Bringing Thai Street Food Home

A couple weeks ago Julius bought me this most gorgeous coffee table book - Thai Street Food by David Thompson.  As I was flipping through it, the beautiful pictures were enough to make me drool.  Thankfully there were recipes as well.  For the size of it, this book certainly belongs to a coffee table. I do imagine it will  soon be covered with splatters as I attempted the various recipes.

Ramen Soup with Crab Meat Dumplings and Barbecue Pork

The soup is a pork bone soup which has very simple ingredients: pork bones, daikon, coriander roots, spring onion ends, star anise, soya sauce, salt and pepper.  It took a few hours to reduce the stock from 3 litres to 2 litres.  I was tasting it along the way because of the aroma in the kitchen was just too tempting.

The crab dumplings were made from crab meat, minced pork, coriander and chopped chives buds (my addition).  I learned a lesson about dumpling wrappers: I was using leftover ones which I defrosted from the freezer and they turned out to be a mess.  Parts were dry and chipping while parts were soggy.  Never freeze leftover wrappers again.

Disclosure: we bought BBQ pork from T&T but one day I will try to make that myself.

The ramen was dried organic brown rice ramen that I found at Sobey's and I added some Shanghai Choy Sum.

It was simply srumptious!

Stir Fried Geoduck with Black Bean and Chilli Sauce

That morning I woke up thinking about razor clams, sadly they were not in season and I had to substitute with frozen geoduck.  Geoduck is also a clam, in fact one of the largest clam that are very popular in Asian cuisine, it is in fact best eaten raw when fresh.

Like I explained to our guests John and Nick, it is very typical for Asians to eat a bowl of noodle soup with a dish of stir fried seafood in any street food stalls for a simple meal.

As I was shopping for dinner, I also picked up some chives buds.  They are one of my favourite Asian vegetables for its texture and taste, and they have these cutest little buds at the end.  

The frozen geoduck turned out much better than I anticipated but it took a few extra minutes to cook on our cooktop.

This was a perfect compliment to the ramen soup and we cleared our bowls and plates!

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/201153/thai-street-food-by-david-thompson

http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/2941/stirfried-razor-clams-with-black-bean-and-chilli-sauce

Ramen Soup 9/10

Geoduck 8/10

Duck Pastrami

When I think of pastrami, I picture beef slices in a sandwich with some coleslaw.  This recipe took it to another place.  A delicious place.

Duck Pastrami with Rapini

I made new friends with juniper berries but do they like to play hard to get.  I wandered in the grocery store a few times and just about to give up on this recipe when I finally spotted dried ones in the spice aisle.

Fun fact: gin is made from juniper berries.

The only challenge with this recipe was that I had to wait 48 hours for brining.  It was definitely worth the wait.  The flavour was rich and the meat was tender.  I would have preferred the meat to be slightly more rare, mine was in the oven for about 14 minutes.

A side dish of sauteed rapini with garlic was served as suggested by Chef Froggett.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/recipes/keith-froggetts-duck-pastrami/article4632449/

Duck 9/10
Rapini 7.5/10

Sherman's Got His Swooth Back

What is "Swooth"? That is my new word for sweet tooth.

The title is a little misleading because I never lost my sweet tooth because I have always said that I did not have one and I often skipped desserts.  And that is why it took this long for me to give desserts a try.

It only took one stunning picture of a soufflé to change my mind.

Grand Marnier Soufflés

When I first opened up the cookbook from Royal Caribbean Cruise, I could not stop going back to the picture of this dessert. It just seemed heavenly. So one day I set up to pick up some ramekins and decided it was time to venture into desserts.

I was simply amazed how a little eggwhite can be whipped into these cloud-like peaks.  We did not have a machine but between Julius and I and some elbow grease, it was like magic!

And the anticipation while they were in the oven was really the best part, watching these babies grow.  I was also reminded to clean the oven because it was getting hard to see through the window...

Twenty minutes later and out come these cute little puffs. A dusting of powdered sugar and here they are:

After enjoying my first dessert, which had great flavours but a bit stiff inside, I looked over a few more soufflé recipes and realized there might have been too much flour in the recipe I used.  They were in no way perfect, but like a first born, they will always have a special place in my heart.

Lemon Custard Cake

Now I have these ramekins, I decided to use them often.  I found this recipe online after a search for "desserts in ramekins".

I had never have custard cakes before and really did not know what to expect, and so I told my guests.  Who would know they would be such a hit!

The steps were so simple and I could prepare ahead of time to let them chill in the fridge.  They did shrink a bit as seen in the photo but that did not ruin the flavours at all.  

It was a cake. No, it was a custard. No, it was both!  It was a layer of cake with custard underneath.  Most importantly, not too sweet but simply heavenly!

In fact, I made these again the following week and served them with some fresh whipped cream on top with the mint, it was perfecto.

http://www.food.com/recipe/lemon-cake-custard-329390

Soufflé 6/10

Custard Cake 9/10