C H E W I N G T H E F A T: Vietnamese Shrimp and Pork Belly with Sweet and Spicy Sauce Ever since my last trip to Hong Kong, where, on our last night there, we went to a Vietnamese Restaurant called “Pho Lemon” (25 Elgin St. Central, TEL: 2523-8272) I have wanted to cook Vietnamese food. There’s likely nowhere on earth where you can find such a confluence of Asian cuisine as there is in Hong Kong. During my last trip there, we’d eaten Japanese, Korean, Malaysian and of course, Chinese food from Hunanese to Cantonese. When I got home, I almost immediately bought a book called “Authentic Recipes from Viet Nam”, by Trieu Thi Choi, Marcel Isaak and Heinz Von Holzen. If it’s true that too many cooks spoil the broth, this book has at least two too many. As Julia Child said, “A cookbook is only as good as its worst recipe.” But I have soldiered on and finally, thanks to an article in May’s Bon Appetit, I struck culinary gold. This is a wonderful dish! I fell in love with Pork Belly several years ago at Joe’s Restaurant in Venice, CA. Shrimp are a staple in our house.
Pad Sathor - Kung ผัดสะตอกุ้ง - Pad Sathor - Kung - Fried Sathor is a pod-seed fruit that is grown and eaten in the South of Thailand - it has a rather oily and acrid taste and aroma. Some variations off the fruit have a spicy hot taste to them. The smell of these beans is inimitable, some ffinding it too acrid to be attractive to the tastebuds. The sathor beans grow in pds on a tree which can reach up to 90 feet in height. the pods are normally cut down using a bamboo pole with a machete stuck at a 90 degree angle in the top of the pole to cut the pods down. I love Sathor when fried with shrimps, or even chicken and Southern Yellow curry paste. Ingredients: 8 Fresh Giant Shrimps, 1/2 a cup of pork mince, 2 cups of peeled sathor beans, 15 small red chillies, 10 cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of Kapi (shrimp paste), 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of Nam Pla (fish sauce), and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil for frying. Preparation Method About Sathor Ingredients:1.
C H E W I N G T H E F A T: Review of Fatty Crab and a recipe for a one-dish wonder called Nasi Goreng with Shrimp Now that it’s made the trek north to the Upper West Side, it’s become one of our two favorite Asian restaurants. It’s a funky place born of owner Zak Pelaccio’s love affair with Malaysian cooking following a stint cooking and eating in Kuala Lumpur. I’d never had Malaysian food ‘til Fatty Crab arrived on Broadway. The restaurant serves Malaysian street food in an atmosphere that imitates that influence. The open kitchen lets you in on another secret. Jalan Alor is a food haven in Kuala Lampur, a downtown street that was once a red-light district but is now home to the kind of food Fatty Crab does brilliantly. If you want a fork or knife, you’ll have to ask for one. Nasi Goreng, my dear Malaysian friend Ann Lee tells me, means nothing more than Fried Rice. Now I hate to ask you to wait until it arrives but it’s truly the only ingredient that is consistently found in every recipe for Nasi Goreng and I doubt it would be the same without it. 1. 3.
Feijoada, Brazilian Black Bean Stew Recipe Hank introduced me to this Brazilian black bean stew a couple months ago and I couldn’t stop eating it. It is outstanding. And perfect for the chilly weather we’re having these days. ~Elise This is another of those big, hearty, meat-and-bean stews that seem to be the national dish of one country or another. Some versions are a little spicy from the sausages, others totally mild. One common ingredient is carne seca, a salted, dried beef often available in Latin markets. Black beans are a must in this recipe if you want it to be authentically Brazilian. Ingredients Method 1 Pour boiling water over the black beans and let them sit while you prepare the rest of the stew. 2 Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat and brown the pork shoulder. 3 Add back the pork shoulder, and the other meats and add enough water to cover. 4 Add the tomatoes, stir well and taste for salt, adding if it's needed. Serve with white rice and hot sauce.
