My New Cuisine Crush

It's very nearly winter down south, which usually means I am craving roast beef, yorkshire pudding, and piles and piles of pasta covered with cheese. This year however, I've ditched the heavy European fare in favour of a winter of Thai food. Coconut, lime, ginger and lemongrass are my flavours of the season. Warming me to the core with chilli - not carbs - and enlivening my evenings with a new culinary challenge too (there is nothing worse than food boredom, my friends). Below are my two favourite Thai dishes. I've built up the recipes from bits and pieces that I have read online, and developed them through rather a lot of trial-and-error experimentation. If you'd like to embark on your own Thai adventure, I suggest you do the same - as David Thompson says, Thai food is all about intuition and interpretation.

Note: A few of the ingredients required here can be a little hard to come by, but don't let that deter you - tracking them down is half the fun! Black glutinous rice (otherwise called sweet black rice, Thai black rice, or even Indonesian black rice) can be tricky to find, even in the best of Asian grocery stores. Similarly, thick rice noodles can be hard to track down. The noodle fridge at my favourite Asian grocer is usually empty by five in the afternoon, probably because noodles are delicious and they walk off the shelves... so get in early folks. White pepper is a little known ingredient, but it's used extensively in Thai cuisine. Use whole peppercorns and grind them up yourself, the powdered stuff is rubbish...

Pad See Ew

What You Will Need:

• 1 large chicken breast
• 300g approx of firm tofu
• 500g of large, flat rice noodles
• 1 large bunch of pak choy
• 2 eggs
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp of black soy
• 1 tbsp of rice wine vinegar
• 1 level teaspoon of white pepper

For the Marinade:

• 3 tbsp of oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp of fish sauce
• 1 tbsp of light soy
  
• 1 tbsp of black soy (sweet soy)
• 1 small chilli, finely chopped

What you will need to do:

1. Combine all marinade ingredients in a large bowl. Thinly slice the chicken breast and dice the tofu into bite sized chunks, then add to the marinade, stir to coat everything, and refrigerate the lot until it's time to stir-fry.

2. Heat a little oil in a smallish frying pan. Beat the eggs together with a pinch of salt and add to the hot oil. Fry the eggy mixture til you've got yourself an omelette, then slice into strips and set aside. Turn the heat down on your frying pan, add a little water, and blanch the pak choy until it is vibrant green. Set this aside too.

3. When you're ready to stir fry, heat a little oil in a large wok. Add the garlic cloves and fry until

lightly browned. Add the chicken/tofu mixture and all of the marinade, then toss the lot until the chicken is cooked through and the tofu has charred slightly.

4. Now it's time to add your noodles! The noodles I use are each about two metres long, so I add them one at a time, snipping them into manageable lengths as I go. I'd suggest separating your noodles in this way even if they're not ludicrously long, as it stops them from sticking together in a sad little lump. Stir the lot until the noodles begin to char too.

5. Finally, add the eggy slices and pak choy. Drizzle in the extra soy and rice wine vinegar, and at the last minute, add the white pepper. Toss until warmed through and serve immediately with slices of lime on the side. Noodle perfection.

Black Rice Pudding

What you will need:

• 2 cups of black glutinous rice
• 1 400ml can of coconut milk (full fat is best!)
• 1/4 cup of caster sugar
• the juice of one lime
• Shredded coconut & sesame seeds, fresh fruit - whatever you'd like to top your pudding with!

What you will need to do:

1. Rinse your rice in cold water, then soak, although not necessarily according to packet instructions. Different brands of rice recommend differing soaking times; I would suggest four hours at a minimum, but the longer the better.

2. Once your rice has finished soaking, it's time to steam! I do this by bringing 2 to 3cm of water to the boil in a large pot. I place my rice in a metal colander, then rest the colander over the boiling water and cover the lot with a lid. (I plan to invest in a proper Thai steamer set, but my colander / pot method works well in the meantime.) Steam for 30 - 40 minutes.

3. While your rice is steaming, heat the coconut milk over a low heat. Stir through the sugar (1/4 of a cup is just a guide. Most recipes I have read call for more sugar, but I don't posses a sweet tooth so I don't use very much. Adjust to taste.) Squeeze in some lime juice, just enough to cut through the rich, sugary coconut milk. Toast a little shredded coconut and some sesame seeds too, or prepare any fruit you'd like to serve, and set aside.

4. Your rice is sufficiently steamed when the grains are soft, but not mushy. I like the grains to almost burst when chewed. Place your steamed rice in a bowl and stir through just enough of the coconut milk to create a thick, glossy purple porridge. Push the rice mixture into moulds and turn out into serving bowls to create delicious, purple pudding mounds. Pour a little of the extra coconut mixture around the pudding, and top with toasted coconut, sesame seeds, or fruit. Serve immediately.

The Parts Make Up The Whole

About a week ago, The Boy - on kitchen duty - asked me what I wanted for dinner. "A delicious feast!" is what I asked for, and a delicious feast is what I received. Two dollar pork buns courtesy of our local Asian grocer, wok-fried greens and a lovely eggy rice dish. The parts made up the whole, and the whole meal was delicious.

These two side dishes are perfect mid-week fare, quick and simple and cheap as chips. Get your hands on some sesame oil, it is really the key ingredient in these two recipes, and keep a few pork-buns in your freezer too. Yum-cha in your own kitchen!

Wok Fried Greens

You can use any veggies you like for this dish, this recipe contains my favourites:

• Bok Choy (or pak choy, or choy sum. Whichever you prefer)
• Brocolini (or brocoli) cut into bite sized pieces.
  
