Next post from Bangkok!

Andy

St. JOHN Bar & Restaurant Smithfield
26 St John Street
London
EC1M 4AY
Tel: +44(020) 7251 0848

Leaving Nahm...and heading to Bangkok!

2011-02-21T05:07:00.000-08:00

After more than 18months the coming week will be my final one at Nahm London.... Heading back to SEAsia: I finish at the restaurant on the 1st of March, and fly to Bangkok for 2 months in Thailand (plus a side trip of 2 weeks in Vietnam) on the 3rd March. I'm going to be spending some time in the kitchen at Nahm Bangkok, but also in two other restaurants in Bangkok and one in Chumphon....plus as I say, two weeks eating in Vietnam. Plans still being finalised but suffice to say it should be an absolutely awesome trip, and one where can take my knowledge of Thai and Vietnamese food up up a notch. I'm planning to put loads of stuff up on my blog while out there....pics, recipes, videos of street food and insights from the kitchens of some amazing restaurants. So watch this space. Leaving Nahm: I'm sorry to be leaving such a special restaurant. I've learnt a amazing amount working for Matthew Albert (the head chef), David Thompson and alongside some really good chefs over the last 18 months at Nahm. Coming out of Masterchef as an amateur cook I felt it was important to understand how far I still had to go, and so working in a top kitchen alongside some great chefs doing a cuisine I'm passionate about was, for me, the only thing to do. I've still got a long way to go in terms of where I want to be as a chef, but I've definitely come a long way from where i started before joining Nahm, and I worked a good number of sections...entrées, salads, relishes, soup, stir-fry and pastry. There's no other restaurant in Europe where you can learn Nahm's unique food, the cooking techniques or be exposed to such an amazing array of South-East Asian produce, and with some amazing Thai chefs in the kitchen it's been very special place to work. There's a great team of people there and I will miss it. I believe the greatest compliment you can pay David Thompson is to state the fact that he has inspired almost every chef that has ever worked for him. I am no exception; David has totally changed the way I look at Thai food and the experience has made me 100% certain that South-East Asian (and especially Thai) food is my passion & my vocation. DT: the main man. And when I get back.... When I'm back from my two months away I'm going to be doing some private catering and other freelance cooking work for a couple of months, perhaps even longer. So! If you're interested in having a dinner party or alike catered by me, or some South-East Asian cookery lessons over the summer, then please feel free to drop me an email: oliverandyj@googlemail.com And after that? Well I'm planning to work in another top Thai or SEAsian restaurant, exactly where I'm not yet sure. Andy

Not to be tried at home

2011-02-01T05:12:00.000-08:00

Me setting fire to stir fry section.

Morito

2011-01-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

Moro & Morito (this also happens to be the view from my front door).

Had lunch at Morito today. It's the Tapas bar version of Sam & Sam Clark's ever-popular restaurant Moro, which is next door.

I actually live opposite so have no excuse for not having been already. Plus I have previously spent a week in the kitchen at Moro and am already a fan of their food.

The legendary Fergus Henderson was just finishing his lunch at the bar as I sat down, always a good sign.

I had a spiced fish soup infused with Iranian dried limes (£4.50), and a plate of white beans, aioli and butifarra (a white Catalan pork sausage (£5.50), plus some interesting breads and glass of really good pomegranate juice.

All delicious.

Morito
32 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QL
(no bookings, walk-in only)

p.s for a more comprehensive review see here.

A chef's guide to sharpening knives

2011-01-17T05:17:00.000-08:00

Apols for the lack of blog-action of late, been pretty busy at the restaurant in the run up to Christmas.

But! Am now going to make up for lost time, starting with promised post on sharpening knives. A follow up to my previous 'guide to knives' post, this is a (hopefully) helpful guide to sharpening keeping them sharp.

Two key points to start:

1) Sharpening your knife/knives is well worth it - a cheap knife kept sharp is much more useful than an expensive knife allowed to go dull.

2) If you're a home cook then the effort required to keep your knives sharp is minimal - one, maybe two pieces, of equipment, a bit of know-how and a few minutes of your time every so often is all that's needed.

Whether chef or occasional home cook, a sharp knife will make your life sooo much easier in the kitchen. You get things done faster and with less effort, your knife skills to improve more quickly and, frankly, you just cant do do lots of things (think a fillet fish, score a pork belly, finely chop a shallot etc) at all unless you have a sharp knife.

Most importantly you'll enjoy cooking more with a nice sharp knife.

So what's the best way to keep your knife or knives sharp?

Well, there's basically three categories here:

1. A steel (a hand-held sharpening stick)

2. A stone (a block of special sharpening stone)

3. Home use sharpening gadgets.

Home use gadgets

So lets start with the most user friendly method first: home use gadgets. There's all sorts of run-through and pull through contraptions out there which claim to be effective and fool-proof sharpeners. Many are undoubtedly fairly crap, so be a bit cautious if you've got expensive knives you don't fancy ruining, but there are some good ones out there.

From what I know the run-through water wheels produce the best results and are easy to use and not especially expensive. They look like this:

A run through water wheel gismo - a good easy use choice.

Here's one for around the £20 mark. These do really work and, if you follow the basic instructions, are pretty fool proof.

They're a good option for the home cook.

If you want to see one in action here's a short video from The Japanese Knife Company (he uses one at about 4:30 minutes in):

As the guy says in the vid these multi wheel sharpeners will, with a bit of work on the coarsest setting, be able to bring a blunt knife back to a place where you can then sharpen it up to a good edge.

So next are the more cheffy options - steels and stones....

A steel

A steel is basically a sharpening stick with a handle (the ones you see show-off chefs attempting to wave around faster than each other). The key thing to remember here is that a steel will sharpen your knife quite superficially i.e make it quite quickly a little sharper, but it wont last long, and it won't do enough to make a blunt knife sharp.

Chef's use steels as a handy way to give their knives a quick boost of sharpness e.g if you're just about to fillet a fish. Chef's tend to use stones before or after work, whereas during work when you're busy you have a steel to hand.

At home you could probably get away with just having a steel - as long as your knife or knives are fairly sharp to start with, and you keep in the habit of using it fairly regularly so they never get too dull.

So which one to buy?

They range from really coarse steel rods to very expensive ceramic numbers. The ceramic ones tend to be high quality but can break easily, the best option in my opinion and the one that most chefs I know go for, is a diamond edged steel. These are really light and durable, and not expensive: you can pick up one for about £20 quid e.g this one.

Here's a slightly random but helpful video of some American guy in his cook shop demonstrating the basics of the technique needed for using a steel.

A diamond edge steel - a good buy at under 20 notes.

N.B it's worth saying that, as with the gadgets above, don't use that cheap 'n' nasty steel you got free with your £20 knife set on your expensive new knife - you'll do more harm than good. Better to buy a new one or use a different method.

A stone

If you're a chef, or want to really get into sharpening your knives, then investing in a stone is the way to go.

Using a stone is really satisfying, and, once you get the technique down you can get a knife razor razor sharp, and then using it fairly regularly will mean you'll keep it that way.

Stones come in different grades - indicating how rough/smooth they are. As I understand it there's different grading systems - with the Japanese one 100 is really coarse, 1000 really fine, I believe there's also a US grading system which runs up to 30000 or something.

The point being you need a coarse stone to grind a fairly dull knife back to a state where you can then use a fine (finishing) stone to make it properly sharp.

I use a fine (Japanese 1000 grade) Kin stone (the waterstone WA1000 on this list) to keep my knives sharp. I try to sharpen them about twice a week which means it's regular enough so that they stay pretty sharp all the time so I don't tend to need to grind down the knives using a coarser stone.

But generally a good option is to have a two sided stone, which has both rough and coarse grades. This means you can both grind down and finish a blade.

A two sided whetstone - the cheffy choice.

Anyway. Rather than me ramble on.... better to watch the Japanese Knife Co video embedded above, and then this, the second part below. Together they explain brilliantly the technique and principles behind using a whetstone on a knife:

It's worth mentioning that there are also ceramic stones available which don't need water or pre-soaking, but they are quite a lot more pricey (as you can see from the prices on the Kin sharpening page).

So that's my take on the slightly confusing world of sharpening - hope it's helpful, definitely watch the vids above, they're really useful.

Andy

A chef's guide to knives

2010-11-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

I thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve learnt about knives since becoming a full time chef, and give a few knife-themed recommendations, for what it’s worth.

I’m by no means some all-knowledgeable sushi knife master, but being a chef in a good kitchen you naturally learn a good knife from a bad one, and get an idea of what you need...and what you don’t.

Here’s a snap of most of my knives - I keep the majority of them in my knife roll at the restaurant every day, a couple I keep at home in my kitchen.

The obvious thing to say here is that working in a restaurant means I need a fair few more types of knife than you'd ever really need cooking at home (see section on that further down). Plus there's a couple of specialist ones e.g for small Asian fruit.

So, as a chef, here's what I've found I've needed...

A large 'chef's' knife
A second medium sized knife
A boning knife
A small knife
A turning knife
A serrated knife
A speed peeler
A steel, and a stone.
Other stuff - I recon a peeler, fish tweezers, scissors & a microplane
Specialist things - e.g oyster shucker, curved fruit knife etc.

So, for those interested, here’s the basic groups of knives seen above:

A ‘chef’s knife’

This is a longer bladed all round knife. It’s probably the most used and useful knife both in a professional kitchen and is the best place to start for a general use knife in the home kitchen. Used especially for cutting vegetables, basic (dicing, slicing...) of meat and fish, and also perfectly suitable for finer knife skills stuff like julienne (v.fine strips) or brunoise (fine dice).

A 'second' knife

I use a smaller second knife, it's a santoku style knife which i try and keep extra sharp, and use especially for finer knife skills stuff which, at Nahm, tends to mean things like lime leaf chiffonade, chilli julienne and alike.

