tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1 2012-02-04T07:54:39Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2228 2012-02-04T11:20:46Z 2012-02-04T07:54:39Z

I made Strawberry Daifuku, only a few days ago. The Japanese dumpling with the strawberry in it. But if you've read my blog, you'll know by now I want to bring Thai flavours to these dishes, and here I'm...

I made Strawberry Daifuku, only a few days ago. The Japanese dumpling with the strawberry in it. But if you've read my blog, you'll know by now I want to bring Thai flavours to these dishes, and here I'm filling a Daifuku with a Coconut Sticky Rice and a Mango center. Instead of strawberry, we have the mango, instead of the sweet bean paste, I have the sweet/salty coconut sticky rice. Even if I say so myself, this really worked well. The resulting dumpling had an extra texture from the sticky rice, and the coconut flavour is far more interesting than the sweet bean paste, which made it better than the strawberry original. I think with a little more practice I could keep the mango in the center, but nothing is perfect. ]]> Ingredient For Filling 50 gms Glutinous (Sticky) Rice 1 Mango 100 ml Water 50 ml Coconut Milk 50 gms Sugar 1/4 Teaspoon Salt 1/4 Teaspoon Rice Flour Preparation for Filling 1. Soak the glutinous rice in some water for a few hours. This will make the sticky rice easier to cook. 2. Steam the rice for 15 minutes to cook it through. The best thing for steaming sticky rice is the specially made steamer. If you want to steam using a normal steamer, put it as flat as you can in a plate and drain off excess water when its finished cooking. 3. Into a sauce-pan, put the water and sugar, and bring to the boil to dissolve the sugar. 4. Add the cooked sticky rice into the sugar pan and stir well to mix it. 5. In a different sauce pan, put the coconut milk, the rice flour, and salt and cook it on a low heat for 5 minutes or until the coconut milk thickens from the flour. 6. Add this coconut milk to the sticky-rice place in a bowl and leave to cool and the liquids to be absorbed. 6. Peel the mango. For this we need small balls of mango, I used a 1 teaspoon measure to ball the mango for my centers and got 6 small balls from 1 mango about 2.5cms diameter each. 7. Take the sticky rice and form it around the melon ball. Again I used my measuring spoons, using the 1 tablespoon measure to form a ball to make 4cm diameter balls. They're quite big, but the balance was right. Place in a covered box in the fridge. 8. Next we make the outer wrapper. Ingredients for Outside 100 gms Sticky Rice Flour 95-100 mls Water 2 tablespoons Sugar Potato or Corn Starch for Dusting Preparation 1. Mix the flour and sugar together, add the water and mix. Keep mixing until you get a smooth liquid paste. If you refer to the video link in the Strawberry Daifuku recipe, it does a good job of showing how to make this. 2. Place in a bowl and steam for 15 minutes. 3. Mix the paste again with a spatula, cover and leave to cool to room temperature. 4. It is very sticky, so get some potato or corn starch. 5. Dust your fingers, and a plate with the starch, place the sticky cooked dough on the plate and cut into 6 equal pieces. Even though the centers are larger, I found I could stretch this dough to cover the larger ball. 6. Press out each piece into a small disc between your fingers, take one of the sticky rice covered melon balls and place in the center, bring the edges of the sticky dough over and pinch it closed at the top. 7. Brush off any excess starch and leave to settle in the fridge. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2227 2012-02-02T09:28:51Z 2012-02-02T11:32:26Z

The famouse Japanese sweet dumpling, 'Daifuku' is similar to our Thai rice ball, a sweet filling contained in a wrapper made from glutinous rice flour. There is one that has a nice variation on this theme, and that's Ichigo...