• Shredded cabbage
• Green beans
• Snow peas
• Baby corn (not strictly a green but delicious nonetheless)
• Thickly diced zucchini

• One tablespoon of light soy sauce
• One tablespoon of oyster sauce
  
• Three or four drops of sesame oil
• A pinch of chilli, if you'd like a little kick

This dish is simplicity itself. You'll need fresh produce, minimal accoutrements, and a red-hot-wok. Prepare your veggies, heat your wok, then toss everything in and off you go! If you don't have a wok, try to avoid using a non-stick frypan. The flavour of this dish is all in the burning, so none of that fancy-pants teflon thank you very much! Resist the temptation to add extra oil - the vegetables should char, so keep your wok as dry as possible. Remove when everything begins to burn at the edges, and serve immediately. A delicious and nutritious side dish.

Eggy Fried Rice

• 1 cup long grain rice
• 2 eggs
• vegetable oil, light soy sauce, a few drops of sesame oil

Another simple side dish, this makes a good base for other fried rice dishes too. Fried rice is Asia's answer to bubble and squeak - you can throw anything in there (within reason) and chances are it will be tasty!

Cook rice as per packet instructions, stand aside and allow to cool completely*. Heat a little vegetable oil in your wok- just enough to coat the bottom - whisk two eggs together and pour them over the hot oil. As they begin to cook, splash some soy sauce over them, then scramble with a fork. This dish is best when the eggs are half way between runny and solid, they need about a minute before the rice goes in. Throw in your cold rice and toss everything around until the egg scramble breaks up and disperses. Drip in a little sesame oil, a little extra soy to taste, and keep tossing until the dish is warmed through and the rice has yellowed slightly. Then eat, eat, eat.

* When cooking fried rice, the temperature of the rice itself is important. Using cold rice prevents your dish from turning into fried mush. Any long-gran rice is suited for frying once cooled, but basmati is best as it has a lower starch content than other types of rice and is less likely to soften when re-heated. Leftover takeaway rice is perfect for use in this dish, if it's sitting in the fridge lookin' a little dry, all the better for it!

Vietbodia, Pt 1: Ho Chi Minh City

When people ask me about my South East Asia trip I usually say, “It was really good. When it wasn’t hilariously bad.” It was pretty much the tagline of our whole adventure. Between the scams (which ranged from harmless price hiking from cheerful coconut vendors, to outright credit card fraud) and the food (from amazing seven course meals to poisonous salad sandwiches), we managed to experience the highs, lows and everything in between.

To start with the bad? I didn’t get my passport back in time from the Vietnamese Embassy and couldn’t fly out with the other girls. A last minute Thai Airways flight, and a very kind father, meant that I met them three days late in Ho Chi Minh City.


It certainly was a surreal way to start the trip. 6 hours on my own in Melbourne Airport, followed by an overnight flight in which I dreamt that I was on an overnight flight. Except that we were all in fancy dress, and I won a prize. I was dressed as sleeping beauty. I made friends with the middle aged lady sitting next to me: “Did you have a good rest?” she asked when I woke up. I said yes, and apologised if I'd been snoring.“Oh not at all!” she said smiled kindly, “I think you had a good sleep.” I began to think of her as Aeroplane Mum after that. She and her husband were travelling to India.

Bangkok airport. The first shop I see is selling life size porceline dogs in bonnets. 10 kilometres of high end shops follow. Areoplane Mum and I keep running into each other on the way to our next gate. “Isn’t it all so fancy!” she says.

One more flight, passing wordlessly through militaristic airport security, and finally, finally, I meet up with my girls in Ho Chi Minh City. In the taxi from the airport the city seemed huge and nonsensical. The traffic was extraordinary; crossing the street was like stepping into a river.

Our hostel was tucked down an alley that reminded me of Melbourne; tiny shopfronts, bicycles, balcony gardens. It was also five metres away from the cheapest, and best, Indian food I’ve ever eaten, and fifteen metres away from an amazing french bakery.

Yes, that is a dragon and a horse in the background. My first great Vietnam food monent - and the first meal I ate in Vietnam - was pond week. Pond weed, or Morning Glory, or Water Spinach, Ong Choy, Kangkung, Pak Boong, as it's variously known, fried with garlic and served with sticky rice. Absolutely delicious. I got more than halfway through before I remembered to take a photo.

It inspired me to go searching through my local asian grocers to see if I could find any. Happily, I live just across the road from the Dickson shops in Canberra, home to at least 7 asian grocers, two of which are Vietnamese. I went and got promptly distracted by herbs and rice paper. So today I have a fresh rice paper roll recipe for you, and a promise to keep you updated on the search for Morning Glory.

Rice Paper Rolls

These guys are seriously easy, healthy and delicious. This is a very basic recipe; feel free to play around with fillings, sauces, marinades - try them with some prawns and avocado, maybe! There's no limit, just think of them like sandwiches.

What You Will Need

A lovely Asian Grocer with a good selection of fresh greens.

Vermicelli Noodles
Cabbage
Cucumber
Carrot
Beansprouts
Your favourite firm tofu - I love Soyco's Japanese Tofu.
Rice paper
Sesame oil
Vietnamese Mint

What you need to do:

Julienne the vegetables and the tofu to the length of the radius of the rice paper
Soak the vermicelli, drain, and toss in about a tsp of sesame oil
Soak a rice paper sheet
Lay on a clean tea towel
Place noodles, vegetables, tofu and mint in a row closer to one side than the middle

Fold over the right side; than the top and bottom; and then roll to close. The rice paper will adhere to itself.

Serve with soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, or any manner of dipping sauce. I like peanut soy, which is roughly: some peanut butter, half as much soy sauce, a squeeze of lime, a shake of chili seeds, a tsp grated fresh ginger, and a couple of minced garlic cloves.

An easy, delicious, and healthy dinner. Or, pack some for lunch, and enjoy the envy of your co-workers. Goodness, all that and I'm only one day in. More of Vietbodia to come...