A smaller blade means a bit more control and it’s nice to have a separate knife from the one I use for the less precise more blunting activities like slicing tough lemongrass and galangal.

Here's my santoku, it's made by Kin (more on them below):

A boning knife

A boning knife is a designed for meat e.g jointing a chicken or removing the bone from a leg of lamb. It needs to be sharp, but also robust as it’s going to come up against bone and cartilage – you don’t want to be using your best handmade Japanese knife for this kind of thing. For me i a cheap but reliable brand like Victorinox is perfect here.

Filleting knife

A filleting knife is basically for fish. Normally medium length and slender, sometimes flexible (which is especially useful when filleting flat fish) but many chefs just use a smallish sharp general use knife for fish. Personal preference really.

Other stuff?

Other knives I regularly use:

A serrated 'bread' knife for bread, tomatoes and for larger fruit prep.

A small sharp knife for carving fruit and for other assorted fiddly slicing jobs.

A small curved 'turning' knife - for peeling shallots, cleaning certain small fruits and other bits n bobs.

A 'rambutan' knife (yellow handle in pic) - for taking the stones out of small fruit like longans or rambutans and similar fiddly jobs.

A speed peeler - essential £2 piece of kit. Fish tweezers, oh and scissors (ideally ones strong enough to cut the backbone out of a chicken or two)

A microplane - v.useful all purpose grater - especially if, your partial to finishing all your dishes Jamie-style with a showering of lemon zest or parmesan (accompanying Essex boy commentary is optional).

A steel and a stone - a steel being the handy way to quickly (but fairly superficially) sharpen knives. A stone is where you do the serious sharpening (think I'm going to do further post just on the subject of sharpening).

So what do you need at home?

Not too much really. Quality over quantity is defo the way to go methinks:

One good quality medium sized chef's knife
Some means of sharpening above knife - steel stone or one of those run through things
A basic serrated knife
A small sharp knife
Other obvious stuff - scissors, peeler etc, plus fish tweezers are probably worth having around.

As mentioned above less is almost certainly more here: if you just buy one or two good quality knives (i.e instead of a whole jumbled knife set) then you can probably afford better quality, plus you'll probably take better care of what you do have.

Generally buying a 'knife set' will mean at the very least buying stuff you don't need / wont use, and, unless you're paying a fortune, the knives in question will probably be shite too!

Final point here is that I believe it's much better for your knife skills to be using one or two good quality knives regularly rather than picking up a different one every time you want to chop a carrot - being familiar with one good knife means your chopping will improve more quickly, and you'll probably cut yourself less too!

So what to buy?

I'd say spend most if not all of your budget on one quality general use knife, then buy a basic bread knife, small knife etc if you don't have already.

So for your main knife....well it's personal preference, but a medium length chef's knife is probably the best bet here.

In terms of brand and here's couple of options:

At the cheaper but reliable end are European brands like Wusthof and Sabatier e.g this or this

But you want a really high quality & beautiful knife then Japanese is probably the way to go. Many people instantly think Global...which are ok - they're reliable but fairly pricey and very much mass produced.

Personally I like Kin knives - they make beautiful high quality Japanese knives, and you can buy them online. I'd say the 210mm knife from their professional range would be a great choice for an all rounder: www.kinknives.com/2professional.htm

There's loads of options on their site so have a browse, or if you want go chat to them and try before you buy then look out for their stalls at Taste of London / the BBC Good Food shows etc.

Finally if want to fondle some expensive Japanese knives & are happy to blow a lot of cash ...then head to the Japanese Knife Co shop near Baker St tube in central London www.japaneseknifecompany.com

Their knives do not come cheap but it's worth a trip just for a look round.

So that's my 10cents worth on knives, hope it's vaguely useful / of interest.

Andy

Oh and, as mentioned, I'm going to do a follow up post on what I've learnt about keeping your knives sharp, which is probably the most important part of all...coming soon.

Roast duck soup with prawn wontons & Chinese kale

2010-11-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

This is a my version of a simple, but utterly delicious, soup I ate in Chinatown Bangkok on my last visit (see the pic in my original post here). I remember being shocked at how tasty it was - not full of complex flavours like so much of Thai food, but just perfectly balanced and with each ingredient delicious in it's own right.

I say Thai food...the boundaries between Thai and Chinese food are sometimes pretty blurred, especially in Bangkok. As far as I understand it this can be called Thai food, but the but the tastes and techniques all originate from China (but then so do so many things - almost all noodles, the techniques of steaming, stir-frying etc etc).

Whether Thai or Chinese it's a delicious dish, which is obviously the most important thing.

Ok, so, needless to say, my home-made version didn't quite reach the heights of the one eaten in Bangkok (the vendor that sold me that bowl of goodness had probably been roasting her ducks and perfecting her wonton filling for 25 years or something), but it was pretty good for a first run. So here's a general recipe....

For starters I picked up half a roast duck from Chinatown, plus some Chinese kale, oh and some fresh wonton skins (though you could use the ones you find in the freezer sections of Asian stores). Plus a handful of raw prawns (there's a really cheap fresh seafood supplier hidden in a back alley just off Chinatown...here).

I made a simple Chinese / Thai style chicken stock base - using a couple of chicken carcasses which i pre blanched and rinsed then covered with cold water and add few mild flavourings...couple of Chinese cabbage leaves, clove of garlic, couple of white peppercorns, few ginger scraps, couple of coriander roots and spring onion trims.

I then took the meat off the bought 1/2 roast duck and added the bones from that to the stock pot too.

The rest is pretty simple...for the wonton filling I peeled, de-veined the prawns and then chopped them quite fine. I added finely chopped ginger & some spring onions and seasoned with pinch of white sugar, white pepper, salt and teaspoon of light soy. Then just balled up the filling and placed on wonton skins, painted edges of the skins with little water and brought up the sides to encase.

To finish I strained the stock - it had simmered for an hour and a half or something - then added some to a pan (use the rest for soups, curries, in stir fries etc), brought it to the boil and seasoned lightly with little oyster sauce, light soy, salt, white pepper and pinch white sugar. Then added some Chinese kale pieces, followed by the wontons a minute later.

In the bottom of the soup bowls I put some sliced spring onions and a couple of coriander leaves, plus a nice amount of sliced roast duck. By this time the wontons and veg were just cooked and ready to be ladled over with the hot stock.

Few dots of roasted sesame oil shaken over each steaming bowl and the soup was finished.

Only ten years more practice and I'll be good enough to push a soup cart round the streets of Bangkok.

Pic also by Wix.

Wing beans!

2010-10-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

Wing beans - they're beans with.... errr wings.

I'd seen them before in Asian stores (they're used all the way from India to Vietnam & China) but not eaten them until recently....

...Green Papaya - a Vietnamese restaurant on Mare St (in Hackney) introduced them to me. I ate there with a few friends and the wing beans along with a crisp smoked tofu number were, unexpectedly, the most popular dishes on a well packed table.

I was doing some Asian food the other night and thought I'd do my own rendition of the dish. I wasn't certain what Green Papaya used i settled on dressing them with Chinese black rice vinegar, light soy, pinch of sugar and some roasted sesame oil and then scattering with toasted sesame seeds.

Very easy, but it came out how I'd hoped: crunchy interesting beans with sharp, salty, & slightly sweet sesame dressing.

See pic, which comes courtesy of professional snapper friend Wix (see www.jameswicksphoto.com), and basic recipe below...

Wing beans with black vinegar dressing:

Ingredients:

Two generous handfuls of winged beans, cut into 2cm pieces
Salt
A tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds

Dressing: 2 tablespoons of Chinese black vinegar, 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, 1 teaspoon white sugar & 1 teaspoon water.

Method:

Blanch the beans in salted boiling water for 2- 3mins, drain and then briefly refresh under cold running water (just a few seconds - so the beans stay warm but don't continue to cook and loose their bright green colour).

Mix the dressing ingredients together, taste and adjust if needed, then toss the warm beans in the dressing and finish with sprinkled toasted sesame seeds.

Would go well alongside many Chinese style dishes e.g some ginger-spring onion-soy steamed fish thing, or a slow braised hot pot (i.e rather than with something like a coconut based curry).

More recipes v.soon.

Sushi of Shiori

2010-10-23T03:44:00.000-07:00

Just quick note to give a thumbs up to a little sushi restaurant I discovered for the first time the other day.

Sushi of Shiori is near Euston / Regents park, on Drummond St (which is also packed with cheap Indian eateries).

The place is small and somewhat pokey but the couple who own it clearly run a tight ship. We had decent yakatori but the unagi nigiri (grilled marinated eel on top of sushi rice mound), super fresh sushi selection, and a bowl of miso soup good enough to bathe in (a Wallace-ism that), were the highlights. Nice green tea ice cream too.

See London Eater's great review and beautiful snaps here

144 Drummond Street, NW1 2PA

p.s will have more of my own snaps up here soon as my camera is back in action.

Thai Street Food - finally published!

2010-10-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

Following the theme of my last post (i.e banging on about what my boss, David Thompson, is up to) just a quick note to say: David's new book Thai Street Food has just been published in the UK.

We've had a copy in the kitchen at Nahm for 8 months now as it was published almost a year ago in Oz, but the UK release was postponed on account of those naughty bankers causing a recession over here.

I have my copy now, and, not surprisingly it's pretty special. David's been working on it for years and he's not a man who churns out a book a year or does them by halves. It's massive and is packed full of stunning pics - of both general Thai street life & of the vast array of food you find on the street out there.

Plus, of course, there's tonnes of (fascinating, delicious, challenging...) recipes - everything from breakfast stall dishes, to weird n wonderful street snacks, to curries and so on...there are also sections on Kanon jin noodles and the food of Bangkok's Chinatown.

