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).

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. 

 

'Bun Nem Nuong'

'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.

Quick pork penang

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

Vietnamese pork shoulder - part 2

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

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.

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 style meatball-noodle broth

(pic by sarahlouisephotography.com)


This is a dish i did on the TV show called Market Kitchen last week (tis bit like Sat Kitchen but for uktv food channel). I believe it airs on the 6th May or something.

The recipe is easy, but cooking on TV... and remembering to point at everything and smile at the camera is harder than it looks (or, more likely, i'm just rubbish at it!).

The dish is a SEAsian style noodle soup with pork meatballs in, and the idea is to accompany it with a platter of loads of herbs, beansprouts, sliced chillies etc - so that, like at noodle street stalls, people can then help themselves and add whatever they fancy to their bowl.

Is a fun way of eating with few friends. Hope you like it.

So...

For the meatballs:

• pork mince - 300g (not too lean)


• 2 or 3 shallots (thai red ones ideally)


• 3 -4 fresh lime leaves - if you can find (buy frozen from thai store and keep in freezer - dried supermarket ones are waste of time)


• small piece of ginger


• 1 -2 cloves of garlic


• 1 bird eye chilli


• little coriadner stalk


• black pepper


• fish sauce

For the broth:

• chicken stock - about 1 litre


• 1-2 star anise


• A clove garlic


• a shallot or 2


• 2 dried shitake mushrooms if you have them


• pinch of white sugar & splash of fish sauce

The rest:

• Pre-soaked rice noodles - whichever type you fancy (prep according to packet)


• lime wedges

Then the add-your-own stuff like:

• a handful of beansprouts


• a couple of small lebanese style cucumbers sliced


• few spring onions sliced


• few long red chillies - finely sliced


• large piece of ginger cut to matchsticks


• herbs - coriander, mint, thai basil, dill, peashoots some


• bottle of fish sauce


• chilli sauce too, if you like

Method:

• get the broth simmering in a pan with ingredients in to infuse


• roughly chop then wizz up the meatball ingredients (except the mince) in small blender (or hand chop small)


• then mix it all well in a bowl with meat - seasoning with fish sauce and pepper.


• roll meat mix into small balls, and then fry in hot pan dash of sunflower oil until nicely browned and cooked through


• divide the noodles & meatballs between bowls and set the herbs and stuff all preped on a platter.


• check the seasoning of the broth - add fish sauce and sugar to taste and ladle over while hot


• let everyone garnish their own with the platter stuff and a lime wedge / add fish or chilli sauce etc


• slurp away.

Andy.