The famouse Japanese sweet dumpling, 'Daifuku' is similar to our Thai rice ball, a sweet filling contained in a wrapper made from glutinous rice flour. There is one that has a nice variation on this theme, and that's Ichigo Daifuku, a three part Daifuku, with a whole strawberry at its center. I'm using the recipe of 'Cooking with Dog', the video blog for Japanese cooking. She makes it look easy, but I find the hardest part is wrapping the center with the glutinous rice dough. The trick is to pinch out the pastry into a circular disc first, using plenty of starch to avoid it sticking. That made it easier to pull the pastry around the strawberry and end up with something even and thin. Don't make the outer layer too think, it will be unpleasantly chewy and spoiled the effect of the daifuku, if you have too much glutinous dough when you pinch the edges together, pinch off any excess. The other thing is, use a small slightly sour strawberry for this. The strawberry sourness is the contrast for the sweet red bean paste. If it's too ripe and sweet you lose the effect. Perhaps I'll try marzipan instead of red bean paste. You need sweetness, and firmness in that layer, but it strikes me that marzipan is the perfect layer there. Or even the sweet yellow bean paste, the Chinese use for in sweet pies. ]]> Ingredients 100 gms Sticky Rice Flour 95-100 mls Water 2 tablespoons Sugar Potato or Corn Starch for Dusting 150 gms Sweet Red Bean Paste 6 Small Strawberries Preparation 1. Cut off the green cap of the strawberries, clean and dry. 2. Cover thinly in the red bean paste, set aside in the fridge. 3. Mix the flour and sugar together, add the water and mix. Keep mixing until you get a smooth liquid paste. 4. Place in a bowl and steam for 15 minutes. 'Cooking With Dog' covered the steamer lid with a cloth, but this proved unnecessary, just be careful when opening it so the water doesn't drip from the lid into the cooked paste. 5. Mix the paste again with a spatula, cover and leave to cool to room temperature. 6. It is very sticky at this point, so get some starch, potato or corn starch will do. 7. Dust your fingers, and a plate, place the sticky cooked dough on the plate and cut into 6 equal pieces. 8. Press out each piece into a small disc, take a strawberry wrapped in bean paste and place it in the center and pull the disc over it and pinch it shut. 9. Brush off any excess starch and leave to settle in the fridge. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2226 2012-02-01T03:05:54Z 2012-02-01T03:29:14Z

Another variation on the sweet toast theme. This one is salty sweet pork hair toast. Pork hair or fiber is pork meat, dried and rubbed to form fibers, it is widely available in Asia grocers. The sweetness comes from...

Another variation on the sweet toast theme. This one is salty sweet pork hair toast. Pork hair or fiber is pork meat, dried and rubbed to form fibers, it is widely available in Asia grocers. The sweetness comes from sweet mayonnaise, often called 'salad cream', the kind with 20% sugar. When I bought these in the market, I thought it used a lot of pork, but when you actually make them, you realize the pork is sitting on a line of mayonnaise and that is what glues it to the toast! So its very economical with the pork. ]]> Ingredients Sweet Mayonnaise Thin Sliced White Bread Pork Hair Preparation 1. Trim the bread of any crusts. I couldn't get bread thin enough, so I carefully cut each slice in half to make it half the thickness. 2. Toast the bread on one side. 3. On the untoasted side, pipe two lines of mayonnaise, each slice will make two pork-toast strips. 4. Dust the pork hair onto the mayonnaise to cover it. 5. Pipe a zig-zag of mayonnaise over the top, and cut into two bread strips. 6. You can see the 3 stages of preparation in the photo above, the line of mayonnaise, the line covered with pork hair, and finished one with the zig-zag of mayonnaise on the top. 6. Toast under a grill until the bread is crisp. 7. Eat warm or cold, but keep out of moist air or they will go soggy. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2223 2012-01-28T11:03:09Z 2012-01-29T02:24:18Z

I first saw these buns in China Town, when I went to the Chinese New Year Celebrations. They are a steamed bread bun, stuffed with all kinds of Thai meats and salty egg till they're bursting out. There's two...

