Thai food!

So I've moved to Bangkok... of course one of the things that drew me here was the food! So far it has not disappointed... I haven't yet ventured into the street food but today I went to a food court in the poshest mall in Thailand - the Siam Paragon Food Hall.  It was overwhelming!

I had so much to choose from that I had to be really strict with myself and force myself to choose the first thing I saw that I wanted. Otherwise, I would have been crippled with indecision! So I had Hainanese Chicken and Rice (which I discovered in Singapore) which was delicious. Its so simple but so good that I learned how to make it at home just so I could have it again! I washed it down with some Thai Iced Tea (so sweet it made my teeth hurt) and to counter balance the sweetness of the Thai Iced Tea, for dessert I decided to have Green Papaya Salad which they prepared right in front of me.

After I fed the beast within, I wandered through the food court looking at everything for offer just for future reference. Next time - I can choose between the Pad Thai stand, the noodle soup stand, the curry stand, the sushi bar, the satay bar or if I want to wander away from Thai food, I can have noodles from Vietnam, Japan, China, Singapore, or even Italy! And for the more discerning palate, there is McDonalds, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts!

I love food and I love choices in food and I love trying things that I have never had before. This is the sad thing about traveling alone. There is a guy that I really like who I wish was here with me in Thailand right now. I know he would be as happy as I am in the food court and we could plot our strategy as to what we would eat and taste everything - double the pleasure - double the fun!  

Pubs I visited in London

I"m not very creative lately - don't have the energy to blog but here's some mini reviews and a collection of the pubs I visited in London over the 2010 Christmas holidays...

Go to my Tumblr Blog for mini reviews:

The Crown on Clerkwell Green

The Marksman on Hackney Road

The Spread Eagle in Shoreditch

The Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich

The Wheat Sheaf in Upper Stratton, Swindon

The Prince Edward in Bayswater

The Nelson’s Head in Bethnal Green

Japanese comfort food

I inherited a lot of japanese ingredients from my friend Jennifer who is moving back to the US next week. Her mother is Japanese and arrived to visit with a suitcase full of wakame, roasted sesame seeds, and roasted barley tea. I don't know a lot about Japanese cooking but I love it!

Yesterday, I used some buckwheat soba noodles that I had and made a little sauce of Dashi, bonito flakes, mirin, and soy sauce. I threw some wakame in there and some of the sesame seeds. It was a bit salty but very satisfying.

This morning, I wanted something warm and soothing but needed some protein. I cooked up some rice in the rice cooker she gave me and soft boiled an egg. I put the boiled egg on top of some of the rice in a soup bowl and poured miso soup on top. I threw in a little dot of wasabi for the broth and then put some smoked salmon in the bowl. I finished it off with a pre-packaged japanese mix of sesame seeds, nori, and some crunchy things that I have no idea what they are.

It was fantastic.

Japanese food is delicous but quite salty. I think I need to get some cabbage and mushrooms in the house so I can add some texture. I"m looking forward to exploring Japanese cuisine this winter!

Ribollita

Image from 101 Cookbooks blog

Ribollita is a famous Tuscan soup of peasant origins whose name literally means "reboiled". I had some left over pasta all'agnolione sauce, a little left over Tuscan sage flavored white beans, and tomato juice which I threw in as well. It was delicious!

RIBOLLITA

• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 4 ounces pancetta or bacon, chopped
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 1 15-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 15-ounce cans cannellini or great northern beans, drained and rinsed
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 small chili pepper
• Salt and Pepper
• Parmesan rind
• 1 bunch kale, roughly chopped

Heat the oil in a heavy large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, pancetta, minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Cook until the onion is golden brown and the pancetta is crisp, about 7 minutes. Add tomatoes and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to release all the brown bits. Add a splash of red wine, the kale, beans, chicken stock, bay leaf, chili pepper and Parmesan rind. Bring the soup to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Pici all' aglione

One of my favorite dishes in Tuscany was the Pici Aglione (Pici with Thick, Garlicky Tomato Sauce or as it was translated on my menu once Pici strongly flavored with garlic)

The following recipe is from Buonconvento's restaurant Da Mario... not the one I ate at but one that was recommended...

