There’s a chemistry...
So this is about using the acid in lemons or limes to cook the fish. It’s not new – soused herrings (vinegar), ceviche, escabeche, actually the whole process is just pickling really. The trick is not to keep it in there too long.
Any excuse to use nuoc cham and rare beef
Use any salad you like - we are weird in Europe in that we make a salad from veg and variations on lettuce and then add a few herbs whereas in other parts of the world herbs are the salad. Tabouleh in the Middle East for example isn't parsley in salad, it's parsley as salad.
Taazi Khumben Alu Mattar Kar - or curried mushrooms, potatoes and peas to you and me.
This is slightly adapted from a recipe in Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook
Yum Yum! This is a beautiful thing
This is a very beautiful hot and sour soup from Thailand. You can just about make it vegetarian, but the fish sauce is important in my view.
What do you mean you don't speak Thai? You eat Green Curry don't you?
You can buy perfectly reasonable thai green curry paste and the shop-bought stuff includes kaffir lime leaves which makes life easier, But Thai food is all about freshness; bright, fresh flavours - herbs, chillis lemongrass. You should try it
The best soup in the world
This is inspired by a Rick Stein recipe that is absolutely lovely.
Made it up before I knew it had a name. Not authentic but it went down well
I couldn't anything I fancied in the Mexican cookbook - seems like all the veg had cheese and/or bread of some sort so I thought about ratatouille with Mexican flavours instead. The Spanish do something called Pisto but it's very tomato-ey and I wanted it a bit less gloopy
This is a truly beautiful thing.
Look at the previous recipe (salt beef) about a week before you want a sandwich. Yeah, I know.
I love Massive Attack's Karmacoma.
I think of it when I cook this: Keemakorma (“What? Jamaica and Roma”). No? Just me then
Holy Guacamole, Batman! (As Robin never said)
This is basically Tomato Salsa with mashed avocado mixed in. Don't buy it, there's no comparison to the real stuff
Not that yellow stuff, this is much, much better
Don't get me wrong, I love standard paella; the yellow one with seafood, saffron, chorizo and tomatoes. It tastes of sun, sangria and sex
Can curry paste be religious?
This is translated as “Muslim” curry paste. It may have been brought in by Persian traders. "Mussulman" is arguably another word for Muslim. It’s interesting – either way it feels like it comes from well to the West of Thailand.
Salsa, chatni, it's all the same; fruit, veg, acid and herbs.
This could pas for Asian as well as American but either way it's really lovely
Rendag-diggidy-dang-a-dang, baby: Cook beef in coconut milk until there isn't any liquid left
This is adapted from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook
“We don’t have this in Mexico, it’s an American thing. But if we did it would be like this . . ."
This is a briliant recipe based on a recipe by Lourdes Nicholls who says something along the lines of “We don’t have this in Mexico, it’s an American thing. But if we did it would be like this . . .