I first saw these buns in China Town, when I went to the Chinese New Year Celebrations. They are a steamed bread bun, stuffed with all kinds of Thai meats and salty egg till they're bursting out. There's two versions of this I've seen, one has an extra layer of pork mince and corn flour in the middle to hold the roll together. If you want to make that version, mix a couple of tablespoons of corn flour, with pork mince and seasoning. Add this at the filling stage along the center of the bun then stick the other ingredients into this. I preferred to keep the bun dry, so I could drizzle some dim-sum sauce on it, and this variation tends to soak up fat from the pork mince. You can see my Thai meat platter for ideas on meats you can use, and this dish also uses pork hair, the fibers of the pork meat.]]> Ingredients for 4 Buns 220 gms Flour (all purpose flour) 1 1/2 Teaspoons Dried Yeast 1 1/2 Tablespoons Sugar Pinch of Salt 230 mls Water 2 Tablespoons Oil Ingredients For Filling 2 Hot Dogs 5-10 Sliced Cooked Sweet Sausage 1 Hard Boiled Salty Egg Pork Hair 4 Shitake Mushrooms Preparation 1. If your shitake mushrooms are dried, leave them to soak them for 10 minutes in warm water. 2. Mix flour and dried yeast. 3. In a separate bowl, mix the water, oil, sugar and salt together until the sugar has dissolved. 4. Add the water mix to the flour mix. You want to make a firm dough here, so adjust the amount of liquid and flour to achieve this. Too dry, a little more water, too wet, a little more flour. 5. You need to work this dough for a good 2-3 minutes. Pushing and folding (kneading action) to make it more elastic. It's not going to be baked, so it doesn't need the full working that you'd use for making bread, on the other hand it isn't a cake, it does need kneading. 6. Place dough in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave for 30 minutes to rise. 7. After 30 minutes, knock it down again and work it again for a couple of minutes more 8. Again cover with a damp cloth, let it rise again for 10-15 minutes. 9. Cut it into 4 equal portions. Form each portion into a finger bun shape. 10. Place on greaseproof paper squares in the steamer. Space them well apart they will expand. 11. At baking school, they had a steam room to let doughs rise, at home I put a little water in the steamer, and just warm it up so there is a little warmth and moister inside the steamer. Then leave the dough in that state for another 10-15 minutes so the buns puff up again. 12. Turn the steamer on full, steam them till they're cooked through, 10 minutes is usually enough for my steamer. You can check they are cooked by sticking a toothpick in and seeing if it comes out clean. If it's not cooked it comes out with some dough mixture on it. 13. Cut the ends of the hotdog sausages in a cross pattern. Then cut them in half. 14. Slice open the bun, stick slices of the pork, half a hotdog, a slice of salty egg, slices of shitake mushroom and some pork hair, all sticking out of the bun for the bursting effect. 15. Put the bun back to steam for another 5 minutes, the hot dog sausage will open up, and although Thai sausages are already cooked, its safer in a hot country just to steam them again like this. 16. This is nice with a little dim-sum sauce drizzled over it (half white vinegar, half light soy), or even a little fish sauce or Maggi sauce. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2220 2012-01-20T08:22:09Z 2012-01-20T09:23:04Z

With so many prepared meats in Thailand, it's worth just preparing a simple Thai pickle and meat platter. There's almost no work involved yet the result is every bit as good as a cooked dish, there are sweet meats,...

With so many prepared meats in Thailand, it's worth just preparing a simple Thai pickle and meat platter. There's almost no work involved yet the result is every bit as good as a cooked dish, there are sweet meats, savory meats, crunchy meats, spicy meat. If you want to expand the textures, don't forget the hairy meats too. For more unusual pickles, well you could add sweet pickled turnip. ]]> In my platter I have: 1. Sliced sweet pork sausage. 2. A spicy liver sausage. 3. This is sweet flat pork, it's almost like candied pork! 4. The fried crunch version of the flat pork. 5. Pickled cabbage. 6. Pickled garlic 7. Thai basil (at the back-right). 8. The rolled fatty pork I made a few days ago. 9. Grated radish.]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2012://1.2218 2012-01-19T06:00:31Z 2012-01-19T09:24:55Z

This rolled, boiled, belly pork forms the centerpiece of noodle dishes, the pork is fatty, but the fat has been cooked down to a delicious melt-in-the-mouth texture. Once it's cooked, it is left cold and sliced as thinly as...

This rolled, boiled, belly pork forms the centerpiece of noodle dishes, the pork is fatty, but the fat has been cooked down to a delicious melt-in-the-mouth texture. Once it's cooked, it is left cold and sliced as thinly as you can make it, then use it to garnish noodle dishes like the one shown below. Start with three layer pork (pork belly with the fat still attached), the fat is essential, it is what binds the roll together and brings the flavour. Make the roll a day ahead, it needs a long time to boil and to be completely cold before slicing. Be sure to tie this with proper cord string, and not the plastic kind. The meat roll is browned on the outside in a frying pan, plastic string would melt at this stage if you used it. ]]> Ingredients 5 Tablespoons Dark Soy Sauce 1/2 Teaspoon Ground White Pepper 1 Teaspoon Salt 2 Pork Stock Cubes Half a large pan of water Preparation The first step it to cut off the skin, it's not needed for this meat roll, but don't waste it. You can deep fry this until it's crunchy, chop it up and add it to the noodle dish as an extra garnish. Turn the pork belly over, to roll it, just need to trim some of the meat off. If it's too thick it won't roll. Roll the pork so that the fat side (the side you cut the skin off) is on the inside of the roll. Remember, the fat is what holds the shape of the roll together. Tie it with strings, loop the string around and thread it back under itself, then pull it tight. then repeat with the next loop, and so on. By looping it this way, you get a better, tighter roll. Next brown off the outside in a frying pan to add extra flavour. Into a pan bring the stock ingredients together and bring to the boil, you want a good deep pan, so the liquid reaches the top of your pork. Place the pork roll into this liquid and boil for 2 hours on a low boil. Once it's cooked for the 2 hours, turn off the heat, cover and leave it sitting in the liquid to cool to room temperature, remove it and place it in the fridge until completely cold. Keep this soup stock, you can use it to flavour the noodles. Once the meat is cold, slice as thinly as you can and add a few slices to noodles dishes. Above you can see a typical noodle plate, here made with fresh egg noodles, boiled for 3 minutes then drained. Slices of the pork roll, thinly sliced cabbage, lettuce, coriander leaves and sliced spring onions for garnish, half a boiled egg, cooked in the stock I made the meat with. I heated up the stock and ladled some over the noodles to give it flavour. If you want extra crunch, you could add some fried crunchy wontons, or perhaps some beansprouts for freshness. Don't forget to have Thai condiments for noodles on your table. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2006://1.1193 2012-01-12T12:51:57Z 2012-01-12T03:50:09Z

