Archive for April, 2010
The Secrets to a Really Good Pad Grapow
Cookbook Challenge Week 21*
Book: Thai Street Food by David Thompson Theme: Thai Recipe: Stir-fried Minced Beef with Chillies and Holy Basil
I guess I should start by prefacing that every Thai feels rather deeply about a pad grapow. For the past twenty or so years, it has been at the very top of the Thais’ favourite dishes. No matter how politically divided they are (I really ought to not comment on politics too much otherwise we’d be here all day long), every Thai loves their pad grapow.
For the uninitiated, a pad grapow literally means ‘stir fried holy basil.’ What it is really is a Thai dish of meat or seafood liberally flavoured with garlic, chilli and this very unique herbs, the holy basil. From my understanding, it’s so called holy basil because people in the subcontinent use it for worshipping purposes thus there are many stories of expat Thais shocking locals by buying a bucket load of this holy basil (also known as tulsi) to make their lunch. The pad grapow is never without its best buddy, the kai dow or crispy fried egg, Thai-style.
My problem of being an expat Thai in Melbourne is that: the pad grapow here is totally rubbish. In fact, I only have one restaurant that I can actually recommend for a relatively authentic pad grapow. Why? Well, firstly, the grapow simply hates the cold Melbourne weather (personally so do I) So most restaurants either substitute with sweet (Italian) basil, Thai basil (no, not right) or even worse, resort to using a prepackaged pad grapow mix from Thailand.
My friends, it pains me to say, none of these options is any good. Another point remains, even if you live in Thailand (or India) and can get your hands on lovely bunches of grapow, why is it that it never tastes the same at home as buying it off the street?
(a squid pad grapow from a street vendor – 30 baht)
So when I visited Thailand in February, one of my goals is to actually experiment with making this fabulous dish.
Which brings me back to why I consider this a Cookbook Challenge. I heavily consulted David Thompson’s Thai Street Food. What can I say? The man really understands Thai food. In fact, after eating around Bangkok where the Thai cuisine has been somewhat bastardised by the recent invasion of foreign foods, quick fixes, cheap-and-nasty ingredients, the Thais themselves have been bastardising their own food. Read the rest of this entry »
Sweet and Sour Prawns
Cookbook Challenge Week 20
Book: The Food of China: the Journey for Food Lovers Theme: Tangy Recipe: Sweet-and-sour Prawns and Vegetables
Who came up with this bloody stupid theme? Oh wait, it was probably me. Anyway, I had capsicums lying around the house from Jim’s garden and since I have everything else around the house, I figured I should kill two birds with one stone (hang on, this sounds a lot like the last post, doesn’t it?) Although I hardly think sweet-and-sour prawns could pass for ‘tangy’ theme but it’s better than being yet-another-week behind, which I’m about to be, since I’m off to Vanuatu for a week next week. Yay!
Sweet and Sour Prawns (for two)
- 12 large green prawns, shelled, deveined and semi-butterflied*
- 1 small red capsicum, diced irregularly
- 1 small green capsicum, diced irregularly
- 2 slices of ginger, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 4 white parts of the spring onions, chopped
- 2 tbsp of chopped spring onion leaves (green part
Prawn marinade
- 2 tbsp Shao Tsing rice wine
- 1 tbsp corn flour
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 2 slices of ginger, bruised
Add the ingredients together and mix well. Add prawns, toss and leave to marinade for 15 minutes.
Heat 3 tbsp of oil in a wok until very hot. Remove the ginger pieces from the prawns and drain. Fry the prawns in hot oil for a few minutes until the prawns changed colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Remove some of the oil until there are about 2 tbsp of oil left.
Fry the white parts of the green onion, garlic and chopped ginger until fragrant. Add the capsicums and fry quickly for two or three minutes. Add the prawns back. Make sure you keep the heat nice and high all the time and stir quickly. Read the rest of this entry »
Sweet Corn and Rice Pudding
Cookbook Challenge Week 19
Book: The Songs of Sapa by Luke Nguyen Theme: Rice Recipe: Aunty Eight’s Sweet Corn Pudding
Recently, there had a staff change in Spatula, Spoon and Saturday production. Tragically, my little Nikon Coolpix which I used to take all photos featured on this blog had met with a little tripod accident. And while it still functions perfectly, it no longer fits on the tripod. So to cut the long story short, Josh is now in charge of all home cooking photography. You may not see this straight away (beside this post) because I have a huge backlog of posts so chances are other than the Cookbook Challenge, they would probably be backlogs. But let’s face it, there’s a huge difference between my and Josh’s photography. It’s pretty obvious. Equipment difference for one, but he also studied photography properly. I’m still in charge of ‘styling’ (if you can even call it that) and any digital manipulation (which is mostly none, because I’m that lazy) and of course the random rambling text that you are now reading!
So enough about staff change, back to the Cookbook Challenge and we are now in Week 19 and I’m still behind of course. My mother-in-law Lyn has a fondness for anything coconut and because I have a few sweet corn on the cob, I figured I should kill three birds with one stone and make this recipe. Yes I realise the main hero of this recipe is sweet corn but really there are many many Southeast Asian desserts that are made from rice, this just happens to be one of them.
Melbourne Food Review: J G Dumpling Restaurant, Glen Waverley
According to Nat, I should have started writing this post on New Year’s day, on the day that we went to JG. And it should have been my new year’s resolution to keep my blog just a leetle bit more up to date.
Alas, we visited J G Dumplings on new year’s day. Today is April’s Fool Day. Go figure. And my new year resolution which is to completely ignore the existence of a certain Australian politician, who was recently referred to as an ‘intellectual nobody’ or I.N. for short. Clearly, that new year resolution failed too.
(The shop formerly known as Bob’s Kitchen, Glen Waverley)
Anyway! No better way to celebrate the new year than to have one of my most favouritest food in the world, the Chinese dumplings. This was the very first time at J. G. We actually intended to visit Bob’s Kitchen. But as you can see, this is what Bob’s Kitchen looks like now.
(xiao long bao – I can’t remember the price srsly it’s been 3 whole months!)
We decided on four dishes including two types of dumplings between the three of us. I have decided that I wanted a set of xiao long bao – which is sometimes known as Shanghai dumplings or soup dumplings. One can never tell, so every time I want to order xiao long bao I always just ask the waiter what it’s referred to in English on the menu. The xiao long bao were nice and juicy. They were definitely one of the better ones. Read the rest of this entry »
