One Night (not) in Bangkok

I've been seriously crap at updating this post... Anyway, here it is:

Home made prawn crackers are something I've been wanting to have a go at making for a while now. This particular recipe comes from David Thompson's Thai Food (aka Aharn Thai, depending on which way up the book cover is).

You start by mincing up raw prawns with garlic, seasoning it and mixing it into a dough with tapioca flour. Then it's made into a fishy kind of sausage and steamed until the whole thing is cooked.



The sausage is then sliced into very fine discs, which need to be dried in the sun / a cool oven. At this point you have the familiar looking semi-opaque dried chips you can buy from any Chinese or Asian store. Fry 'em up in hot oil and you end up with these:



Honestly? Not worth the effort if you ask me. The end result was a bit chewy in the middle (probably because they weren't sufficiently dried), bland and disappointing. I guess I knew deep down that something as processed as a prawn cracker is best left to the professionals and their big factories. Still it was an interesting experiment.

The Panaeng Beef Curry I also made from a David Thompson recipe was much more successful. Using simmered beef brisket and a home made curry paste. If there's a blender that makes proper curry paste I haven't found it, so I stick to the old fashioned pestle and mortar technique. Takes a long time and makes your arms ache, but the end result is infinitely superior.

Got to say though that the Thompson recipe uses staggering amounts of coconut cream and milk - the finished sauce must be around 40% fat. In future I'll scale this way back so that I don't die of heart disease before I go back for second helpings.

Smoked Anchovies and roasted garlic on toast

There was a Mark Hix recipe in the Independent a couple of weeks ago. It's so simple the word "Recipe" is perhaps overstating the amount of preparation involved. Maybe "assembly" is a better term. I knew it was something I wanted to try. The original article is here:

http://tinyurl.com/fishinmymouth

(or Google "Mark Hix Smoked Anchovies" if you're reading this in the future and the link has expired)

Hix raved about Nardin smoked anchovies, which he said were more like fresh fish than tinned. And having eaten them I couldn't agree more. They're available from Brindisa at Borough, though I'm sure you can find them elsewhere, including on the internet.



They weren't cheap, mind you. £5.50 for 8 large anchovy fillets means this dish is probably best saved for when you feel like splashing out.



It's a really delicious combination. The anchovies had a very pleasing light smokey flavour. And their texture was reminiscent of pickled fresh fish, like a thin version of a rollmops; completely unlike any other tinned anchovies I've eaten.

Thai Dried Crispy Beef

This dish requires a bit of preparation, but is so worth the trouble. It's like a Thai version of beef jerky and is great as a snack or served with rice as a meal. I've made several versions of this - the most basic just involves flavouring the meat with ground coriander and salt, but this version uses lots of garlic and lemongrass for fragrance.

I've seen many recipes that suggest using filet steak - but unless you enjoy burning money there's absolutely no need to use one of the most expensive cuts of meat. Any nice, lean piece of beef that is of a shape that allows you to cut it into thin slices will do. Here I've used a roasting joint and removed any fat or sinew.

Cut the beef into slices across the grain - no thicker than a pound coin. Then put them in the marinade for anywhere between one and twenty-four hours. In my marinade I used:

Lots of minced garlic
Finely cut lemongrass
Ground coriander
Fish Sauce
Oyster Sauce
Good pinch of brown sugar
A splash of Chinese Ricewine



The next step is to dry the beef. In Thailand they do this in the sun. In Britain you could be waiting an awfully long time - in fact you are more likely to desiccate yourself than your beef in the process. So I lay out the strips of meat on a tray with a wire rack and put them in the oven. Use the lowest possible setting, with fan on if you have one. You may want to keep the oven door ajar if it gets to hot.