The warm sweet sticky rice & coconut adds creaminess, the strawberries add sourness, and in the center, chopped strawberries in syrup add the sweetness. This makes a very delicious dessert....

The warm sweet sticky rice & coconut adds creaminess, the strawberries add sourness, and in the center, chopped strawberries in syrup add the sweetness. This makes a very delicious dessert. ]]> Ingredients 500 gms Strawberries 100 gms Sticky Rice 300 gms Coconut Milk 10 gms Sugar 1 Teaspoon Salt Syrup 100 gms Sugar 100 ml Water Preparation 1. Soak the sticky rice in warm water overnight. 2. Make a sugar syrup, heat the 100gms of sugar with 100ml of water and boil slowly until the syrup is thick, then leave to cool. 3. When it is cool, chop two strawberries into fine pieces, and mix them with the syrup - this will form the center of the plate. 4. Steam the sticky rice in a until cooked, then place in bowl and leave to cool a little. 5. To the sticky rice, add the 10 gms sugar, salt and coconut milk and mix well. Leave the rice to soak up the coconut milk. 6. To present the dish, slice the strawberries into thin slices and layer them with spoonfuls of the sticky rice mixture. Fill the center with the strawberries in syrup.]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2215 2011-12-31T07:32:41Z 2011-12-31T07:46:49Z

It's the holiday season and as you can imagine I'm busy. The big thing for Thailand is really the New Year rather than Christmas, and I spend a lot of my time making snacks to serve with drinks over...

It's the holiday season and as you can imagine I'm busy. The big thing for Thailand is really the New Year rather than Christmas, and I spend a lot of my time making snacks to serve with drinks over the New Years eve. This one is about the simplest one you can make, yet incredibly tasty. They are wontons skins, (the Chinese pastry used to make dim-sum and similar snacks) dusted with pork seasoning powder and fried. What you get is a salty, savoury, crunchy snack that is absolutely perfect to eat with drinks, and absolutely perfect too because it takes only a few minutes to prepare! Happy New Year. ]]> Ingredients Wonton Skins Pork or Chicken Seasoning Powder (Ros-Dee) Water Preparation 1. Lay out the wontons on a board. 2. Spray or brush with a little water. 3. Dust pork or chicken seasoning powder on the wontons. You don't need much, a light dusting is enough. If you're not sure of the strength of your seasoning powder, try making a few first! 4. I used Ros-Dee brand powder, it is a popular brand here. 5. Get the oil medium hot, given the wontons a quick fry till golden brown and drain on kitchen paper, and that's it. Serve them hot or cold, don't leave them a long time or they'll get soggy. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2211 2011-12-11T20:20:03Z 2011-12-11T13:37:23Z

Gyoza may be Japanese (or rather the Japanese version of Chinese dumplings), but that doesn't mean they can't benefit from some Thai spices. Here I've made a Lap-Mu filling (a spicy pork dish common to Thailand), the side vegetables...

Gyoza may be Japanese (or rather the Japanese version of Chinese dumplings), but that doesn't mean they can't benefit from some Thai spices. Here I've made a Lap-Mu filling (a spicy pork dish common to Thailand), the side vegetables served with Lap Mu are cabbage, coriander leaves and spring onions, and these have also been incorporated into these gyoza, and give it a lighter filling than you'd have with meat alone. The pastry part is the same as other gyoza recipes, I've included it below for convenience. For Lap Mu you need to make toasted sticky rice, it's such a common ingredient that you can buy it in Thailand in packets, or simply toast your own stick rice in a frying pan. ]]> Ingredients for Gyoza Pastry 200 gms Flour 170 ml Hot Water 1 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil 1/4 Teaspoon Salt Preparation 1. Start with the pastry first, this needs to be rested, and while it's resting you can make the filling. 2. Mix the salt, flour and hot water together. By hot I mean as hot as your hands can cope with, stir as you add the water to combine it, add more flour if the dough is too loose. 3. Add the oil and work the dough for 5-10 minutes, cover and leave to rest for 15 minutes. 4. Roll it as thin as you can get, I cover with a sheet of plastic to keep the moisture in, and leave it to rest again for at least 30 minutes. Don't skip this second resting, or the pastry will spring back and become too thick. 5. Cut discs at least 8 cms across. My Gyoza crimper is 10cms across, so I cut larger circular discs 10cms by pressing in a large lid. 6. I then re-roll the discs even thinner, even with resting, they will spring back a little. But also because I like to have a little overlap around the edge of my crimper, so I can trim excess off and make a nice even edge. Ingredients for Filling 100 gms Pork Mince 50 gms Chopped Cabbage 20 gms Chopped Spring Onion 20 gms Coriander Leaves 1 Tablespoon Chopped Garlic 1 Teaspoon Chopped Red Chillies 1 Teaspoon Flaked Dried Chillies 1 Tablespoon Lime Juice (Or Lemon) 2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce 2 Tablespoons Toasted Sticky Rice 2 Tablespoons Corn Starch Preparation 1. Mix all ingredients together and let it marinade for at least 10 minutes 2. Take a disc of pastry, spoon a good teaspoon of the mixture in, wet the edge and crimp into a dumpling. 3. Place in a frying pan, add a few millimeters of water and cover, steam like this until the water is boiled off. You need to steam them for a least 10 minutes, if the water boils off too quickly top it up with a little more water. 4. Once they're steamed, add a few tablespoons of oil and fry them to brown them. 5. Serve with a dipping sauce made of half light soy, half white vinegar. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2210 2011-12-09T08:13:03Z 2011-12-10T02:59:43Z

Gyoza are the Japanese version of the Chinese pot sticker dumplings which are very very popular in Thailand. You can see from that sentence just how far good food travels. The Japanese version has soy or seasoning sauce in...

Gyoza are the Japanese version of the Chinese pot sticker dumplings which are very very popular in Thailand. You can see from that sentence just how far good food travels. The Japanese version has soy or seasoning sauce in the filling and tends to have more expensive ingredients like shrimp. I make a lot of these and so have a gyoza crimper to get them all even and well made (you can see it in the photo below - the white plastic thing), but most people crimp them by hand using a pleating action. Be sure to follow the pastry recipe carefully, if you don't rest the pastry long enough it shrinks back and becomes too thick, likewise if you overwork the dough it becomes too chewy. ]]> Ingredients for Gyoza Pastry 200 gms Flour 170 ml Hot Water 1 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil 1/4 Teaspoon Salt Preparation 1. It's best to start with the pastry first, this needs to be rested, and while it's resting you can make the filling. 2. Mix the salt, flour and hot water together. By hot I mean as hot as your hands can cope with, stir as you add the water to combine it, add more flour if the dough is too loose. 3. Add the oil and work the dough for 5-10 minutes, cover and leave to rest for 15 minutes. 4. Roll it as thin as you can get, I cover with a sheet of plastic to keep the moisture in, and leave it to rest again for at least 30 minutes. Don't skip this second resting, or the pastry will spring back and become too thick. 5. Cut discs at least 8 cms across. My Gyoza crimper is 10cms across, so I cut larger circular discs 10cms by pressing in a large lid. 6. I then re-roll the discs even thinner, even with resting, they will spring back a little. But also because I like to have a little overlap around the edge of my crimper, so I can trim excess off and make a nice even edge. Ingredients Filling 100 gms Shrimp 50 gms Cabbage 20 gms Spring onion 2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce 2 Tablespoons Sesame Oil 1 Tablespoon Corn Starch 1/4 Teaspoon Salt Preparation 1. Shell the shrimp, cut down the backs and remove the black thread gut. If you look in the ingredients photograph, you'll see I just bought a ready prepared tray of shrimp to save time. 2. Chop the shrimp finely, you want to see shrimp pieces, but also get a fine mix, shred and chop the cabbage and spring onions finely. Mix with all the filling ingredients together including the corn starch and soy. 3. Take a disc of gyoza pastry, put a teaspoon of the mixture in the center. 4. Brush the edge of the pastry with a little water and fold over in two, and crimp to form a little dumpling. 5. Gyoza are cooked in a frying pan, you place them in the pan, add a few millimetres of water to the bottom of the pan, cover with a lid, then boil off the water in the frying pan to steam them, steam for at least 10 minutes, add more water if necessary to cook them long enough. 6. Once you've steamed them and the water has almost gone, add a few tablespoons oil and fry till brown. 7. Serve immediately Serving The dipping sauce for gyoza is an equal mix of soy and vinegar (a light vinegar like rice vinegar, not a strongly flavoured vinegar). Serve the gyoza fresh from the pan, with the dipping sauce on the side. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2209 2011-12-08T10:10:15Z 2011-12-08T07:10:59Z

Another Japanese influence, as Thailand gets richer, so people want to try new things. This is a popular dish in Thailand, originating from Japan, it is a dish of cold noodles with a raw quails egg and side flavorings...