2 cups canned, peeled Italian plum tomatoes

6 cloves garlic

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound pici

Drain the tomatoes. Cut them open to release inner juices. Chope and drain again. Smash 4 of the garlic cloves, cut them in slivers, and put them into a heavy pan with the oil. When the oil begins to bubble around the garlic, add the tomatoes and a good amount of salt and pepper.

Coarsely chop the remaining 2 cloves of garlic and add to the sauce. Cook for about 15 minutes, until the garlic is softened and the sauce nice and thick. Add more salt and pepper to taste. 

Cook the pici in salted boiling water until just al dente, drain, and mix with the sauce.

Some food adventures from my traveling life...

I am excerpting the food section of a post I did in February 2010 about the best and worst things I've experienced while traveling! For the whole post, please go here.


Best meals in foreign countries:Side of the road from Boguila to Bangui, Central African Republic, March 2007A piece of freshly caught fish grilled over a charcoal flame with hot peri peri powder and tomatoes and onions, washed down with a cold coke, eaten with fingers. It might have been made better by the fact that I was on a 10 hour land rover trip squashed in the front seat with another person and with a big barrel that reeked of oil behind me.



Beirut, Lebanon, August 2006:
Everywhere we went, we would get some sort of street food and it was ALL divine - from zataar filled croissants to labneh to zataar pizzas with fresh goats cheese on them to the Arabic and Italian ice cream parlours where we conducted our meetings. At night, we went to divine little bars and drank "Malcom Lowry's" and ate fresh Ceasar salads prepared by beautiful men while listening to the latest lounge music. All war zones should be so gorgeous.



Le Quartier Francais, Franschhoek, South Africa, October 2003: Freshly caught salmon trout grilled and served on a plank of wood accompanied by a divine South African Sauvignon Blanc by the glass in a beautiful old French Huguenot farmhouse overlooking a vineyard. Downside: My traveling companion had a stomach virus and couldn’t even eat her broth although she tried valiantly.



Califa del Leon in the Colonia Condesa neighborhood, Mexico City, Mexico, May 2006: My first Taco al Pastor - roasted pork served with cilantro and pineapple on a fresh tortilla. All you can eat until you can’t eat anymore. Washed down with a cold beer and eaten on the street corner in a beautiful neighborhood in Mexico City on my first night there.



Camel Market, Khartoum, Sudan, December 2005:Freshly slaughtered lamb purchased and then brought to Sudanese women who stir fried it over charcoal briquettes with salt and pepper -served with a leafy green like arugula, tomato salad, freshly baked bread, and peanut sauce. Washed down with lukewarm plastic bags of water while sitting on plastic garden chairs and swatting flies away in the mid day heat of Sudan. Sometimes the setting isn’t that important.



Malabar House, Fort Cochin, Kerala, India, January 2010:Seafood Uttalpillum (?) – a spicy 
mix of freshly caught Sea bar, tiger prawns, and squid cooked in a spicy tomato curry sauce with tapioca mashed potatoes served with sparkling water and a Kingfisher beer in the courtyard of the Malabar House next to a Sitar and tambla concert under a full moon. I sat under a mango tree next to a pool of water.



Somewhere outside of Saint Johann in Pongau, Austria, May 1998: I fell off the meat wagon and was trying to get back on. My boyfriend at the time wanted to stop at a famous place for Frankfurters dipped in mustard and grated horseradish. Even though I was a vegetarian, I couldn’t resist. It was delectable and I’ve never looked back since.



Pave d'Auge in Beauvron-en-Ange, Normandy, France, July 2009: A Michelin 1 star – foie gras,  a chilled red Sancerre, divine fish, vintage calvados, exquisite service



Castelmuzio, Tuscany, Italy, August 2009: 
My first taste of pecorino cheese dipped in truffle honeyserved with a Vino Nobile. To die for! Eaten in a small little apartment overlooking the hills of Tuscany, an olive grove, and the abbey from an English Patient.



The Royal Thai restaurant at the Cinnamon Lake Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, September 2005:Thai Seafood Green Curry with Joel. “Make it how it should be made” he answered in response to do you want it spicy. We sweated and ate and sweated and ate until we almost passed out and had to stagger back to our hotel rooms. We came back the next night for more.



