A Little Thai Adventure (Part Two)

After all the trials and tribulations of acquiring ingredients that I needed (see Part One), I’m ready to get my Thai cooking on! My initial aim is still this Thai Green Curry. I will make my own paste. I will!

Without wanting to waste any fresh ingredients, I ended up making the following dishes:

• Monkfish and Prawn Thai Green Curry
• Monkfish Bites with a Herby Lime Dip
• Chicken and Galangal Soup
• Duck Massaman Curry
• Orange and Lemongrass cupcakes

And here is how I got there....

Monkfish and Prawn Thai Green Curry

Thai Green Curry Paste

I had a friend over for the weekend and decided to make this for the very first time that day. Was it really such a good idea to attempt this for the very first time, from scratch, for a visitor? If it all went wrong, Fish and Chip Friday was bound to save us.

Before the cooking even starts for a curry, there is a fair amount of prep work involved. When making a curry paste, I have my trusted pestle and mortar. I've read that you can mix all the ingredients in a food processor but it's best to pound them in a pestle and mortar to release the full flavour. If I actually owned a food processor, I would have been tempted to use it!

I've been very well advised that you should mix the dry ingredients first before adding the wet ingredients. I was really pleased that my curry was taking shape when adding the coconut milk and other ingredients including some aubergines, bamboo shoots, monkfish, prawns. I really liked this combination as it was nothing too heavy.

My Homemade Thai Green Curry

My plan was all came together and both my friend and my other half enjoyed this meal. Twice in the fella’s case. Greedy pig!

My friend even ended up taking some of my curry paste home with her as she wanted to cook the same thing for her family! So needless to say, I was very pleased with the outcome.

Recipes adapted from the following:
Felicity Cloake's Perfect Thai Green Curry Paste
Rick Stein's Green Monkfish and Prawn Curry

Monkfish Bites with a Herby Lime Dip

Monkfish Bites with a Herby Lime Dip

Ok, so I've got a fair few fresh ingredients left that I want to use up before they get wasted, so I try and figure out what else I can make! I didn't use all the monkfish that I bought for the curry, so what else could I do with it?

My friend and I had spend a day shopping at the new Westfields Stratford. When hunger striked, we decided to carry on the Thai theme and visited Busaba Eathai. I've been to this restaurant before in Soho and off Bond Street. It's always a great eat and reasonably priced.

One of the dishes we had was the Gong Tohd Prawn, which are butterflied prawns fried in breadcrumbs served with a chilli lime sauce. The sauce was so zingy and refreshing! I knew I couldn't make an exact replica of it, but I tried to make something similar. Being hungry at home, and not really wanting to head out, this little concoction came to life from whatever I had in my kitchen.

In goes the coriander, some home grown minuet basil leaves, a dash of fish sauce, chopped galangal, a squeeze or two of lime juice, finely chopped lemongrass, a sprinkling of palm sugar, the heat of a birdseye chilli and a bit of seasoning. I probably should have written this down as it turned out to be quite nice!

I chopped up the monkfish into bitesize chunks and coated them in Ottogi breadcrumbs - a friend had bought me these so that I could make a Chicken Katsu Curry :) After frying my breaded seafood leftovers up in a little oil, it was time to plate up.

This really went down a treat and I will definitely be making this again.

Chicken and Galangal Soup

Chicken and Galangal Soup

Oh, the galangal. Why could I not have bought just one piece of it? I ended up giving my friend a few pieces to take home with her but I still had a good amount to use up.

Why, hello there Google Search! Chicken and Galangal soup came up quiet a lot. I'd never even tried it before and we quiet fancied a soup so I gave it a go.

After searching through some recipes and trying to find one which doesn't contain cup measurements, I decided against calculating the measurements and ended up doing a bit of guess work.

The usual suspects went in plus some mushrooms and chicken. Not too bad. I've no idea how it's meant to taste but it was quite a pleasant meal.

