Final snaps from latest Thailand trip - assorted southern food

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

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

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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. 
4. 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

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!

  

 

 

 

 

Cha Ca, Hanoi

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

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

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

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

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.

        

Cau Lau, Hoi An

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: