NEW WEBSITE

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

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

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

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)

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!

  

 

 

 

 

Wanderlust article

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

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.   

Thai banquet cookery class - 28th June

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

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

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

Banh Xeo, Saigon style

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

,
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)

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

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

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!