Not all of the recipes are as complex in technique, or characterised by the need for mad ingredients you'll not find unless you happen to be walking round a Bangkok morning market; more than a few are definitely do-able for a home cook.

But even if you don't recon you'll cook a single thing from the book it's a hell of a coffee table number or, best of all, a guide to what delights you ought to be seeking out should you ever find yourself on the streets of Bangkok, Chiang Mai or Hat Yai.

By way of a sneak-peak check out some recipe extracts in this Observer FM article.

Nahm in Bangkok

2010-09-23T02:37:00.000-07:00

Apologies for lack of blog-action of late: I’ve been away on some much appreciated R & R in Turkey. Before that I also spent a few blessed days chilling and eating in Provence - where I had planned to take some food snaps to get on here, but my camera has mysteriously developed a serious technical hitch (of the not-working variety). Off to fix-it shop this morning.

Anyway, in the meantime a quick note to mention the fact that my boss David Thompson has just opened our sister restaurant Nahm in Bangkok. Pretty exciting (well for me at least).

David takes his food very seriously but, I'm sure, that for him, nothing gets more serious than feeding high end Thai food to Thais in Bangkok - he'll be in the kitchen 24/7....cooking, tasting, checking, yelling and tasting again.

Apparently the food is seriously good, but seriously uncompromising - e.g sometimes hot enough to injure you, sometimes using ingredients of the not-for-the-faint-hearted variety (hands-up for fish-gut infused curry?) etc.

Nahm BKK - some of the best Thai food in the world (so don't let the odd mention of fish guts put you off).

I spoke to David briefly yesterday (he rang the restaurant) and, amazingly, he seemed his normal wry self. He kindly said come out and visit, see the restaurant & he'll take me round town.

Not before Christmas I won't, but it would take some sort of ash cloud + natural disaster combo to keep me away in 2011.

Oh and see this article from Sunday's Observer Food Monthly on David, Nahm BKK and his new street food book (which is out in October, more on that soon).

Quick pork penang

2010-08-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick way of making a drier almost 'stir fried' type of curry. It works with various pastes & protein combos, here I made 'penang' curry with pork, peanuts, plus lots of long fresh chillies and Thai basil.

Penang is a variety of Thai curry paste, to be simplistic it's a form of red curry which generally includes peanuts. It tends to go work best with beef or even game (we have a venison penang on the menu at Nahm at the mo), but pork is nice here too.

I'm not going to give a long recipe here, instead below is a rough idea of how I cooked it.

Note: I used a bought curry paste here as was in a hurry. Home-made is obviously best (the nice Thai lady who writes 'Chez Pim' has a good paste recipe here), but if buying try and get a decent one from an Asian store e.g the Mae Ploy brand is common and not too shabby*.

This was for 4 people, with some other dishes alongside...

I started by taking about a cup of thick coconut cream and heating it in a wok until it 'cracks' (starts to split and go oily), then with the wok fairly hot I fried three generous tablespoons of my paste in this for at least 4-5 mins, stirring the whole time, and added some torn frozen lime leaves I had handy.

Next I seasoned this with palm sugar and fish sauce to taste (rich, salty and slightly sweet) then added 300g or so of sliced pork loin, and cooked for a minute of two more before pouring in a small cup of chicken stock (or use thin coconut milk) plus 4-5 diagonally sliced long red and /or green chillies and some roughly crushed roasted peanuts.

Finally I just checked the seasoning again, turned off the heat and stirred through a big handful of thai basil leaves.

Start to finish it takes only about ten mins. Pretty quick and not too taxing.

*note on bought curry pastes - I'd say go for red over green (a green curry paste relies more on fresh ingredients, hence the ones from a tub/jar/bag/tube are always so disappointing).

A.

p.s cheers to Ben for the pic

Koya - udon mania

2010-08-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

I ate at Koya with a couple of friends the other day. It's a compact Japanese canteen style joint in Soho, it's had foodies queueing out the door every night since it opened. The speciality at Koya is home-made udon noodles, served in various interesting ways, along with other Japanese sides, tempura etc.

My knowledge of Japanese food is limited to what I've eaten in few places around London and what I learnt in the week I spent at Nobu Berkely. So i won't bang on about dashi stocks and the process of making udon noodles by hand...because I'd probably have to make it up.

Suffice to say the food was really good. We ate various udon dishes...i had smoked mackerel with green leaves and a cold pouring sauce, friends had a beef curry and a hot miso pork version. All yummy and the noodles were good - chewy, fresh and satisfying.

As good, if not better, were the sides. We had braised cider pork belly, which was rich, sweet and tender (and served with a blob of brilliant fiery-fresh mustard) and tempura cod with lotus root chips. The cod was spot on, crisp, moist and cooked to perfection, served with a dipping sauce, some minced radish etc. We got beetroot and sweet potato crisps instead of the advertised lotus root but who cares, they were good too.

The tempura cod - banging!

£18 a head with a beer each, not bad. Plenty of other interesting variations on the menu too, so I'll be going back soon.

Koya - go try it, even if you're not big on udon-wormy-noodleness.

Koya
49 Frith St, Soho.
W1D 4SG

Thai style grilled tiger prawns

2010-08-17T02:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick Thai marinade, perfect for a tiger prawns on a BBQ or on a griddle pan. Barely a recipe really. Would work well with other seafood e.g squid or a whole fish like snapper or something.

All you need is some raw (grey, not pink) big prawns ideally still in their shells. A few hours before you want to cook them use your pestle and mortar this marinade (proportions below about right for 6-8 prawns)...

half a teaspoon of white peppercorns (if you only have black peppercorns then I reckon just leave them out)
2 sticks of lemongrass, tough outer layers peeled off
2 cloves of peeled garlic
5-6 washed coriander roots (you could use stalk at a push)
a 2cm piece of fresh yellow turmeric, peeled / a v.small pinch of tumeric powder
two bird's eye chillies ("scuds")
plus a splash of fish sauce & pinch of white sugar & sea salt

Start by pounding the peppercorns, then chop the lemongrass and throw that in with pinch of sea salt (seasons and helps with pounding-down process), crush until quite fine, now add your garlic and coriander roots, pound again, finally chop up the chillies and turmeric and add them, pound again. When it's all well smooth-ish add a tablespoon or so of fish sauce and pinch of white sugar, mix, and it's ready.

Prep your prawns. In the pic I've removed the shell from the body but left the tail and head on, but I often just leave the shell on as it stops them from drying out. Either way you want to remove the vein - if peeled then do this by cutting down the back to expose vein and pull it out, if you want to keep shell on then hook the vein out with a skewer or toothpick.

Now rub the prawns all over with the marinade and leave to marinate for at least an hour, several hours is better.

When you're ready to cook grill them until charred and just cooked on you BBQ, probably 2 mins on each side.

Serve with coriander and lime pieces to squeeze over, plus, if you like, a little bowl of fish sauce and lime juice with a sliced chilli in ("prik nahm pla") or a bought chilli sauce like siracha.

P.S you can obviously tweak this marinade in all sorts of ways e.g simplify it to just the garlic-coriander root-peppercorn combo, or for extra fragrance pound in some fresh galangal and finely chopped kaffir lime leaves ....etc etc

Thanks to Ben for the pic.

A Thai dessert - grilled banana & sticky rice parcels

2010-08-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

For the majority of the last 5 weeks or so I've been the pastry chef at the restaurant (with a sprinkling of salad, soup and stir-fry sections providing extra variety). I could ramble on about the weird n' wonderful ingredients involved - like jasmine-smoked flour, burnt coconut ash puddings, golden duck egg strands...etc, but I wont (however I will try and take some snaps of it all and get them up here).

Instead I thought I'd do a Thai dessert for the blog, not a complex one like we do at Nahm but something pretty simple which would be a nice way of ending a Thai meal (though traditionally Thais don't really do dessert as final course to a meal, they eat sweet things as snacks.... but hey).

I've eaten these several times on the street in Bangkok - see my snap below (in fact there's load of stalls selling this & similar good stuff right near the infamous Khao San Road...right here in fact), and they're damn good. Sometimes you find them steamed but I'm more a fan of the grilled version....

Ingredients (for 6+ bananas / portions):

One 'hand' small ripe Asian bananas (yep... you could sub in normal banana here).
A cup of white sticky rice.
2 cups of coconut cream (if using bought 'coconut milk' then this is rich, thicker part)
Caster sugar - about 5 tablespoons.
Pinch of salt
A panadanus leaf or two (if possible)
Some banana leaves.

Optional additions - a few tablespoons of extra coconut cream (you can thicken this by heating with a little whisked-in rice flour), and some toasted sesame seeds.

Method:

You need to soak the sticky rice in cold water overnight first. The next day drain the rice and put in a pan and add the two cups of coconut milk and the pandanus leaf (if using). Cook until the rice is softish and edible, about 15 / 20 mins. Take the pan off the heat, remove the leaf and season with the sugar and pinch of salt, add more sugar if needed - it should be quite sweet. Set aside and allow to cool.

Now get the bbq going or a griddle pan heating up peel your bananas (slice them if you like too, you'll need to if they are the large non-Thai variety). Wipe your banana leaves clean with a new cloth and take off the tough rib at the bottom and cut in to sections big enough to roll each banana in*. Now add a thinish layer of your cooked sweet rice (about the size of your banana) to one of these sections, place a banana on top then bit more of the rice. Now roll up and secure with a tooth pick or something (the Thai ladies who make these at street stalls would do some ninja folding here; I'm not really up that).

*N.B if the leaves are stiff & hard to roll then you might wanna first soften them briefly over the flame from your gas hob.

Grill these on a medium heat, turning a couple of times, for about 20 mins, by which time the banana should be nicely cooked and the rice hot, sweet and a bit caramelised in places.