Duck Massaman Curry

Massaman curry paste

A massaman curry is a Southern Thai dish traditionally made with beef. I actually only tried a massaman for the very first time earlier this year - and I loved it. There seems to be a lot of variation on the name, but Google seems to favour 'Massaman'. I've seen it written as Mussaman and a few other ways I can't quiet remember.

On visiting the aforementioned Busaba Eathai restaurant, my friend had ordered a Duck Mussaman Curry (as written on their menu). It was surely delicious!

With ingredients still to use, I figured I'd give it a go having bottled out by purchasing the curry paste before. I followed a mix of recipes again. I've made a decent amount of paste so that I can give this dish another go. I'm glad, as this didn't really go to plan.

Massaman Curry

I think I've gotten the flavours a bit mixed up. Too much cinnamon involved, and I definitely put in too many peanuts. It could have been better but I do think my paste is a good base for it so perhaps next time it will turn out better.

I had leftovers and had read that this usually tastes better the day after. Why not, hey? Its so true. It does actually taste better the next day! The flavours just seem a little more aromatic and my cinnamon error seemed less noticeable.

I have found that I have a new ingredient to love though. Tamarind paste - it has a lovely sour flavour which really worked nicely in this curry. It's meant to be a popular ingredient for a traditional Thai sour soup. Yum!

Orange and Lemongrass cupcakes

What else could I make, eh? Something sweet of course! I hadn’t baked for a little while and so thought it would be a good opportunity to. My default bake is a lemon cake as it’s easy, tasty and a hit with friends and family. I didn’t want to do too much thinking, so decided to use the same base for my mixture. I added orange zest instead of lemon, a grating of the remaining lemongrass, and some ground ginger hoping these flavours would compliment each other.

Orange and Lemongrass cupcakes

After baking for about twenty-five minutes, the cupcakes came out of the oven. I tried to make a buttercream icing, but my mixture was too runny and too sweet. The cupcakes were quite nice though. Subtle flavours which made it nice and light. I was pleased that the sponge was very soft and fluffy too! The cupcakes had a lovely slight crust that I don’t usually get with my cakes. I think that it’s because I used cane sugar as I didn’t have caster sugar at the time. It’s not as fine so when mixing it with the butter, I didn’t get the same creaminess I normally would. But I think this resulted in the nice little sugared crystals on the top of my cupcakes :)

Now what?

Although my initial focus was the Thai Green curry, I’m glad that my excess of ingredients encouraged me to explore more on Thai culinary delights. Whether they are authentic or not, it’s nice to experiment with new flavours.

I will be sure to revisit, perfect and write down some of these recipes! Although, I’m quite happy to continue dining at the wonderful Thai restaurants we have here in this country :)

A Little Thai Adventure (Part One)

It all started when a friend of mine went to a Thai cooking class. He was so excited that he'd just made a Thai Green Curry. I'd recently been making my own curry pastes but more for Indian curries, so I asked if he could send me the recipe. To my surprise, this cooking class involved using a jar of bought curry paste and pre-made fish balls. I'm wondering what kind of cooking class my friend actually attended! Pre-made ingredients are certainly not to be dismissed, often being a saver and quick win, but I was really after more.

I have lightly attempted making Thai food before but never from scratch. As I'd recently started making Indian curry pastes from scratch, it seemed sensible to try my hand at Thai curry pastes too.

My first attempt was a Massaman curry a while back but I very quickly failed as I found that I couldn't get all the ingredients from my local Tesco. Oh, how amateur of me! So I ended up buying a jar of paste since my heart was set on a Massaman that night. My friends’ Thai cooking class encouraged me to give Thai cooking another try, but with the right ingredients this time.

Key ingredients

There are a few key ingredients in Thai cuisine. I started with a fixation on making Thai Green Curry, and due to the quantities I bought of each ingredient, I found myself trying a fair few dishes with Thai influences in an effort to use up my fresh ingredients. These delights (and mishaps) will feature in part two of My Little Thai Adventure.

