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Easter Thai Time!

Easter Thai Time!

So for Easter Sunday this year we decided to have Thai.

We were having friends and Family around for Dinner so we decided to keep it simple.

So of course it had to be Thai Fishcakes and the ubiquitous Thai Green Chicken Curry. These were complimented by some nice crunchy pickled vegetables, cucumber sauce and Thai sweet chilli sauce.

The fishcakes were made a couple of days beforehand and re-heated in the oven for 35 minutes beforehand, they reheated really well and saved time on the day. The Thai green curry paste was also made in advance to save time.

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the Thai Green Chicken Curry (I’ve put one in of a previous creation) but I’ve included the recipe anyway for anyone that wants a go.

First up the pastes. These will make more than you need but if you fry them in some oil and put them in sterilised jars they will keep in the fridge for six weeks or so. By the way if you’re one of those Veggie or Vegan types you can omit the shrimp paste.

Thai Green Curry Paste

Makes 180g/6oz

2 teaspoons coriander seeds (or two level teaspoons ground coriander)

18 small, hot green chilli peppers

2 stems of lemongrass

3 tablespoon galangal sliced (or ginger)

1 tablespoon kaffir (if you can get them, normal if not) lime zest

30g/1oz coriander (if you can get it with the root on add that too)

6 cloves of garlic peeled and chopped

60g/2oz shallots or onion chopped

1 tablespoon shrimp paste

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon ground white pepper (yes you can substitute black but white gives a truer and better flavour)

Add all the ingredients (starting with the hardest first) into a food processor or wet grinder and blitz to a smooth paste adding a little oil if necessary.

Thai Red Curry Paste

10 – 15 dried red chillies (soaked in hot water for twenty minutes or so)

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 stems lemongrass sliced

6 cloves garlic peeled and sliced

60g/2oz shallots or onion sliced

3 tablespoon galangal or ginger sliced

1 1/2 tablespoon shrimp paste

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons ground white pepper

add all the ingredients into a food processor or wet grinder and blitz to a smooth paste as above.

Thai Fish Cakes (Tod Man Pla)

this makes approximately 22

375g/13oz white fish (haddock, cod, Pollock!)

1 large squid tube

1/4 portion of red curry paste (roughly a tablespoon)

1/2 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon softened palm sugar or dark brown sugar

2 kaffir lime leaves soaked in hot water

55g/2oz yard-long beans (or any round green bean) cut into thin slices

1 small egg beaten

Prepare the fish and squid taking the bones and skin off the fish and removing the backbone, beak and intestines from the squid then rinsing. Roughly chop and process the fish in batches into a smooth paste. CurlyE was helping me with this – “Urgghhh! that looks like snot!” to be fair he was right! Mix in the other ingredients with just enough egg to bind without being sloppy.

Form the mixture into balls using about a dessert spoon of mixture for each one (having a bowl of cold water and keeping your hands wet will stop the mixture sticking to your hands). Flatten your balls into disks about 5mm thick.

place the fishcakes on greaseproof paper on a tray (if all the ingredients were fresh and not previously frozen they can be flash frozen at this stage).

To cook from fresh deep fry for approximately 3 minutes, from frozen give them about 4 – 5 minutes.

Pickled Vegetables

We love pickled vegetables in our house. They make a lovely side dish to all South East Asian food. Even a bit of poached chicken on some plain boiled rice is livened up and made into a tasty refreshing dish with the addition of them.

The choice of vegetable is up to you. In this instance we used baby sweet corn, onion, carrot strips, white cabbage and some green beans. We also did one jar with some sliced chilli in, some like it hot! The pickling liquor is quite light, so these will not keep for months but they should keep for a couple weeks in the fridge.

To make your pickling liquor you want roughly 50/50 vinegar to water, some sugar to taste and some bits n bobs in it to flavour (Lemongrass trimmings, coriander seeds, garlic, ginger or whatever takes your fancy).

Simmer the mixture for 20 – 30 minutes until the sugar has melted and the flavours have infused the liquor.

Prepare your veg and place in a colander over a bowl. sprinkle with salt, give it a toss and leave for 20 minutes to draw some of the water out. after twenty minutes give the veg a rinse, drain and then put in clean jars (sterilised if not using within a week). Strain your vinegar liquor while still hot and pour over the vegetables to cover. It will be ready after 24 hours.

Sorry it’s not much of a recipe but it’s just one of those things I do on the fly!

Sweet Chilli/Cucumber sauce

In a pan put 175ml/6 fl oz water, 250g/9 oz sugar, 2 teaspoons salt and 175ml/6 fl oz white vinegar. Bring to a simmer and simmer until the sugar has dissolved.

Put 1/2 of the above mixture in a serving bowl, add a dash of fish sauce and light soy sauce. Finely dice some cucumber and add to the sauce. And that’s the cucumber sauce done.

To the remaining vinegar mix in the pan add 2 teaspoons of dried chilli flakes or a couple of finely diced fresh red chillies and two teaspoons of strawberry or raspberry jam. Bring to the simmer again and cook until the jam has dissolved, that’s your sweet chilli done.