Another Japanese influence, as Thailand gets richer, so people want to try new things. This is a popular dish in Thailand, originating from Japan, it is a dish of cold noodles with a raw quails egg and side flavorings such as radish and wasabi. The noodles are the plain center of the meal that carries the flavours. Her I've used squid ink noodles that have a wonderful smell of squid as you boil them which I like, but wholewheat egg noodles are more authentic. Thais tend to add sliced meat and sliced omelet and serve the noodles, which is not authentic and spoils the simplicity of the dish. A lot of this dish is about the eating process, each person individually mixes their own dipping sauce to their own preference, and the cold noodles become the central shared communal food. A social food, that establishes social hierarchy and bonds - who gets the noodles first, who takes the most, who signals who to eat first. and so on. The dipping sauce is Soba Tsuyu, which is 50-50 Mirin and Light Soy. Miring is a sweet rice wine, the Mirin adds the sweetness, the soy adds the salt and flavour. You can also get ready made sauces for noodles, known as Soba Tsuyu. If you can't get it, don't worry, a sweetened soy sauce works perfectly well. ]]> Ingredients 100 gms So Ba Noodles ( Eggs Noodles ) 1 Teaspoon Wasabi Grated Radish (Nabo the Big Radish) Chopped Spring Onion Sea Weed Paper Strips Soy Sauce for Dipping Mirin (Sweet rice wine) for Dipping 1 Raw Quails Egg per person Preparation 1. Boil the water and add the noodles, it's easy enough to tell if noodles are cooked, just take one out, break it open and look to see it's cooked inside. Once it's cooked, rinse in cold water until they are completely cold. A dip in some ice water can finish the cooling process if you don't have cold water. 2. Grate the radish, it's nice to have strands of radish that give texture and make it easier to pick up with chopsticks, rather than a mush. So be careful when grating, drag the radish slowly over the full length of the grater and it will grate long strands of the radish. 3. Chop the spring onions finely, mix with the radish strands. 4. Cut open the raw quails egg and place it upright standing in its shell, in the radish/spring onion mix. You can see this top right of my photograph. 5. Pile loops of the noddles on the place. Put some tin slices of seaweed paper on the top of the noodles to dress them. 6. Serve piles of the cold noodles, with the Soba Tsuyu sauce (the Mirin/Soy mix) in a separate bowl, the radish/spring onion and the raw egg in a separate bowl, and an empty bowl for each person to assembly their own personal dipping sauce in. Eating Each person has their own little bowl, and takes some of the mirin/soy sauce in the bowl, mixes in the raw quails egg, and mixes in some of the wasabi, according to their personal tastes. This becomes their personal dipping bowl. They then take a mouthful of the noodles with chopsticks and dip those into their bowl to add flavour and eat. Interspersing the noodles with some of the onion radish mix to freshen the palate. In the Thai variant, slices of cold meat cuts are also dipped in the sauce and eaten, sort of noodles, then meat, then freshen palate with radish, then noodles, then meat, then freshen palate...noodles, meat, radish... ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2171 2011-12-06T12:56:06Z 2011-12-06T03:00:57Z

Bituoy also known as Pandan Leaf, is a green leaf with the flavour of bubblegum used to make cakes in Thailand. 'Bituoy Water', is blended leaf sieve into water to transfer the smell and colour to the water. Bread...