I found the main ingredients for Thai lovelies are:

• Galangal
• Kaffir Limes and Leaves
• Lemongrass
• Shrimp Paste
• Coriander Root
• Palm Sugar

Galangal

Galangal

I didn't know what galangal was before, and was naive to think that I could find it in my local Tesco Extra which seems to be attempting to stock a few bits out of the norm. They have dried galangal slices, but fresh ingredients are always nice, right?

Galangal is from the ginger family. It looks similar with it being a root and knobbly, but is much paler in colour and tougher to cut through. Popular in Thai and South-East Asian cuisine, it has a peppery flavour and it has a much cleaner and fresher taste than ginger.

I managed to purchase a few of these from a visit to Loon Fung in Chinatown, London. I had to buy a pack of them containing about six pieces, since they were not sold singularly as with ginger in mainstream supermarkets. I only needed half a piece for my Thai Green Curry!

Kaffir Lime and Leaves

Kaffir limes and leaves

Now, this I had heard of before. I had some Kaffir lime leaves in my cupboard from a previous attempt at cooking something Thai related. It has a really fresh limey scent.

I have read that Kaffir is an offensive term and the proper term should be Magroot. Though Kaffir is so commonly used rather than the latter, that it seems pretty accepted. Kaffir is used on all the packaging so I think it’s a safe term to use... I hope.

Both the leaves and fruit itself are used in a lot of Thai cuisine. The leaves are stocked in many supermarkets in dried form and this is what I have used. I didn't manage to locate any fresh leaves unfortunately.

I hadn't managed to find any Kaffir limes either, and a normal lime is often used as a substitute. However, authenticity does not take kindly on substitutions!

Lemongrass

Lemongrass

Ah, the lovely aroma and freshness of lemongrass. I’ve tried the delightful infusion of lemongrass in various foods and drinks. Lemongrass tea is so fresh with citrus notes, and I've recently tried a Lemongrass Collins cocktail from LAB in Soho not too long ago.

Acquiring fresh lemongrass is another tricky one. I defaulted to Tesco again since that is where I do most of my grocery shopping anyway. They stock fresh and dried lemongrass. Again, I would opt for the fresh ingredient but I do hesistate on the quality of it. The outer parts of the stalks seem dry and overall, quite short. Waitrose is similar, perhaps slightly better, but I found what seemed to me a much higher quality version of it in Chinatown. The stalks are longer, they look like they have a bit more life in them, and a firmer to the touch. I’m still convinced I can find better, but I’ll make do for now.

Shrimp Paste

I failed miserably at acquiring this when attempting a Massaman curry, which is partly why I ended up buying a jar of curry paste instead.

So, after I went for dim sum (oh, how I love dim sum) at Tai Pan in Liverpool not too long ago, I checked out the Wing Hing Lung store downstairs. Why hello there, shrimp paste! My Mum warns me that it's a stinker and how true that turned out to be...

Coriander Root

Coriander Root

Fail. I never managed to acquire this in the end and used coriander stalks instead. A few recipes I had researched seemed to suggest either / or were fine, so i hope I didn't do too much wrong with this!

Palm Sugar

Easy to acquire from my local Tesco Extra. I wish I had bought it from the Wing Hing Lung store as I remembered seeing it there in a bigger jar. Each recipe hasn't required more than two teaspoons but I think it would have been cheaper to get it from Wing Hing Lung than the speciality foods section in Tesco.

You try and you learn

The moral of the story really is that you can’t find everything at your local Tesco, however much you might wish for that to happen. Go to an Asian supermarket, or it may be useful to buy online. I haven’t tried purchasing online yet but I’ve read that you can buy good produce on some websites.

Maybe don’t go up and down the country like I did. I just happened to be at a Chinese supermarket in Liverpool during a visit and thought to buy a few things. Must explore more places around London!

Keep your eyes peeled for Part Two of My Little Thai Adventure where I will be putting my Thai ingredients under a bit of heat and telling you all about how I get on.