Serve the banana parcels hot, garnished with the extra thickened cream & sesame seeds if using:

Yalla Yalla

2010-08-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we have 'late' starts at work (get in for 1:30pm). Lunch first is therefore needed, but all I ever seem to find in my fridge nowadays is old bits of galangal or, if I'm lucky, a lump of hard cheddar.

So am always on the lookout for place to get good cheap, tasty and quick food along my Holborn-Soho-Picadilly cycle route. Yalla Yalla is a Lebanese 'street food' cafe hidden in Soho which I'd heard about, and fairly cheap too, so fits the bill. I went there for pre work feed last wk...

There's no surprises on the menu...falafel, kibbeh, fattoush, grilled meats etc. But the food was good, and not expensive. I had a roast aubergine baba ganoush thing, tabbouleh, pittas and lamb sausage stew. Plus some fresh juice. All was really nice except the tabbouleh (I know it's supposed to be mostly herbs but this one was made from 99% old n tough parsley & tasted like hedge trimmings drenched in lemon juice), but home made lamb sausages in nicely-sour fresh tomato stew, good breads & an excellent smoky aubergine goop more than made up for it.

They do takeaway too.

www.yalla-yalla.co.uk

Thai quail with crispy garlic & chilli-vinegar sauce

2010-08-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a dish i cooked recently...inspired by yes, you guessed it, the food of David Thompson (who's currently a little preoccupied setting up Nahm in Bangkok). It's actually a technique I learnt doing fish dishes at the restaurant, but works well with all sorts, like quail, which I'm a big fan of.

The sauce is a something I made after chatting to one our Thai chefs, it uses vinegar as opposed to the normal lime juice found in many Thai dipping sauces (nahm jims), works well methinks.

Garlic, coriander root and white pepper is central combo here. It's one of the fundamental Thai flavour bases, dating back to way before chillies arrived in the country (about 1500 i'm told).

Cant take the credit for the nice pic.... my friend Ben took it.

Thai quail with crispy garlic & chilli-vinegar sauce

Ingredients (serves 4 - 6 as part of a Thai meal)

4 quail, 'oven ready'
kecap manis (a dark sweet soy which you can find at most asian stores)
a good handful of garlic cloves, skin on (ideally the small Thai garlic cloves but about 2 bulbs of normal if you cant find)
5 - 6 coriander roots, washed
a tablespoon of whole white peppercorns
plentiful plain oil to deep fry with
some fresh coriander and a lime for garnish

Sauce:

4 fresh long red chillies
one clove of garlic
2 coriander roots
pinch of salt
pinch white sugar
Thai coconut vinegar, failing that white rice vinegar - about 2 tablespoons

Method

Cut each quail in to 4 pieces leaving the meat on the bone. Marinate in about 3 tablespoons of kecap manis (you could use light soy plus pinch of sugar if you don't have KM) for a few hours, overnight is better still.

When you're ready to cook make your sauce first: de-seed the chillies, chop and pound in pestle and mortar with the salt, coriander roots an garlic clove until smooth. Now add the vinegar and pinch of white sugar to taste.

Next make your paste for the quail by pounding together the roots, peppercorns and garlic (yes with skin still on) until a coarse fragrant paste, not too fine is err... fine.

Get plenty of oil heated up to deep fry, when it's really hot add half your paste and then half the marinated quail. What you want to do now is wait until the paste turns to light golden crispiness, skim it off and set it aside to drain on some paper and then continue to fry the birds until they're cooked (which should take about 4-5 mins in total), then fish them out a let rest for couple o mins.

Repeat with the other half the paste and quail, make sure you give your oil a good skim in between to remove any gubbins that'll go black n 'orrible.

Serve the quail with crispy garlic mix and some coriander sprinkled over and then a lime wedge and dipping sauce on the side.

Thanks again to Ben for the pic.

Viajante

2010-07-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Following my previous post on Viajante check out London Eater's review of the place and, even better, his amazing snaps of the food: http://londoneater.com/2010/06/01/viajante-tales-of-the-travelling-chef/

Pear and saffron chutney

2010-07-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is my favourite chutney. I learnt to make it when doing a week at Maze and have adapted the recipe a bit to my taste. I made this batch a few days ago to use for some canapés i was doing at a friend's wedding.

It goes especially well with pate, foie gras or game, but also with cheese and all the other usual suspects. At Maze they served it with quail, sliced fresh pear, micro herbs and some other gubbins i can't remember.

Feel free to tweak the spices (e.g add more, or sub in some cardamom or clove) and sugar levels to suit your taste / what you've got planned for it.

Pear & Saffron Chutney:

Ingredients

2 medium onions, diced
4 apples, peeled cored and diced
about 1.2kg of not-too-ripe conference pears, peeled cored and diced
zest of one orange, plus the juice of two
about 200g golden raisins / sultanas
a thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, grated
300ml of white wine vinegar
350g of caster sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
most of one nutmeg, finely grated
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, more if you like a kick
a generous pinch of good quality saffron, infused in little warm water

Method

Put all the ingredients except the pears sugar and saffron in to a good heavy pan, simmer for about 5mins until liquid reduced by at least half. Stir regularly.

Add sugar and saffron and cook for 5 more mins, now add pears and simmer nice and slow for about 1.5 hours until reduced thick and shiny.

Put in jars while still hot.

p.s it tastes better if you can manage to leave it for a few days, or even a week or two, before tucking in.

'Hot' London eateries.

2010-07-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of ideas on where's hot to eat in London right now...

Trullo: www.trullorestaurant.com/

Just opened off highbury corner, Trullo does a tight menu of rustic Italian dishes.

Opened by a guy who I know from the week I spent working at Moro - Tim Siadatan. Before Moro Tim was at the prestigious St John and was one of Jamie's original recruits for his 'Fifteen' project, and, randomly, is the brother of Apprentice winner Yasmina Siadatan.

Tim Siadatan

The style is similar to Moro, The River Cafe and Bocca di Lupo (not surpising really, when you realise Jacob who set up BDL used to work at Moro and Sam & Sam who started Moro came from the River Cafe); the charcoal grill gets a lot of action, there's a small ingredients-led menu and so on. But it's cheaper - starters around £5 and mains are about the £12 mark.

Book in advance though - with glowing reviews the place has got off to a flying start and tables are hard to come by.

The Loft Project: theloftproject.co.uk

If you want something different and exclusive then this could be for you...not a restaurant The Loft is a Dalston based "platform for the next generation of talented chefs to take up residency and showcase their food".

Errr yeah...well basically it's a private venue which has top quality guest chefs come and cook their own signature menus. It holds a maximum of 16 at one table and the menu is a fixed multi course (normally around 12 dishes) menu designed and cooked by whichever chef is resident that day.

The place is the brain child of Nuno Mendes and the chefs who cook there are undoubtedly some of Europe's most exciting talent.

Check out the schedule of top gun cheffers here

At £120 per head it's not cheap, but that includes wine, and where else are you going to get a private tasting menu from a culinary trail blazer for that price? Errrm.... nowhere? Correct!

Viajante www.viajante.co.uk/

Not content with just The Loft, this summer Nuno Mendes opened the seriously ambitious restaurant 'Viajante' in a very cool venue: the Bethnal Green Old Town Hall.

Rather than read me ramble on about it have a look at these two links to give you an idea of the place:

www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/venue/2:26888/viajante

www.theworlds50best.com/tag/nuno-mendes

The food at newly opened Vijante is some of London's most modern modern and inventive.

A couple of other 'hot' London tables:

Bar Boulud at The Mandarin Oriental www.barboulud.com/barbouludLondon.html
Albion at The Boundary Project www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/venue/2:20997/albion-at-the-boundary-project

A Chef's Life

2010-07-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

My previous sous chef is now writing a blog called 'A Chef's Life'

He was sous at Nahm for 2 years, is now sous at Zuma, he's also had the same position at Nobu Berkeley and Mirabelle and has also worked at The Square, so clearly i taught him everything he knows ("boooollllox!" as he would say).

There's some good stuff on there, find it here http://chefchrisjames.blogspot.com/

Let me know if he starts stealing my recipes though.

Chef Chris (he's the one on the left!)

Nahm - few more snaps

2010-07-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

A few more snaps from Nahm kitchen taken recently...

One of the new stir-fries - a smoky chilli beef, with fried shallots, toasted chillies & cumin. A personal favourite.

Here's the 'Hots' section plating up.

Razor clams with grilled gola (a kind of thick curry with a roasted-coconut flavour), then topped with crispy shallots and fresh coriander.

Chef Prinn in action - the man's a topgun on the wok.

Dishes on order prepared ready to be stir fried or steamed.

Chef Dtew tucking in to some after-service leftovers (dont think i've ever seen him without that cheeky grin on his face).

Before we all push off home heroic kitchen porter Nicolas arrives with a doff of the hat - to clean the kitchen top to bottom through the wee hours.

I regularly bump in to him again the next day as he finishes his shift and I start my next. He's stopped bringing the previously standard issue 2 cans of redbull... as I think he's now got a dodgy ticker!

Banh mi in the city

2010-07-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

What is banh mi?

Banh mi is a Vietnamese baguette, a kind of half French half South-east Asian sub. A legacy of the French occupation of Vietnam, these little beauties are normally filled with a delicious combo of pickled veg, 'Vietnamese' pate, fresh herb (usually coriander) and then some other meat, normally pork, but sometimes chicken or even something like egg or tofu. Condiments wise we're talking mainly mayo & chilli sauce.

If you land yourself a good one you won't be disappointed - think light crisp baguette (apparently because they're made with both wheat and rice flour), crunchy sweet-sharp veg rich pate and meat, fresh herbs, some chilli kick and perhaps a lubing of mayo.