Bituoy also known as Pandan Leaf, is a green leaf with the flavour of bubblegum used to make cakes in Thailand. 'Bituoy Water', is blended leaf sieve into water to transfer the smell and colour to the water. Bread in Thailand is usually sweet and eaten more as a dessert than a main course side dish. This recipe is typical of that, it's a sweet bread with added Bituoy and it's one of the recipes I learned at baking school. The baking school I learned from, uses their own various additives, a cake/bread emulsifier 'Pacto3', which is used to keep in moisture and softness, but other brands of cake emulsifier also work, and you get perfectly acceptable bread without any emulsifier at all, but the bread will dry out quicker. Consider it optional They also use U99, their flour improver, this makes the bread more foamy, more like cotton wool and less like rustic bread. I'm afraid that this is a sweet bread, and without the flour improver, it will have the wrong texture. Three difficult to obtain ingredients, sorry, Bituoy, Cake Emulsifier, Flour Improver...]]> Ingredients For Green Bread 500 gms Bread Flour 290 mls Bituoy Water 60 mls Carnation Evaporated Milk 40 gms Butter 40 gms Sugar 1 1/2 Teaspoon Salt 1 1/2 Teaspoon Bread/Cake Emulsifier Pacto3 2 Tablespoon Dried Yeast 2 1/2 Tablespoons Flour Improver U99 Ingredients For The White Bread 500 gms Bread Flour 290 mls Water 60 mls Carnation Evaporated Milk 40 gms Butter 40 gms Sugar 1 1/2 Teaspoon Salt 1 1/2 Teaspoon Cake Emulsifier Pacto3 2 Tablespoon Dried Yeast 2 1/2 Tablespoons Flour Improver U99 Preparation Repeat Separately for Each Type 1. Add all dry ingredients into mixing machine and mix for 1 minute. You can do this by hand if you prefer. 2. Add all the liquids into the dry ingredients and knead for a good 20-30 minutes. 3. Make it into a dough, cover and leave it to 15 minutes to swell up. 4. Cut the green dough into 200 gms chunks do the same with white dough too. 5. Take one green and one white dough. Roll them into rectangles (about 2cms thick, you don't need to roll them too thin). 6. Place the green rectangle on top of the white. 7. Roll them up like a swiss roll. 8. Place in a non stick baking tin (or greased floured loaf tin), a 1Ib loaf tin. Leave for another 40-60 minutes at room temperature to rise again. 9. Bake for 35 minutes at 200 degree celsius. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2208 2011-12-01T23:49:02Z 2011-12-01T16:22:44Z

The tuna in this sandwich is fried until it's crunchy, then pepped up with chillies and glued to the bread with sweet mayonnaise which also adds the sweet balance to the spicy tuna. Frying the tuna like this definitely...

The tuna in this sandwich is fried until it's crunchy, then pepped up with chillies and glued to the bread with sweet mayonnaise which also adds the sweet balance to the spicy tuna. Frying the tuna like this definitely adds an extra dimension and texture to otherwise boring tuna sandwiches. Be careful when frying the tuna, it will burn easily and it also spits as the water in the fish flakes boil off. After experimenting with it, I decided to fry it slowly in the oil that comes in the can, and covering it with an anti spatter lid, shown below, to let the water cook off without the tuna flying everywhere. ]]> Ingredients 4 Slices Wholewheat Sliced Bread 1 Can Tuna in Oil 1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce 1 Tablespoon Lime Juice 1 Teaspoon Palm Sugar 3 Large Red Chillies Chopped 3 Stalks Chopped Coriander Half Small Chopped Onion Mayonnaise Preparation 1. Take the tuna in oil and break up the tuna into fine pieces. 2. Fry the tuna in the oil, slowly, let the water boil off it, it will spit a little so best to cover with an guard or lid. 3. Turn it frequently to cook it evenly till it's crunchy. 4. Drain off any surplus oil from the tuna. 5. Chop the coriander, chillies and onion into fine pieces. Mix with the palm sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and mix into the tuna. 6. Spread mayonnaise over both slices of bread, the mayonnaise sticks the mixture to the bread, so it needs to be the top and bottom layer of the sandwich, with the tuna mixture spooned in the middle. 7. This mixture will make about 2 to 3 sandwiches. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2207 2011-11-24T06:49:45Z 2011-11-24T11:44:20Z

Japanese pizza, or Oknonmiyaki as they call it, is a cabbage batter mixture fried and covered with a dark barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, bonito flakes (dried flakes of fish used to add flavour) and shredded seaweed. That's the basics, but...