Hotel La Cayenne, Les Cayes, Haïti, 2001-2003 :
Poisson au gross el or Lambi Kreyol for dinner. Served with a big boiled plantain and spicy rice and beans and cold Prestige beer. Or Spaghetti with avocado and hot sauce for breakfast. Something about that hotel and the food brings back good memories.



Little restaurant near a great small Fado joint in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal, February 2008: Grilled sardines, a bottle of vinho verde. Divine!



Worst Meals in a Foreign land:
Saclipea, Liberia, December 2004:Boiled cow head with hard rice in eaten out of a communal bowl with five Liberians and a Congolese. “That white woman can’t eat that hard rice!”



ICRC party in Nyala, Darfur, October 2004: Ate nothing but rancid “La Vache Qui Rit” cheese and sandy bread for three weeks, came to a party at the ICRC rooftop and lined up for the barbecue. My mouth was literally watering. The par-cooked goat meat that I swallowed almost without chewing was bad. I had to decide whether to make myself vomit then or hope for the best. I hoped for the best and got food poisoning. That’s when I learned about Oral Rehydration Salts thanks to my friend Mamie and the MSF clinic.



Most Monotonous Diets in foreign lands:
Everything at our hotel in Pretoria, South Africa, March 2004:All you can eat buffet. You had to fight off hordes of German tourists to get to the food and then it was bland, over cooked, and sauced with what seemed to be paste. Terrible in its nothingness particularly compared to what I knew South Africa was capable of.



Traveling through Kinshasa, North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, DRC , May 2005: Almost every day we ate beef brochette, pommes frites, and a beer. By the end of three weeks, I was dying for vegetables and was pretty convinced that I had “trigger finger” from gout.



The MSF Cafeteria, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2007-2010:Every day you have your choice of dried out breads, processed mystery meats and cheeses packaged in plastic wrap or odd salads such as canned beans, celery, canned corn, and olives in mayonnaise or red peppers, canned black olives, fake tofu/feta, celery, and raw onions swimming in olive oil with no vinegar. Deep fried cutlets that when cut open are made of spaghetti. Soups that are either grey or brown and taste vaguely like paste or canned beef flavor. Buttermilk or milk to drink. “But it’s free!”

After effects of cheese and pastries!!!!

Although I failed in my quest to document ALL the cheeses that I ate in Paris, I certainly ate my share. A particularly memorable cheese was a silky, creamy Roquefort that will forever  banish lame gorgonzola to a distant memory.

But there was an after effect to the cheese, pate, and baguette diet that I maintained for 18 days in Paris - that's an "overly curvy" figure that I'm not too thrilled about. After some reading and discussion with friends, I've been looking at both the "Chrononutrition" diet that my fabulous French friend (let's call her FFF) is following and the "Blast Bellyfat diet" that another friend, amazing australian epicure (let's call her AAE) told me about. These diets are all about cutting carbs but not ignoring them. You can eat them but mostly during the day so you have a chance to burn them off. On the chrononutrition diet, you can eat bread and butter and cheese in the morning (very French!) but no carbs after lunch. On the belly blast diet, you drastically reduce your carbs and you increase your fat intake from avocados, olives, and nuts.

So far, it hasn't been too difficult except to be home in time to cook something. I don't think I could do this in the winter but with all the great summer produce, its not too difficult.

I've been having omelettes with onions and mushrooms or red peppers for breakfast. Sometimes soft boiled eggs with a piece of cheese or some poached chicken or salmon left over from the night before. At lunch, I have a big salad with nuts, meat, fish, or eggs on it. Filling and tastes great. Having some time off, I can make all my own salad dressings.

On the chrononutrition diet, they recommend that you eat nuts or dried fruits in the afternoon. I love roasted almonds and the Moroccan vendor at the Dappermarkt sold me on some fantastic dates so this has been lovely.

So far for dinner - I've often skipped dinner because I'm out or just not as hungry. But tonight, I'm going nuts cooking up everything that I've made so I have it in the fridge to make things easier.

I'll post the following recipes but here's my menu for the weekend:
Slow cooked Salmon with braised Leeks tonight.
Tomorrow lunch, poached chicken salad with a tarragon mustard dressing
Tomorrow dinner, Summer gazpacho.

Stay tuned for recipes!