C H E W I N G T H E F A T: Melissa Clark's Salmon with Anchovy-Garlic Butter Before you turn the page on this wonderful dish, let me assure that those dried-out and dreadful anchovies that someone left atop your last Caesar Salad are not at work here. Instead, these flavor makers are worth a great deal more than their weight in making this fast and easy dinner worthy of any Meatless Monday. The New York Times featured Melissa Clark's recipe last week and then added it to its "Food" Email blast this week. And for good reason. It's a winner. I love Melissa whose recipes pepper this blog because they are always easy for a home cook to achieve using combinations of ingredients most of us haven’t thought of combining before. It is worth it to pay more for these anchovies. butter is used to ‘fry’ the fish in and the other half makes a quick pan sauce to spoon over the salmon once it emerges from the oven. Recipe for Melissa Clark’s Salmon with Anchovy-Garlic Butter Serves 4 (but if serving two, stick to the recipe for making the butter and do not halve it.)
Kung Pao Shrimp (Kung Pao Prawn/宫保虾) Recipe I am back after spending 3 weeks in Asia, including a few busy days in Penang which I wished I had stayed longer. Though it was a very short trip, I am very glad that a couple Rasa Malaysia readers and a good friend came to visit. It was great to be a culinary guide taking them to sample all the best street food (hawker food) in Penang. This Kung Pao Shrimp (Kung Pao Prawn) post has been sitting in my “Draft” folder for a while. If you remember, I made Kung Pao Chicken a while back, and have always thought shrimp/prawn makes a great substitute for chicken. If you love Kung Pao as much as I do, you can pretty much Kung Pao anything you wish, for example: cuttlefish, squid, and my personal favorite, bull frogs! Anyway, back to Kung Pao Shrimp or Kung Pao Prawn. Anyway, this Kung Pao Shrimp recipe is still good and best suited for most people.
How to make the perfect gravadlax For many of us, January is a sober culinary month after the excesses of Christmas – but gravadlax is glowing pink proof that healthy eating doesn’t have to be all hairshirts and low-fat hummus. This Scandinavian buried salmon (a term that would have been pleasingly intelligible to our own ancestors, “lax” being the Middle English word for that mighty fish before the Normans came along and introduced the Latinate salmon, and “grave”, of course, persisting to this day) is a relic of the time when fish was put into holes in the ground and covered in salt to preserve it for the wild and freezing winter ahead – no doubt something similar was practiced on these isles, too. Fortunately, there’s no need to get out into the garden with a spade. It is incredibly quick to make and, as Diana Henry observes in her book on the art of preserving, Salt, Sugar, Smoke, curing fish is one of the “most calming things you can do in the kitchen”. The fish The cure Herbs and spices Method The sauce (Serves 6-8)
Fish stew 1. Using a sharp knife, score the tomatoes with a cross over the skin at the base. Bring a small pan of water to the boil and blanch the tomatoes for 10 seconds. Drain and place in a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking and to allow the skin to come away. Peel the tomatoes then cut them into quarters and remove the seeds. Set aside. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Simply Divina- Sicilian Swordfish - Divina Cucina Swordfish is a beginner’s fish. One of the least fishy and more meaty fishes. There are some recipes which just grab you the first time you eat them and remain in your memory. This is one of them. When we go to Cantina Siciliana for our cooking class, Pino is more than generous to share his recipes with us, not just those we had for class, but also what he makes for us for lunch after. This is called Pesce Spada alla Pantesca a recipe from the island of Pantelleria, famous for their capers. I once was shopping in Florence for a recipe my vegetable vendor gave me, when I told her what I was making and the list of ingredients ( as per her recipe to me) she added carrots saying she ALWAYS had carrots in the recipe. The secret to this recipe is start with a cold pan. Turn on the heat. I added some Sicilian oregano tonight and was great. If you are going to Sicily, you MUST eat at Pino Maggiore’s restaurant. Cantina Siciliana via Giudecca, 36 Trapani.