thaidatingtravel’s Neighborhood

Whoo-hooo! Great picture, that!

Well, nothing to say here — just the plain glory of aloo gobi.

Now this was absolutely excellent. I used to think of this as "fiskeKrateng" because I'd only ever heard of it — I never saw it written down. My hearing is possibly a little impaired. But "fiskeGrateng" — hey, that makes sense: it's that French au gratin thing, isn't it? Well, I had a try at it a little while ago, and it turned out shit. Well, the "inside" — the filling — was good, but the topping wasn't. And the topping really is the key here. It's gotta be nice and crispy and whatnot.

This time around, I really got it right. The topping, I mean. And (as is often the case, of course), I accidentally used a much bigger pan that required, and ended up with far more crust, than filling. (As a child, I would always try to snag a little more than my fair share of the crispy top, than the filling.)

But the real deal about this dish isn't the "au gratin" part. What makes this a really unique dish (well, as far as I know) is that you mix eggs into the thing — and not just that: you whisk the egg whites separately (to stiff peaks) and then fold them in. So you end up with something that is almost souflé-ish in texture. I've not seen anything similar in any other cusines.

This is very cool. It's my mother's food, and I had to ask my sister for some very vital details on this one. I mean, it is a conseptual thing, and it's so rare to find food that makes use of any radically interesting methods — but this ones does. And what's more, it was part of my childhood.

Haven't done this one in a long, long time. Part of the reason for that is that Thai green curry paste is so damn fiery — to the point that after my first encounter with it, I made my own paste... But this time around, I made a mistake, and ended up having to simmer things a bit, which mellowed the paste a lot. An accident that made the dish better — you don't see that too often. But it happens.

And yeah, the small kaffir lime leaf was for decoration. Of course, them things were used in the dish. They are fantastic.

A simple meal, served cold, for someone going on a long car journey — not heavy, but tasty. Salad with garden tomatoes, and breaded strips of chicken breasts, that were flavored with my own curry powder. I used no dressing on the salad, but in retrospect I think I could, or even should, have done something more to the salad part of it all. But you do what you can, with what you've got. Looks good, though.

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. These are meatballs that quite frankly weren't as good as I hoped for — the Thai peanut dipping sauce I made came from a meatball recipe that was much better.

It doesn't present very well either, in spite of a fancy-pants little dipping sauce cup on the plate.

The broccoli in oyster sauce (with some bean sprouts) don't present very well either, but oh well. I'm serving veggies, and that can't be bad.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the wee little donkey, too.

I used to make some really horrible looking meals, way back. But I kinda figured I'd gotten good at this cooking thing, now. Good enough to not make anything that looked this nasty. I stand corrected. Damn. It tasted good, though. The bacon was nice and crispy, and the chicken breast nice and moist. The corn was good also. And the sauce was reasonable — not great, but reasonable.

But holy shit, that is one awful looking meal.

The original recipe called for the use of coconut meat, which isn't very popular around here, so I just used coconut milk the last time around, but it ended up tasting very coconutt-y. This time, I decided to use toasted, ground cashew nuts instead. I don't know of anything that could replace coconut, but I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out really nice.

The cashew was mixed into a paste with the meat from three stripey Pete tomatoes that were skinned and seeded, and had most of its water removed. This mixture was thrown into the wok after I'd stir-fried some diced garlic, Jalapeño pepper, galangal and lemongrass paste over very high heat. Next, some brown sugar, turmeric (the color of this dish just screams turmeric, hehehe), lime juice and some torn kaffir lime leaves. After about 20 minutes of simmering, I buzzed it in a blender till smooth (galangal takes quite long to go soft) and returned it to the pan, pushing it through a sieve. Finally, I ended up adding some coconut milk, but let it simmer long enough to blend the flavors together.

I stirred in some cilantro towards the end, and served it over rice, garnished with more cilantro and a couple of very thin slices from a very hot Jalapeño. Very tasty. Would work very well chicken also, I think.

Strips of pork tenderloin sliced thin, marinated in a mixture of Szechuan chili, Hoisin, black bean and soy sauce, toasted sesame seed oil, toasted sesame seeds and Szechuan peppercorns (whole — bad idea), crushed black peppercorns, scallions and a non-seeded Jalapeño. Later, I adjusted the marinade with lemon juice, white wine vinegar and Shiraz sauce and some apricot jam.

This was then grilled on a very high heat coal barbecue, with a bunch of sliced onions. The flavors disappeared completely. I tested some of the pork halfway through the marination process, by sautéing it over very high heat in a non-stick pan, and the result was much better there: I got some brownage, and the flavors were preserved. Over the grill, I mostly got a steaming effect, in spite of having the coals actually touching the griddle.

Served with lettuce, cucumber, Roma tomatoes and bean sprouts, wrapped in a grilled tortilla. The whole thing was basically inspired by that Korean fire beef recipe, Bul Go Ki.

Quite good stuff. But plenty of things to consider, ponder, and improve.

Miso soup with shrimp and chicken stock, mushrooms, scallions and noodles.

A salad with garlic-rosemary croutons from homemade bread, Roma tomatoes and cucumber, with lettuce tossed in a Hoisin, soy and toasted sesame seed oil dressing.