Banh mi joints have been popping up around london for couple of years now and they're getting ever more popular (the English are scared of eating anything that doesn't resemble a sandwich, so they're perfect). Broadway market, Greenwich, various places on Kingsland rd to name but a few and now one right by me - Theobalds rd, near Holborn / Farringdon, called Banh Mi Bay. Quite a modern looking place where you can take away or eat in, the place also does pho, the famous Vietnamese soup.

I went down there for a bit o lunch recently.....had classic pork banh mi: which was pretty good really - v.fresh veg and herbs, nice pate & cooked pork in there, only minor complaint was that bread, while, authentic, could perhaps have been bit lighter an more crisp, plus wanted a little more chilli kick, but no doubt that was my fault for not asking for them to fling more in at the key moment.

In the name of research I also found room for a soup - banh canh, which i believe refers to the thick noodles in there. I had it with prawns, but crab, meat or veg options were also chalked up as I remember.

Was not too shabby. Nice clean tasting broth, fresh prawns cut nicely & obviously not pre cooked, slippery noodles and a bit of herbage (pak chii, coriander, spring onion), some lemon and fresh chilli on the side. More DIY garnish (esp herbs) would have gone down well, but generally a good bowl of grub.

All in all Banh Mi Bay is a v.welcome addition to my locality, and with my exotic themed baguette costing a v.reasonable £3.50 I think I'll be back as soon as I next open my fridge to find I've got bugger all for lunch....so probably tomorrow then.

Vietnamese sambos - search them out!

Banh Mi Bay: 4-6 Theobald's Rd (WC1X 8PN).

Vietnamese pork shoulder - part 2

2010-07-03T03:22:00.000-07:00

Ok so, as promised, here's the second Vietnamese pork shoulder recipe (see the first part here). This one's a slow cooked number 'Thit Heo Kho' is the Viet name I think. It's delicious and not hard to make. It's a version of a dish i first saw made a when doing a week in the kitchen at The Modern Pantry - Anna Hansen's great restaurant in Clerkenwell.

I've used young coconut water in the recipe (you can buy it frozen in Asian stores) - it's authentic & gives a really nice background flavour, but if finding it proves tricky then you can replace it with chicken stock plus an extra pinch of sugar.

This dish is often made with pork belly, so use that if you prefer, just take the skin off before you dice it up (or even better ask your butcher to).

Browning the meat isn't the authentic technique here, the meat would normally just be simmered in the liquid, & usually blanched first. It's nice both ways so take your pick.

The Vietnamese style pickled veg are an optional extra but do work really well - adding bit of crunch and sharpness to cut the rich pork, plus look pretty cool. They do need to be made a good few hours (or ideally a day or two) in advance though.

Vietnamese braised caramel pork with pickled veg

Ingredients (serves 4 -5):

About 800g pork shoulder (trimmed up & diced in to generous bite-sized chunks)
300ml or so young coconut water (or use stock, see note above)
caster sugar - about 6 tablespoons
about 4 tablespoons fish sauce or light soy sauce - whichever you prefer
3 cloves garlic, peeled and bruised
1 or 2 slices of fresh ginger (doesn't need to be peeled)
star anise 3 to 4 pieces
1 tablespoon coarse ground black pepper
3 to 4 shallots - ideally the red Asian ones - peeled and cut in to quarters
small bunch spring onions
2 tablespoons plain oil e.g groundnut

For the pickled veg:

500ml white rice vinegar
350ml caster sugar
pinch salt
vegetables - especially carrot, daikon, cucumber or lotus root
*optional extra flavours - a slice of ginger, a star anise, a dried chilli

Method:

Pickled veg - if using:

A few hours / days in advance - simmer vinegar, sugar & salt in small pan until sugar all dissolved.
Remove from heat, add any flavourings (see above*) you might want and allow to cool down a bit while you julienne your veg (a mandolin might help here), if using lotus root then just peel and do really thin slices.
Finally put cut veg into a jar or container and pour over pickling liquid to cover.
Keeps in the fridge for weeks, and goes well with all sorts of of dishes - from spring rolls to grilled meat.

Braised pork:

First make your caramel - heat 4 tablespoons of your caster sugar in a small pan until it starts to melt and darken around the edges, stir just a little bit and allow all the sugar to melt and go a dark brown colour, when it just starts to smoke then add about 2 tablespoons of water. Stand back - it'll spit and splutter, then just give it a couple more stirs and set aside to cool.
Mix your diced meat with a couple of tablespoons of soy or fish sauce. Now heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a heavy casserole style pan and brown it (you might need to do two batches), chuck in the shallots and garlic while your doing this too.
Now just add all your other ingredients (including the caramel) except the spring onions, but go easy on soy and sugar - about add a tablespoon of white sugar and 3 of soy or fish sauce, you can taste an add more later if need. Now just add enough water to cover all the meat.
Simmer v.gently for about 2 hours or until the meat is meltingly tender and the liquid is nicely reduced and darkened.
Taste and add more sugar / salt / soy / fish sauce to taste, remove the anise if it's getting too strong.
Garnish with sliced spring onions, pickled veg (if using) and serve with white rice.

Vietnamese pork shoulder - part 1

2010-06-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

The Vietnamese love pork, probably more than any other SEAsian country. They use it a million different ways - from surf and turf style salads and stir-fries through to a Vietnamese version of French pork pate which goes in those delicious Banh Mi that are now taking off in London (more on them in upcoming post).

Recently i cooked some Vietnamese style pork myself. i picked up some shoulder from a good butcher near me, it's a great, and fairly underused, cut - really cheap (i think i paid £7 or something for almost 1.5kg) and has a nice balance of meat and fat. It grills up moist and tasty but also works perfectly in slow cooked recipes too.

So with that in mind i decided to do my piece two ways, both Vietnamese style. Firstly pretty simply: marinated, grilled and served with noodles, herbs and a dipping sauce. The rest i made in to a slow braised hot pot style thing - with star anise, caramel & young coconut water, but that's part 2 which i'll blog up v.soon.

In the meantime here's the snaps and rough recipe for the first way: marinated, grilled and served with noodles & herbs...

I started by trimming it up a bit to remove any excess fat or gristle and then cut the meat against the grain into nice long slices about 1.5cm thick. I marinated these in a mix of oyster sauce, fish sauce, a pinch of white sugar and white pepper and finally minced garlic and lemongrass.

After leaving this for a couple of hours (overnight would be even better) i skewered it all up and grilled them off on my double size griddle pan thing.

Over coals / on a BBQ would be the ideal scenario but the griddle option is next-best.

The trick here is to grill the meat nice and slow, turning every few mins to render out any excess fat and to get the meat all nice n caramelised.

When ready I served these skewers up with the classic Viet dipping sauce 'nouc cham' (see recipe on previous post here), some rice vermicelli noodles, roasted peanuts and a selection of Vietnamese herbs (in this case sweet basil, perilla & Viet coriander - but good just mint and coriander would work) to pick at.

Oh yeah, and i fried up some Vietnamese black sesame crackers to put alongside too - mainly cause I came across them when rooting through my cupboards.

It was a nice simple meal: tasty pork, soft noodles, punchy sauce, few crunchy peanuts and some assorted herbaceousness to provide a bit of freshness and interest.

Braised Viet pork thingo recipe to follow shortly.

Monkfish with clams, saffron potatoes & samphire

2010-06-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick recipe i cooked for an al fresco lunch on a recent sunny day, for once not Southeast Asian themed....

Monkfish with clams, saffron potatoes & samphire

You could use all sorts of fish and shellfish here in place of the monkfish-clam combo. Only tip is don't be too heavy-handed on the seasoning because the samphire and clams are both salty already.

Ingredients (serves 2):

300g of monkfish fillet
2 small handfuls of clams
2 plum tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
a handful of samphire, washed
1 large waxy (e.g 'cyprus') potato
some chicken stock & a glass of white wine (both optional)
pinch of good quality saffron strands
EV olive oil
sea salt & black pepper
small handful flat leaf parsley
some fresh chervil (optional)

Method:

First peel your potato and dice it into cubes about 1 - 1.5cm square, put them into a small pan with enough chicken stock (or water) to cover, add a good pinch of salt and a nice few saffron strands. Simmer until just cooked (about 6 - 8 mins i guess), then drain and set aside, keep the saffron cooking liquid too.
Meanwhile wash the clams, cut the monkfish into slices about an 3cm thick.
Peel the tomatoes, de-seed and then dice them about the same size as the potato. Chop your garlic and parsley fairly fine (but keep them seperate).
Put a wide frying pan (which you have a lid for) on a medium high heat, add some olive oil, throw in the garlic, now season your monkfish slices with salt & pepper and lay them in the pan to fry.
After about a minute or two the fish should have starter to colour, so flip the pieces over, turn up the heat nice and high and add in your clams followed by your glass of white wine and a bit of the saffron potato water (just use more of the latter if you got no wine handy) and clamp down the lid.
Leave covered for about 2 mins, then lift off the lid and throw in your samphire and tomatoes, cover again for one more minute - by which time everything should be nicely cooked & the clams all open (throw away any that aren't).
To finish stir through the chopped parsley, drizzle with olive oil and garnish with chervil sprigs (if using).

Some more wine (to drink) and bread (to mop up the sauce) is ideal here.

Hope you like it.

Vietnamese beef & starfruit salad

2010-05-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

I'm mad for Vietnamese food. After Thai it's my second favourite SE Asian cuisine. As soon as I get chance I'm going to head out there, travel around, and eat everything in my path. In the meantime I'm having to settle for reading up on the food and making an effort to cook it a bit more.

So, with that in mind, here's a simple Southern Vietnamese style salad recipe which I adapted after reading up some recipes (in this yer book, amongst others). This kind of food is right up my street - fresh, healthy & full of flavour. Easy too....