Basically you want to dry out the surface of the meat, though still leave a bit of softness and give if you squeeze the dried beef. If you dry it out completely it will end up like deliciously spiced shoe leather. But you also don't want it to sit in a lukewarm oven forever. The longer you leave it, the more time bacteria have to breed. So take that as a sensible warning and don't sue me if you get food poisoning. Just use your common sense. It shouldn't take any more than 75 minutes max, turning the meat over halfway.



Once the meat is done you can either prepare it straight away or put it in the freezer for a delicious snack at a later time. The most common way of cooking it is to deep-fry the beef in hot oil. But on this occasion I've just brushed the slices with oil and stuck them under a very hot grill - it's a little healthier and I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference to be honest.

Thai dried beef is great with sweet chilli sauce and beer.

Garlic Palourde Clams

Picked up some clams at Borough Market today. They were Carpetshells, otherwise known as Palourdes, Vongole or Almejas (depending whether you're eating them in France, Italy or Spain, respectively). I wanted to recreate a mouth-watering dish I has at Tierra Brindisa a few months ago. They called them Palourdes Clams a la Plancha - cooked on the grill, but basically clams in a garlic sauce.


I cooked some chopped garlic in olive oil, then added chilli and threw in the clams, along with a slug of white wine. That was it. Then served them up with some wilted greens I also picked up at Borough. No idea exactly what they were, as there was no label, but certainly some member of the brassica family. Finished off with some nice rye bread.



A closer look at the clams below. Unfortunately the batteries in my camera died, so all the images in this post are crappy mobile phone shots.

Phat Phuc Noodle Bar

Had a serious case of lunch fatigue today – I’ve pretty much exhausted all the options around where I work, so I decided to go on a culinary mystery tour instead. This involved jumping on the first bus that pulled up opposite the office on Westminster Bridge Road, which as it turned out was the 211 to Hammersmith.

I grabbed a front window seat on the empty upper deck. It took me through Westminster along past Victoria Station and on to Sloane Square, where I decided to jump out.

I was starting to lose faith in my good-food-sensing powers walking along the Kings Road: Pret, Eat, Starbucks. Same old same old. But then a waft of fragrant spiced broth hit me in the nostrils and I walked down some steps into a shady courtyard right on the corner of the Kings Road and Sydney Street.

I’m sure if you live in Chelsea Phat Phuc is hardly an unheard-of discovery for you. But it’s exactly the kind of place I dream about stumbling across by accident: a shack with a counter serving cheap Vietnamese food, and a number of wooden tables covered in red parasols.

I ordered the Bo Pho: beef broth with stewed flank, rice noodles and herbs for £5.50, and it was delivered to my table about 90 seconds later. Just what I needed on a blustery and cool March day. The broth was more golden than other phos I’ve eaten, and fair bit sweeter – maybe a touch too sweet for my taste. But that’s my only minor quibble as it was a cracking bowl of hot soup with plenty of herbs and pleasantly chewy brisket.



I was also impressed with the condiments on the tables: sugar, powdered chilli, chilli oil and a dish of crispy shallots that you help yourself to. It went down so quick the bowl was still steaming when I’d finished.



Next time I jump on the 211 bus I’ll definitely make a return visit. Oh and by the way, Phat Phuc is not what you shout at someone that’s eaten too many noodles. Apparently it means “Happy Buddha”.

www.phatphucnoodlebar.com

Roast Dinner Rarebit

Well, I won't claim this is haute cuisine. I was trying to come up with a creative way to use up the two day old leftovers from my Sunday roast. I didn't feel like knocking up a sauce or doing anything as elaborate as a pie or soup. So I came up with the Roast Dinner Rarebit.

I chopped up all the leftovers into smallish pieces: roast chicken, potatoes, brocolli and cauliflower cheese. Then mixed in a big spoonful of English mustard and some of the jelliefied gravy and spread the whole lot on a wholemeal baguette.



Then I sprinkled over some mature chedder and whacked the whole thing in the oven until hot and bubbling.



It would probably go quite well with a side salad, but I just opted for a good squeeze of Chilli Ketchup.