thai again

It’s been a while since I made Thai food at home. Normally it is one of our favourite cuisines to eat, but I overdosed on it when I first arrived in Geneva. My attitude toward cooking tends to mirror my attitude toward life. Variety needed! All the time! Change! Change! Change! What this means is that I frequently make something we love once and don’t make it again for months. When it comes back to mind, the recipe is gone or I’ve forgotten.

Thai food is mercifully easy to figure out even if I haven’t made it in a while. (Disclaimer: Thai food in a western kitchen is easy to figure out; the original stuff is a different story altogether, I’m sure.)

I first made these pork lettuce wraps several years ago as a starter. It is a great starter, unique to look at, oh-so-tasty and easy to cook and assemble. What I’ve discovered is that it also makes for a great lunch, which is how I had it today. The key ingredients for the flavour are fish sauce, brown sugar and lime juice. Depending on your preference, go heavy or light or medium with the three. I like mine a bit more sour and salty than sweet, so I took it easy with the sugar. I would recommend adding the three ingredients slowly, stirring and tasting as  you go if you want a more balanced taste. It takes maybe five minutes to get all the ingredients ready, 10 minutes to cook and about five minutes to assemble.

• Thai Pork Lettuce Wraps I did follow this recipe fairly closely (from Taste), but I always add more garlic and then alter the fish sauce, brown sugar and lime juice ratios to my taste. I used a mix pork and beef mince – it was on sale at Coop. I imagine that using chicken, turkey, pork or beef mince should all be fine. I also added spring onions for the last few minutes that it was on the stove before adding the chopped coriander.

finding nemo

Fish was a family staple while we were growing up. We probably ate it once a day until I was 14-years-old. These were the cheapest kind of Filipino fish – galungong, dalagang bukid and others. We only ate it deep fried from the top of the head to the tail. The eyeballs were doable, but other than that, I was not a big fan. It has taken me many, many years to realize that fish can taste fantastic and be as satisfying as meat or chicken.

These days I have even more incentive to eat it as much as possible because its omega 3 and DHA are excellent for the small one inside of me. White fish is my preference, and so far cod – or le cabillaud royale in French – is definitely my favourite.

Cookbooks are one of my favourite wedding presents and some of the presents that I use most frequently. A friend of mine bought me the Thai Bible by Jacki Passmore, and the Fish Cooked in Butter recipe is a winner for cod. I followed the recipe closely with the exception of putting very little butter and no cornflour on the fish. I skipped the breading part entirely and put the fish directly in the pan. I also left out the bamboo shoots – didn’t have any – and added pak choy instead.

• Fish Cooked in Butter season with salt and pepper 400 g of firm white fish (sliced), coat evenly with 1/2 cup of cornflour (no need, really), shaking off the excess. Melt 120 g butter in a large pan over medium heat and cook the fish slices for about 40 seconds on each side, until golden brown and almost cooked through. Carefully lift out of the pan and onto a plate and set aside.
• In the same pan sautee 4 thin slices (shredded) of ginger, 3 spring onions (chopped), 1 clove of garlic (sliced), and 1 chili (sliced). Sautee for about a minute, stirring. Add 60 g of bamboo shoots and 2 tomatoes (cut into wedges) and simmer for a few minutes, stirring. I added the pak choy here instead of the bamboo shoots.
• Season with 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and 1/2 a teaspoon of brown sugar, and add 3-4 tablespoons of water to make a sauce. Simmer for 1-2 minutes, then return the fish to the pan and heat gently in the sauce. I also added some lime juice to it because I think lime juice is always a good addition to Thai dishes.

ode to melbourne and “pumpkin”

There isn’t much I miss about Melbourne. Friends were the obvious highlight of my time there, but I don’t know if I could find a culture more opposite to mine than Australian culture. Functioning in Melbourne involved giving up many aspects of life that I loved and valued, and I felt like I was constantly having to adapt to be able to fit in. But adaptation has its benefits. I picked up many new skills in Australia for which I am thankful – driving, camping and beach-ing to name a few.

My favourite gift from Melbourne though was its food. I have done my share of world travel, and I think I have been to the majority of significant world cities, so I don’t take it lightly when I make the following statement – Melbourne has some of the best food in the whole world. It’s probably because the whole world, almost, is in Melbourne. It doesn’t hurt that the cost of eating out is also reasonable.

That city nourished and taught my taste buds and gave my hands confidence in the kitchen. It’s only now that I enjoy the benefits of the years of eating out at Vietnamese, Thai, Greek, Turkish, Indian, Afghan, and so many other restaurants.

One of the vegetables I learned to love in Melbourne is the pumpkin. I grew up eating it in Sri Lankan pumpkin curries, and in the US it is only a dessert, of course. But in Australia (and the U.K., I found out later) pumpkin is roasted regularly for dinner. It is now a favourite vegetable of mine, but sadly it is rarely, if ever, available in the supermarket here. I gave up on ever eating it until a few weeks ago when there was a bin of autumnal gourds in Coop. Apparently pumpkins and squashes only come out in the fall here. I bought a pre-cut and wrapped C-shaped piece of pumpkin, but it was tasteless and disappointing. My second attempt was much better.

This one is technically a butternut squash (based on what it looked like), but tasted like a pumpkin after it was cooked. The Penang curried beef was spicy, salty and a bit sweet, and the pumpkin was predominantly sweet (naturally) and a bit spicy. The broccoli is for good health (just boil it for a few minutes with salt).

• Penang curry let the beef cook in the liquidy sauce for a while until the sauce thickens. I didn’t have the thick coconut cream, but the regular coconut milk worked just fine. As always, pay attention to the proportions of curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce and sugar.
• Butternut/pumpkin chop it into similar-sized pieces so that it roasts evenly. Heat your oven to a medium temperature (I would give an exact one here, except that our oven doesn’t have temperatures, only 1-8, and I have yet to figure out what that means except that I cannot bake). Toss the chopped pumpkin in olive oil, salt and whatever spices you want. For this pan I sprinkled paprika and chili flakes. I personally find that savoury flavours work well with pumpkin because it is so naturally sweet. Bake for however long it takes to cook (usually between 20 and 40 minutes).

thai rice

My sister was with us last week and did most of the cooking for me, which was amazing. Marriage surprises me in several ways, here are two: I love to cook, and cooking every day is hard work. I’m easily bored with old recipes and enjoy trying new things, but I’m also getting a sense for what kinds of flavours and foods we like to eat. So I don’t try any old thing.

Thai food is one of our favourites, and I find that it is a much simpler kind of food to make. The flavours are always fresh and sharp. This recipe for pad thai rice was simple and delicious. It can be eaten alone as a vegetarian meal, as we did, or with a meat dish like a curry.

• Pad Thai Rice I dramatically increase garlic and ginger in most recipes I cook. This one calls for one clove of garlic; I think I put in six. I skipped the shrimp because I can be a bit allergic to it, and I forgot to buy lime juice, but the taste was still beautiful. I put in loads of spring onions as well because it gives a wonderful crunch along with the peanuts (I also roasted the peanuts a bit on the stove).