Beef & starfruit salad

The dressing is the classic Viet dipping sauce / dressing 'nouc cham'. As i understand it there are lots of variations on the recipe but the one below is the most common.

Ingredients (serves 2, or 4 as part of larger meal):

250g or so of thick cut steak, i used fillet but rump, sirloin or ribeye would all work a treat
1 large / 2 small not-too-ripe starfuit **
A handful of plain skinless peanuts - toasted in a dry pan for few mins until nicely coloured
1-2 long red chillies
Small bunch Thai basil
Small bunch mint
Large handful of beansprouts
A couple of peeled Asian red shallots (optional)

**ripe (sweet) starfruit are yellow, unripe are green and more sour - a greenish one is perfect here as you want it bit sour, but don't panic if you can only get ripe ones....just add little more lime juice to your dressing to balance the whole thing out.

Beef marinade:

2 coriander roots
4 slices of peeled galangal
3 sticks lemongrass, tough outer layers peeled off
pinch of sugar
tablespoon of fish sauce

Nouc cham dressing / sauce:

3 teaspoons fish sauce
3 teaspoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoon caster sugar
4 teaspoons water
2 teaspoon lime juice
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
1 bird's eye chilli, finely sliced

Method:

First make the marinade your beef: chop the first three ingredients roughly then pound to a paste in a pestle and mortar before mixing in the fish sauce and sugar. Rub this into your steak and leave for least an hour, but even 24 if you can.

When marinated, grill the steak on a bbq or griddle pan to your liking (an yes medium rare is clearly the best choice here). Set aside to rest.

Next make your dressing: add the water, vinegar and sugar to a small pan and bring just to simmer. Turn off heat, give a stir and allow to cool a bit then add the fish sauce, lime juice, sliced chilli and garlic. Taste and adjust to your preference.

To finish the salad: slice your shallots quite thin & the red chilli at an angle, cut your starfruit in to nice long shards or, if that sounds too poncy, then any-old-how will also be fine!

Cut your now rested steak into nice bite-sized pieces. Mix these with all the salad ingredients. Dress with about half the nouc cham sauce, toss again and serve.

Stick the rest of the sauce in a dipping bowl and serve alongside.

Hope you like it. More Vietnamese recipes to come.

A

2010-05-11T11:58:00.002-07:00

Thai feed: southern style curry, grilled pork & chilli jam relish

On a recent day off i made the effort to go to Chinatown and pick up fresh Thai ingredients for a bit of a cook up. I went to Loon Moon - far as i know it's by far the best shop in Chinatown / central London for Thai ingredients, that is apart from when giant Icelandic ash clouds are stopping flights of Thai goodies coming over.

A couple of friends were coming over, one of which was Ben who kindly took some pics of the food.

I didn't have an exact plan of what to cook before i went out shopping but ended up deciding to make fresh coconut milk and using that to do a yellow curry with prawns, then some Northern Thai style grilled pork and an easy relish using bought Nam Prik Pao (a smoky Thai chilli jam) along with a few herbs, a grilled banana blossom and a various bits and bobs of garnish.

Here's some snaps and rough recipes:

First the curry...

I made my own coconut milk for this, which is not something I've done much before at home. But it's not as hard as it sounds, and, while more hassle, does produce much tastier result than opening a can. I'll take a load of pics next time i do it and do a whole post on it.
The curry itself was based on a quite a simple yellow* curry paste, which works well with lots of different types of seafood. I was going to put some torn up betel leaves in there at the end, but forgot! No matter, but for the record they go well in this kind of curry.

*n.b I say 'yellow' here because the paste contains a good dose of fresh turmeric which makes the final curry.... you guessed it, yellow. But! That's slightly confusing because, in Thailand, if you ask for yellow curry (gaeng leung) you'll get a quite different spicy boiled curry with no coconut milk. Hmmm...perhaps I should call this a 'turmeric curry'. Any ways, i digress, back to the recipe!

Here's the recipe for the paste:

- 6 long dried red chillies, soaked and de-seeded
- about 5 cleaned coriander roots
- 4 sticks of lemongrass, tough outside peeled off
- 5 Thai red shallots, peeled
- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
- a small piece of fresh tumeric, peeled
- a square inch of peeled galangal
- a tablespoon of shrimp paste (gapi)

Chop all the above nice and small and then ideally use a pestle and mortar to pound the ingredients one by one (hardest first) into a paste. If you're not feeling motivated enough to go the authentic route then a small hand blender thing will whizz it all up in half the time with the addition of a splash of water to help it bind.

So to make the curry I heated most of the coconut cream until it cracked (split and became oily), then fried the paste in resulting 'crack' until fragrant (about 5 mins). I then seasoned this with a pinch of palm sugar and a few tablespoons of fish sauce, added a little more cream and some plain chicken stock to let it out.

Next went in the prawns (tail and heads still on but I'd taken the vein and middle section of armour off) and a couple of torn lime leaves, which i let cook for 4 or 5 more mins. Finally I added some sliced long red chillies (the forgotten torn betel leaves would have gone in now too), double checked the seasoning and dished in to bowls, finishing with shredded lime leaves:

At the same time I also cooked some slow grilled pork - using pork neck, but any not-too-lean cut would work, and marinated it in a paste of coriander roots, garlic and white peppercorns along with some sweet soy sauce. I cut it pretty thick and grilled it on my cast iron griddle thing long and slow, turning regularly.

Next time i think I'd cut it bit thinner (maybe 15 cm), just so it cooks bit quicker and gets a more caramelised crust, which is obviously the best part.

With the sliced grilled pork I served a sauce which Dtew (a Thai chef from Chiang Mai showed me recently) made from lime juice, tamarind water, roasted chilli powder, fish sauce and a v.small pinch of white sugar (i topped it with ground roasted rice for a bit of extra texture & nuttiness). Plus some fresh mint and coriander sprigs, lime & cucumber slices.

Finally I did a relish based on nam prik pao, which is a chilli jam made from fried garlic, shallots, chillies, dried shrimp etc. You can buy quite good stuff in Thai shops. Which is what i did here - just warming a few tablespoons of it up in a pan and seasoned it with fresh tamarind water, palm sugar, roasted chilli powder and fish sauce. We do similar at Nahm, and then use it as a dressing for a salad.

Alongside the relish: some grilled banana blossom, blanched green beans and betel leaves:

Thanks to Ben for the great snaps.

Thai crisp fish salad with green mango & cashews

2010-04-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

Crispy fish salad with green mango & cashews

For the last month or so i've been doing salads at the restaurant. It's a big step up for me and a really challenging role - partly because they're a lot of work to knock up during service, but also because whoever is doing salads runs the 'Larder' section. Larder does pretty much half of the kitchen's menu; we do all the canapés, entrées, relishes & salads, plus, at lunchtime, we also knock up the soups, pad Thai, oh and need to be able to jump on pastry and do the desserts too.

There's normally 3 of us and i have organise the team's prep during the day, make sure we're ready for service, not in the shit, or, for that matter, about to run out of any of the wide array of obscure sliced, toasted, deep fried, julienne or fermented wot nots we need each day. During service i then call the orders, do my dishes, check the other's, taste this that or the other, and generally sort of hold it together and not sink the ship.

It's challenging, and sometimes v.stressful. Especially for someone like me who was behind a desk not much more than a year ago. But I'm learning loads and basically loving it.

Anyhow, i ramble! Basically what i meant to say is: i'm now doing salads, so here's a nice salad recipe from Nahm: fish salad with green mango and cashews....

It's a dish we've had on as a special recently, using brill. It's exactly my kind of food - fresh & simple, but also interesting and bang full of flavour and texture. so thought i'd share the recipe, i'm sure the nice man David Thompson wont mind (!?).

No of ingredients might look a lot but it is a pretty simple salad by Thai standards.

Ingredients (serves two without much else or four or more as part of a Thai meal)

Around 250g of fish on the bone (as mentioned we use brill at Nahm for it but any firm-ish rich white fleshed fish should work well, e.g john dory would be ideal, or even trout or salmon i would think, i used a hake tail cut in to thick steaks on this occasion). Whatever you buy get the fishmonger to gut, clean & scale it first.
100g or so of plain cashew nuts
4-5 sticks of lemon grass, peeled and though outer layers removed.
4-5 red Thai shallots, peeled
3 cloves of garlic
1 green (hard & unripe) mango
small bunch coriander, with the roots
small bunch mint
couple of kaffir lime leaves
juice of 3 or so limes
2-3 bird's eye chillies
white sugar
salt
light soy
fish sauce
plain oil to deep fry

Method

Peel the mango and julienne it into matchsticks (see pics - feel free to use a mandolin or something here).

Finely slice the lemongrass, slice the shallots quite thin.

Slice 2 of garlic cloves a thinly as possible, then shallow fry in plenty of oil until just golden and crisp, set aside. now fry your cashews until golden in the same oil (boiling them for 20 mins first produces a nicer result, if you can be bothered).

Pick the leaves from the mint and coriander, tear off the coriander roots, wash and set aside.

Cut your fish in to steaks (on the bone) about thumb thickness, marinate for 5-10 mins in generous amount of light soy with a pinch of white sugar, before deep frying in plenty of sizzling hot oil until dark golden brown with crisp skin. drain on to kitchen paper and allow to cool for few mins before flaking flesh off bone in to large chunks, ensure crispy skin included.

Now make the dressing: pound the last garlic clove with 3-4 cleaned coriander roots, a bird's eye chilli or 3 and a pinch of salt, in a p & m until fairly fine. add juice from about three limes, good pinch of white sugar, and season up with fish sauce. it should be hot, sour, salty and only slightly sweet.

Ok nearly there....shred your lime leaf as fine a you possibly can and assemble the salad by adding all the ingredients (except the dressing) in to a mixing bowl, saving back half the lime leaf shreds for garnish.