Japanese pizza, or Oknonmiyaki as they call it, is a cabbage batter mixture fried and covered with a dark barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, bonito flakes (dried flakes of fish used to add flavour) and shredded seaweed. That's the basics, but the real secret with this dish is it's all about using up leftovers. Tuna, bacon, crab sticks, shrimp, whatever you happen to have leftover, can be used to add bulk and flavour to the pizza. For mine, I have shrimp, crab-sticks, bacon, carrot and spring onion to use up. It reminds me of the Spanish fritata rather than a pizza. For easily cooked items like tuna, add them to the cabbage batter mix, for more difficult items like bacon, fry them first then pour the cabbage batter mixture over the top. Otherwise you'll end up with overcooked cabbage and undercooked bacon. Dashi is used to flavour the batter, but fish or chicken stock, or chicken seasoning powder in water can also be used. Without the flavouring you have only plain cabbage flavour, so it's worth adding something! The dark sauce on the top, Okonomiyaki sauce, is similar to barbecue sauces, if you need to make a substitution a strong deep barbecue sauce is what you're aiming for. ]]> Ingredients 60 gms Flour 70 ml Dashi, or Fish Stock 1 Egg 150 gms Chopped Cabbage 50 gms Chopped Carrots 20 gms Chopped Spring Onion 30 gms Crab-sticks 30 gms Chopped Shrimp 2 Bacon Chopped 1 Sheet Dried Seaweed Dried Fish Flakes (Katsuo Bushi or Similar) Mayonnaise Okonomiyaki Sauce Preparation 1. Mix Flour egg and stock together until it forms a smooth batter. The batter should be thick enough to stick to the cabbage, adjust the flour as necessary. 2. Finely chop the cabbage and mix into the batter. 3. If you are using leftovers that are already cooked, or easily cooked, mix those in with the batter too. I finely chopped and mixed in the crab sticks. 4. Heat a frying pan with a little oil 5. Partially fry the bacon pieces, add the shrimp just to lightly cook them - they will cook more once you've added the cabbage mixture. 6. Spoon on the cabbage batter mixture over these shrimp and bacon pieces to form a round pizza disc with the bacon on the bottom of it. 7. Fry it on a low heat with a lid, you are finishing the cooking of the bacon and shrimp and cooking the batter on one side. Lift the base with a spatula to check it's not burning. 8. Now the difficult part - turning it over without breaking it! I slid it out onto a plate, then tipped the plate over back, into the pan. 9. Repeat the cooking process on the other side, fry with a low heat covered with a lid to brown off the other side of the pizza, lift it with a spatula to check how it's browning. 10. Take it out and place it on a serving plate bacon side up. 11. Next the fun part, Oknonmiyaki traditionally has a grid of sauces over it. If you don't have Oknonmiyaki sauce, you can do what I did and make the recipe below. Then pipe it in a criss-cross pattern over the pizza. 12. Squeeze the mayonnaise out over the pizza in a criss-cross pattern too. 13. Cut the seaweed into very fine strips and sprinkle over the top of the pizza. 14. Sprinkle the dried fish flakes over the top. 15. Serve immediately. Ingredients for Okonomiyaki Sauce 3 tablespoons Tomato Ketchup 4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 3 tablespoons Dark Soy Sauce 1 teaspoon Sugar Preparation 1. Put everything into a pan, over a low heat, and stir until the sugar has dissolved and some of the vinegar in the Worcestershire sauce has boiled away. 2. Leave to cool before piping it. If you want a good pattern on the pizza, you want this sauce quite thick when it cools, if it's not thick enough cook off some more of the liquid. ]]> tag:www.khiewchanta.com,2011://1.2203 2011-11-07T02:45:54Z 2011-11-07T07:17:14Z

Use sweet bread (bread with a high sugar content) for this recipe. In Thailand it's very difficult to find bread that isn't sweet, even a cheese sandwich in Thailand is typically made from sweetened bread and sweet cheese with...

Use sweet bread (bread with a high sugar content) for this recipe. In Thailand it's very difficult to find bread that isn't sweet, even a cheese sandwich in Thailand is typically made from sweetened bread and sweet cheese with an added layer of sweet mayonnaise. I'm afraid that is how Thailand is heading these days, copying western food, but adding more sugar to it. Pandan (aka Bituoy) is a green leaf with a candy/bubblegum flavour used to make flavoured water with is then used for recipes like this one. You can also buy pandan flavouring in Asian shops if you can't find the leaf. Alternatively as a fall back, use vanilla essence and make vanilla toast. I've recorded a video of this toast being sold in Bangnarmphueng Floating Market Bangkok that you can see below: ]]> Ingredients for Topping 200 ml Evaporated Milk 100 ml Coconut Milk 1 Tablespoon Wheat Flour 1/2 Teaspoon Salt 5 Tablespoons Sugar 2-3 Tablespoons Pandan/Bitouy Water Ingredients 100 gms Butter 4-5 Thich Slices of Bread Preparation 1. Mix all the ingredients for the topping together in a saucepan and cook through very slowly until it thickens, stirring all the time. You want to ensure the flour is cooked through. 2. Take 4-5 thick slabs of bread, toast them lightly on each side. 3. Spread melted butter all over one side of the toast, make sure it is completely covered. 4. Grill the bread a little more butter side up, to make sure the butter is melted and soaked into the bread, then flip them over and grill butter side down to slightly cook the butter. 5. Pipe the warm pandan sauce over the bread. You can also spread it, or spoon it over. 6. Serve immediately. ]]>