Thai Green Chicken Curry

Enough for 6 – 8 people

30g/1oz fresh coriander

1 generous tablespoon green curry paste

4 kaffir lime leaves (soaked in water if dried) shredded

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon chilli powder

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1 400ml can coconut milk

6 – 8 chicken breasts sliced (roughly 1 kilo/2.2lb)

1 heaped teaspoon dark brown sugar or a couple lumps of palm sugar

a dash of soy sauce

a dash of fish sauce

some Thai basil leaves shredded

2 Thai red chillies thinly sliced

juice of two limes

Blitz the fresh coriander in a food processor. Heat some oil in a large pan and add the curry paste, fresh coriander, lime leaves and the spices. Fry for a couple of minutes, stirring so the mixture doesn’t burn. Add the coconut milk, bring to a simmer and cook on a low heat for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken and if necessary enough water to just cover the chicken. Bring to the simmer and cook gently, covered for approximately 10 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a further 5 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Serve with some plain rice or noodles and a little pickled veg and mango salad on the side.

Mango Salad

Dice a whole mango and place in a serving bowl. Add a dash of vinegar, black pepper, a sliced red chilli and a sprinkling of soft dark brown sugar. Top with some toasted and crushed cashew nuts before serving.

So that was our Easter Sunday Dinner. It might not have been traditional but it was damn good!

Oh… yes there was dessert but it was just a boring old trifle… and erm…. the custard didn’t set… whoops!

The trifle was a bit sloppy but that wasn't going to stop me! — The trifle was a bit sloppy but that wasn’t going to stop me!

Pack Up!

The Kids are back at school which means we’re back to the dilemma of “what shall we give the kids for their lunches?”.

Except it’s not really that much of a dilemma. As a family that cooks a lot of food, we just cook… more!

Neither Kit nor myself have the patience to be making sandwiches for four hungry children every morning & to be honest I don’t think that eating bread every day in that quantity is a particularly good idea.

So, we are setting our Kids up in readiness for the life of a student! We find it so much easier to pack them off to school with a container of cold curry, rice and a dollop of yoghurt or a wedge of cold pizza. We’ve even sent them with leftover Beef Pie, mushy peas & gravy!

All you have to remember is that when you do cook, cook that little bit extra.

Our Children have never complained about having leftovers & always look forward to the delights that lie within their lunch-bags. The Teachers (and Caretaker who sometimes gets roped into the lunchtime supervisor role) always comment on how lovely the food our Kids take looks. At times it seems they are quite jealous & complain that they’ve only got manky sarnies for their lunch!

We recommend getting a load of plastic take-away containers in for pack-ups as they are ideal for portioning leftovers into and refrigerating or freezing until needed. We get ours from the Chinese supermarket – a pack of 250 usually sees us through a few years!

So if ever you are looking at a recipe and think crikey! That seems like a lot! Just think of the hassle it will save you of having to make up the kids lunches… or even your own!

Venison Chilli

Our Butcher sometimes gets some very nice wild venison in. When he does we always make sure that we get some venison neck in, we usually buy quite a bit for the freezer. Venison neck when cooked long and slow is great. It makes fantastic curries but this was a first for us. I can honestly say though that this chilli was one of the finest I’ve ever tasted!

We put this in the oven at 165 C and then turned it straight down to 115 C and there it stayed for a good eight hours! I don’t see why it couldn’t be cooked for less time on a higher heat though? I would say that at 165 C for four hours would be fine, any less I would expect the venison not to be quite so melt in the mouth.

This recipe gives a medium (to us!) heat level. Although our kids like spicy, too hot and they start to grumble. Kit and myself simply added some ‘Ome-Made Chilli Sauce to ours.

If you can’t get venison neck you could always do this recipe with chuck steak or even beef shin would give a good result. There is no reason why you can’t even stick to the traditional minced beef.

You will notice that the recipe makes a lot but if your going to have the oven on for that amount of time you may as well do extra! It freezes and reheats well so gives some hassle free meals in the future.

Venison Chilli (makes approximately 12 portions)

1 kilo/2lb Diced venison (or meat of your choice)

500g/1lb dried beans (I used red Kidney beans and pinto beans) soaked over night or couple tins of beans of your choice

4 big fat cloves of garlic, chopped

3 medium onions

3 teaspoons ground cumin

3 teaspoons chilli powder (I used 1 standard hot, 1 new Mexico and 1/2 of bhut jolokia but not everyone has these hanging about in there cupboards)

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 large glass of red wine (or anything else ‘moist’, beer, lager or even cola), don’t forget one for yourself too!

2 tins (280g in total…ish) tomato puree

1 400g tin chopped tomato

2 tablespoon sugar (granulated will do)

3 beef stock cubes or 1 tablespoon beef bouillon or some strong beef stock (approximately 1/2pint/280ml)

50g of seriously dark chocolate (at least 70% but I used 85%)

Plenty of freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste

Method

Drain and rinse the soaked beans put in a pan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Boil for ten minutes then drain.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large pan

Fry the garlic and onion until soft

Add the spices and continue to fry for a couple minutes, if they are catching add a splash of water.

Add your meat to the pan and brown, stir in the oregano and season with salt and pepper.

Add your wine or beer (if you haven’t drunk it all yet!) and whack the heat up to reduce the liquid to a nice thick consistency.

Reduce the heat and add your tomato puree and cook for 2 minutes or so now add your tomatoes, sugar, stock cubes (or stock) and par-cooked beans (if using tinned add an hour before serving) and enough water to cover everything + 1/2 inch, bring to the simmer

Break your chocolate up roughly (remembering to taste to check for quality!) and sit on top of the chilli, let it melt slowly before stirring it into the liquid. now put a lid on the pan and put into a pre-heated oven at 165 C/330 F and then turn down to 115 C/240 F where it will stay for eight hours (or less if you decide to cook on a higher temperature, see above)

Go and enjoy the rest of your day knowing that all you have to do for tea now is cook a bit of rice!