Now just mix, add dressing, mix again briefly and serve. garnish with reserved lime leaf.

Serve in nice bowl for people to share from & garnish with reserved lime leaf.

Andy.

Red mullet, aubergine caviar and roast tomatoes

2010-04-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

Red mullet is one of my favourite fish, aubergine is probably my favourite vegetable. Here's a recipe combing the two - with just the addition of some basil and a few roasted cherry tomatoes.

If you wanted to make this dish more fancy you could include some roast baby aubergines, a drizzle of black olive dressing (blitzed black olives, splash of EV olive oil and of good balsamic) and few micro herbs and if your going all out.

Ingredients (about right for a lunch / starter for 2):

1 medium sized red mullet, cleaned, filleted and pin-boned
1 medium aubergine
handful of baby plum / cherry tomatoes, ideally mixed colour (red, orange, yellow)
few cloves of garlic
sprig of rosemary
sprig of thyme - optional
bunch of basil
pinch dried chilli flakes
EV olive oil
a lemon
sea salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Cut the aubergine in half lengthwise, score in lattice fashion quite deep (see pic) then push garlic slices and rosemary needles into the cuts. Sprinkle the cut face with bit of salt, put aubergine back together and wrap with silver foil. Bake in the oven for 30 - 35 mins or until nicely soft and collapsing. Take out the oven unwrap and allow to cool a bit before scraping out the flesh into a small pan.

Now cook the liquid out of this pulp for 5 or so mins on medium low heat, season with salt and pepper, add a splash of some good EV olive oil, allow to cool and, if you like, add some some chopped basil leaves for flavour and colour.

Meanwhile half your little tomatoes, lay them cut side up on a baking tray and drizzle with EV olive oil, season with salt and pepper and scatter over some finely sliced garlic, plus, if you have them, a few picked thyme leaves (if using) and dried chilli flakes. Bake in same oven for 20 - 25 mins, so they're nicely roasted sweet and soft.

Pick the leaves from the basil bunch, setting aside the small daintiest ones for the final garnish, and then pound them in a pestle and mortar with a little salt (or whizz up in blender if you prefer) until pureed. Add a good glug of EV olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice and then pass through a sieve to give you a vivid green basil oil.

Season your fish fillets and pan fry on medium high heat in a little olive oil on the skin side until crisp and almost cooked (opaque) the whole way through, flip over and turn off the heat, after another 30 secs or a minute they'll be perfectly cooked. Squeeze little lemon juice on and remove from the pan.

Finish the dish by placing a nice portion of the aubergine caviar on each plate, top with a fish fillet and dot around the roasted tomatoes. Garnish tomatoes with the little basil leaves and drizzle around green basil oil.

Andy.

Fried rice, Thai style

2010-04-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of fried rice. It's a reliably tasty, if unadventurous, dish to fall back on at pretty much any food outlet across South East Asia.

Crab fried rice is also on the lunch menu at Nahm and, in one or other form, it's often knocked up as an after-service chef's feed for us by whoever's on stirfry that evening.

Failing that i sometimes take a bowl of leftover rice home, and, with the addition of an egg and a few bits from largely empty fridge, I've got a tasty late night meal in minutes.

Working at Nahm means i cant help but to have learnt what makes good Thai style fried rice ('kao pat'), and how much nicer it is than much of the 'orrible Chinese takeaway / student style make-it-up-as-you-go-along stuff we often eat in this country.

Main things to remember are

a) use decent Thai or basmati rice, preferable a day or so old and definitely not wet or mushy.

and

b) don't use the dish as a dumping ground for all sorts of leftovers, random vegetables or other things found lurking at the back of your fridge - you don't need much more than an egg or two, little spring onion / choice herb or vegetable, plus perhaps a little cooked meat or something.
So....here's a recipe / rough guide (serves 2):

Ingredients:

1 generous bowl of cooked rice (preferably cooked a little while ago / the day before, so it isn't still hot and steaming)
1-2 eggs
1-2 garlic cloves
A couple of shallots - optional
Some greens things e.g coriander leaves, few chopped spring onions, Asian celery or leaves of some sort of quick cook Asian greens
A some cooked protein e.g bit of grilled pork, cooked Chinese sausage, steak or a few cooked prawns.
Fish sauce / light soy
Plain oil - sunflower, groundnut etc
Pinch white sugar and white pepper

Accompany with:

Nam pla prik (a little bowl of fish sauce with finely sliced bird's eye chillies in, and perhaps a squeeze of lime).

Plus a lime wedge and few pieces of cucumber, if you have them.

Method:

Mince/mash the garlic with a little salt, slice thinly the shallot and spring onion, if using. Roughly chop any green leaves / pick any herbs you're using, and finally cut any meat, prawn or whatever (i used a small piece of cooked steak in pics).

Get all your ingredients and seasonings to hand and take a wok put on a medium high heat and add two tablespoons of oil. When hot throw in the garlic and shallots and cook until just golden and fragrant, now quickly crack in your egg(s) and allow to set for 15 secs then mix well.

Now add your rice and cook on a medium heat, adding a touch more oil if sticking or a little dry, for a good 2 or 3 mins, pressing down to break up any clumps. The heat shouldn't be too high as you need time to heat through the rice. Season with a little white sugar, light soy (or fish sauce) and white pepper. Taste and adjust if needed.

Next add anything that needs heating through e.g greens and / or cooked meat.

Give it another minute, and finally add any herbs and spring onion. Mix through and serve with wedge of lime.

Season at the table with the essential and addictive nam pla prik:

p.s caught the Masterchef 2010 final on iplayer - congrats to all three finalists, looks like they all pulled the stops out and cooked some great stuff.

Tobago

2010-03-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

I recently got back from a blissful holiday in Caribbean with some friends.

We were in Tobago - an extremely chilled island down south near Venezuela.

Just the ticket after my first 7 months in a professional kitchen.

We were self-catering and I generally did the cooking, which was a pleasure - wondering down to the next beach come sunset to see what the fishermen had brought in that day and returning with a whopping fish for not much $$$.

Refreshingly all the fishing out there seemed to be done pretty sustainably i.e small scale, small boats, with lines and for only what they could sell that day or, at most, the next.

i did quite a bit of different stuff with what we bought...fish kebabs, baked whole in banana leaves, BBQ'd , Thai fish curry (with some paste n bits which i'd smuggled over), deep fried goujons with home-made lime mayo etc.

Though with such spanking fresh fish even doing bugger all but putting it in the oven for few mins produced delicious results.

I didn't recognise all the species of poisson out there but there was definitely kingfish, mahi-mahi (dolphin fish), albacore tuna, barracuda, snapper and much more...

Little slideshow below of my fishy themed snaps. Hope you like.

Am now back in the kitchen in chilly London, tan fading fast!

Before work tortellOni

2010-03-03T03:56:00.000-08:00

Been meaning to do a recipe for the blog for ages, clearly i haven't managed it in a fair while...

It is actually more time consuming than you'd think - you gotta think of a half decent recipe you fancy cooking, gather all the ingredients, take snaps, cook, take more snaps, wash up the chaos and then search for about an hour for that bloody cable which connects your camera to laptop, then write it up.

not easy to fit in around restaurant hours (plus ave mostly been doing 6 days a week of late)...pretty obvious why not many chefs have blogs.

Anyhow, here's a somewhat rushed recipe i did before a late (2pm) start at work recently. I decided to do pasta, mainly because I've got a good Italian deli right nr my place (see G Gazzano & Sons here), & it had some really good looking sausages.

So sausage pasta it was....

Tortelloni with sausage meat & a quick tomato & basil sauce.

I'd have normally called them tortellini but after being corrected by a slightly snotty Italian waiter at Bocca Di Lupo (he re-pronounced everything i ordered back to me, as if we were speaking different languages...e.g I'd order "cassata" and he'd look at me an check that i meant "cassata" ...erm yeah, "cassata" please...!???).

Anyhow he was right on the oni -ini front; they're both the same shape it's just that "ini" are smaller than "oni", the ones below are the same size as the BDL ones...so tortelloni it is.

Pretty simple recipe, and fairly quick when you get used to the making of the pasta / folding bit.

Ingredients (serves 2)

Pasta (this is a basic recipe here but if you like it richer you can add more yolk than whole egg, just adjust the volume of egg / amount of flour accordingly with experience):

200g Italian pasta flour (type 'OO')
2 large organic free range eggs
dash of EV olive oil

Stuffing

2 - 3 Italian sausages
1 - 2 shallots, chopped fine
a little beaten egg
a some herbs or flavourings e.g few fennel seeds, chilli flakes, little chopped fresh thyme or rosemary etc
Parmesan

Sauce:

1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
EV olive oil
a clove of garlic, finely chopped
a bunch of basil, leaves picked

Method:

Make pasta dough - if you already know how to knock up fresh pasta then skip this and use your favourite method:

i almost always use a food processor for this for ease (and because most restaurants I've worked in do too), though if your processor is huge you might want to do by hand if your doing the smallish quantity above.
Processor method basically = sieve flour in to processor bowl, add pinch salt and splash of oil, mix your eggs in bowl then tip in and pulse until well mixed (should form tiny balls), tip out on to work surface and push together to form ball of dough.
Knead a little and cover with cling film and, ideally, rest for an hour (now you get your filling made, and get the stuff ready for your sauce - see below).
Cut the dough in 2 and keep one piece aside (covered).
Roll out your pasta to the thinnest setting on the machine, you can do this through any method you please but i think best results come from the folding and turning method (see guide by Giorgio here).
Cut resulting long sheet sheet into squares about width of a credit card. Put a portion of filling in middle of each then brush around with a little water or beaten egg and fold (see here), place on some clingfilm or lightly floured surface until ready to cook.

Filling:

Take the skin off the sausages and roughly chop / crumble the meat.
Sweat the finely chopped shallot off in little olive oil or even butter, add any herb, fennel seeds or whatnot now and then the meat making sure you break it up in the pan so it doesn't clump up. Cook for a couple of mins or until just cooked through. Tip in to a bowl to cool.
When cooled a bit add a touch of beaten egg to bind, a generous grating of Parmesan and taste to check seasoning.
Put in fridge to chill before you use to stuff pasta.

A note on the tortelloni / ini thing here: an Italian friend Alessio (chef from Nahm, previously worked at Locanda etc) informs me that meat stuffings for tortelloni are cooked first (like i did here - phew!) whereas with tortellini meat is put inside raw (because they're so small that it cooks through in time that pasta does).

To finish:

Get a large pan of salted water boiling ready for the pasta.
Make the sauce by frying the chopped garlic in a large frying pan with a generous glug of olive oil, add the cherry tomatoes and cook until just collapsing, season then stir through the basil.
Drop the pasta in to the water, cook for a couple of minutes only then transfer them with a slotted spoon to the sauce, toss together and cook for another minute in the frying pan and serve with grated Parmesan and perhaps another drizzle of nice EV olive oil.

Nahm - some snaps from the kitchen

2009-12-27T05:25:00.000-08:00

Nov & Dec have been, errr, pretty busy at the restaurant...so not been much blogging going on here.

But did recently manage to take few snaps at the restaurant which thought i'd stick up here.

Obviously taking pics during service is little tricky, especially as i've only recently learnt one end of my camera from the other, so they're not gonna win any prizes.

But it does give a wee snapshot of the Nahm kitchen where i now spend the majority of my time.

Early morning shot of two of of many Eastern European kitchen porters - Christof and Sasha in this case - cracking on with daily chore of making fresh coconut cream / milk.

It's a mission of a job, which involves smashing up a tonne of coconuts, squeezing em in a big press and warming the pulp with water...

The happy couple: sous-chef Chris with Ireni (our elderly, Lithuanian, ball-breaking kitchen porter).

She has fists like clubs, is old enough to be my granny and has a repertoire of broken english phrases to give you what for... like "very not beautiful!" (when you make a mess) or "NOT bring!" (when you leave a pot in the wrong place where she refuses to pick it up from).

But of course everyone loves her all the same.

Here's Choi deep-frying some long dried chillies before service.

The wok station ready to go - with jet engine like burner already firing.

Desserts lined at the pastry section - ready for wrapping and then steaming to order.

Julien knocking up coconut black-ash pudding in a copper wok...

Close up of said pudding, it might look like engine grease but is surprisingly tasty.

As ever, Curry section's ready for service at least an hour before before the rest of us.

Alessio and Choi manning their posts.

Me and sous-chef Chris, and in the background Dobbie 'giving the finger' right behind his head.

Our runners that night - Aggi and Roman.

One of my fav dishes on the menu: pork n squid salad with chilli jam dressing, ma hor canape in the background.

A Thai meal on the runners tray - all the dishes plus rice come to the table at once, the idea being they compliment and balance each other.

A stack of spiked cheques on my section come the end of service.

Update!

2009-11-18T03:23:00.000-08:00

So it's seems that since starting at the restaurant I'm destined to begin every post by apologising for how long it's been since the last hint of blog activity...So yep apols. Will try harder!

Planning on get new recipes up soon, but in the meantime thought I'd write a bit of an update on my life as a chef at Nahm.....

So it's been a little over 3 months since i started there. The time has flown by, even though my first week there seems an age ago.

Guess that's due to the number of hours you clock up. It's a far cry from my old office life of desks, meetings and presentations...just the same kitchen, with, give or take, the same handful of chefs, runners and kitchen porters every week.

The hours

The basic regime at Nahm works like this: you do 5 or 6 days, at least two of which are doubles (start 10am work til close), the rest are late starts 2pm. You have to be in the kitchen ready to go this time, not strolling through the doors with a latte in one hand.

In terms of hours it's not the worst kitchen I've been to (think Maze...which from what i could tell was 7.30am - 12.30am at least 5 days a week, with no hint of staff food or breaks) but it's by no means the easiest either.

On a good day we get 15 mins to grab some food, but it's not uncommon to have days when if you dont eat standing up, you pretty much don't eat. I can think fair few occasions when I've not really eaten, or sometimes gone to the loo, for 12 hours or so!

I should probably point out that this is not so much company policy; it's just because you're so busy (& often stressed) you don't have the time or inclination to stop...you go from doing one urgent thing to the next (thinking to yourself if i don't do X in the next 2mins, I'm screwed, then ok now if i don't do Y in next 30secs chef is gonna start shouting for it etc etc).... which is the way it goes in busy kitchens all over.

Weekends come and go with much less relevance than in my old life. More than once I've only remembered it was a Friday or sat night when I'm cycling home in the wee hours - as i have to dodge an especially large number of hammered people pouring out of Soho (fighting, puking, hailing cabs and so on).

The contrast between me cycling home along Piccadilly at 1am (sweaty, knackered, smelling of fish sauce, prawns or something) and the swanky crowd in their glad-rags mincing outside Nobu or Mahiki, is fairly amusing too; they'd probably call the police if i stopped to ask the time!

The hours, staying on your feet all day etc doesn't bother me really, you expect that and get used to it. The only time i get demoralised is if i don't think I've had a great service. If you feel like you've done a good job the whole thing makes more sense.

Conversely when you've worked bloody hard all day and not eaten but end up annoyed at yourself because of some silly mistake during service or because you didn't chop shallots fast enough, that's when i find it most draining.

'Sections'

There are 4 'sections' at Nahm - 'Soups', 'Hots' (curries and stir-fries), 'Larder' (salads, relishes, starters etc) & pastry (desserts). 2/3 of my time thus far has been on the 'Soup' section, with the rest on 'Larder' (aka 'Colds').

'Soups' has been good for me; it's a one man show, you run it yourself - manage your own orders, do all your own prep / 'mes en plas'. You're responsible for cooking dishes from start to finish, plating up and getting it up on time. Then finally you clean down and make sure you're good for the next day and have a prep-list of what ya need to do ready for you or whoever is on there tomorrow to crack on with the following day.

Oh and there's also the small complication of the soup section also doing room service for the hotel (Nahm restaurant is in a 5 star hotel, called the Halkin). So at any time you gotta be prepared to knock out a sirloin steak & Caesar salad for room yadda yadda, salmon and clams for table blah blah in the bar....etc etc.

Finally it's also the soup guy's job to knock up staff food, from whatever is available, for about 30, to be ready for staff canteen at 5.30 each day. Needless to say being put on soups was a plenty challenging start to my first full time job as a professional chef.

Being 'in the shit' (pardon my french)

Being in the shit (ITS hereafter) is basically being 'in trouble' / 'up against it' / 'swamped' etc.

On soups it might happen like this: you've got a busy service looming in the eve with some nice big tables coming in early, you're trying to knock up some decent food for staff while getting stitched up by constant room service orders every 20mins..... you start to get behind, but every time you get back to your all-important prep the bloody ticket machine chugs out another order for a club sandwich or cauliflower soup. So before you know it service has started and you're still trying to finish prep which you're going to need any moment now....e.g your praying you don't get an order for mussel soup because you haven't had time to shell that tray of mussels you just steamed off...and what's that order chef is now shouting out? "duck curry, blah blah....4 mussel soup" Doh! So you start to frantically shell clams, when you should be working on the table that's going out in 3 minutes, another order comes in, then another, and because you were rushing you didn't hear table XYZ being called away and you realise with only minutes to go that you need 2 more soups on.........you get the idea!

You are now well and truly ITS. You can feel like a rabbit in headlights, about to be squashed. Sometime you get a merciful lull in orders which can give you breathing space to get back on track but, if not, it can then get to the point someone from another section has to drop what their doing to come help dig you out. Not much fun. Happened to me fair few times in my first few weeks and even experienced chefs find themselves thoroughly ITS from time to time, but it's rare and they handle it pretty well.

N.B From what i can tell being 'in the shit' is generally such a thoroughly unpleasant experience that the fear of being back in it is probably the number one source of motivation for chef's all over.... you just close my eyes and imagine yourself well and truly ITS in a few hours time - trust me, is enough to make anyone work faster!

So you learn the hard way....to try an push and be more organised to get yourself ahead of the game. So if the sods-law run of room service orders arrives while your trying to get ready for service, then, yes, you swear at the machine a bit but you've got the time to knock the orders& get pretty much back on track for when the opening salvo of restaurant orders arrives.

When i started i was ITS quite a lot, i know I've come a fair way since then. But am still far from being immune to it, and as soon as i get comfortable i get thrown on to new & different section on busy night and the learning the hard way cycle starts all over...

Quick 'Scudding' update

Before i finish i should provide one update though: in my previous diary post i mentioned 'scudding'. This is basically sneaking bird's eye chillies in to fellow chef (waiter, runner or whoever)'s food or drink and watching them unknowingly consume - a proud Nahm tradition. I previously mentioned the fact that no one had scudded me yet...

Well that didn't last long, in fact i foolishly mentioned it to David Thompson when he asked how things were, i said "good, i cant believe i haven't been scudded yet" or something equally foolish.

Needless to say David sent the word out and i got a multiple scudding that day - in my double espresso (saw that one coming, but David kindly encouraged me to down it anyway, interesting flavour sensation it was), rubbed around the rim of my water bottle, in the water with my tasting spoons etc etc!

So never fear, i haven't missed out on this important rite of passage, and i now have integrity when i share the love and scud others (in fact i get so much childish amusement from it that i think i might give a few family members the treatment over the Xmas period!).

Scudding: these little beauties, hidden in your food & drink.

Will write more soon, some recipes coming too.

Andy