I don’t tend to mess too much with Thai curries, at least not with their spicing. The rest of the ingredients are usually fair game though. But this time I decided to go one step further.
It probably helped that the recipe I first looked at was written by Nigel Slater in The Observer. And I feel comfortable with Nige (as he is known at home) and his recipes. After all, Real Fast Food was the first cookbook I ever owned. Continue reading
Looking back at that sepia toned period, “when I was growing up”, I realise I had a pretty privileged time when it came to food. Every autumn we’d start eating game – usually pheasant – for dinner every week or two. It would invariably be casseroled in red wine, one of my step-dad’s staples when it was his turn to cook dinner.
Of course, being a typical kid, all I really wanted was egg and chips, maybe a mars bar for pudding. What was this game, this fresh fish and seafood? Give me deep fried fast food horror instead! Okay, so maybe I wasn’t that bad, but it was only when I grew up and out of home that I truly realised what a treat it was. Continue reading
I’ve always loved tales of travel and far off places, adventures under a burning sun, crumbling desert fortresses and high mountain passes. Travellers like William Dalrymple, Bruce Chatwin and Robert Byron have long captured my imagination with tales of Afghan chieftains, nomads in the dessert and forgotten ruins.
And they always seem to end up sat on low divans in a tent, or around a fire under the stars tucking into mountains of steaming rice studded with chunks of tender spiced goat or mutton. Their writing is redolent of heady aromas and strong tastes as well as being full of striking descriptions of lands travelled and people met. Continue reading
This is one of those curries where if you throw it a hard stare, the lamb just kind of sighs and falls to pieces. There’s nothing tender about about the taste however, a meaty, earthy spicy hit that floods your mouth when you take a bite.
It’s this melting but flavourful effect that makes lamb shoulder my favourite meat to slowly cook in a curry. The lacing of fat and connective tissues that run through the meat give it a glorious texture, and hold a decently strong flavour that stands up well to spicing. Continue reading
Everything about this dish cries out comfort. The creamy coconut, soft potato, even the chilli heat brings a certain loving warmth to your mouth. Definitely one for eating on the sofa, with a fluffy pile of white rice,and a good book.
Curry is one of my standard fall back midweek dishes when I want something simple, tasty and not too labour intensive. And this is certainly straightforward. It’s an evolution of one of my standard veggie curries – spicy potato, pea and tomato. Continue reading
A good curry is like a huge, enveloping embrace from an old friend. The is something so warming, inviting and downright friendly about the combo of heat, spice and sauce that I just can’t get enough.
It’s also something that, more than other foods, tastes totally different when you make it at home to when you eat it out. Maybe it’s the ghee, the quantities, or maybe it’s just the way I cook ‘em. Who cares, the end result is very tasty.
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Forget voodoo, zombies and Baron Samedi, the real magic among the islands and jungles of the Caribbean comes from Creole cooking. A strange and wonderful combination of food was brought here from all corners of the world as Empires and Republics vied for control of the trade routes, harbours and plantations.
Indian spices arrived with indentured labour from the subcontinent and mixed with West African ingredients planted by slaves. Local ingredients such as Mexican chillies and sweet potato where thrown together with court-boullion and spicy sausages from the Mediterranean, and there is the vividly coloured local seafood, fruit and vegetables. Continue reading
No-place does vegetarian food like the South Asian subcontinent. I’ve had very good vegetarian Italian, Japanese, Thai and for want of a better name, fusion food. But nowhere, and I mean no-where, that I’ve come across takes vegetarian based cooking so seriously and has such a breadth of veggie food. It’s my go-to cuisine when i’m in need of a serious green (or orange, yellow, red etc) flesh-free hit. Continue reading
The thing about cooking curries, tagines and other big pot dishes, particularly if there are only one or two people eating, is that there is a minimum amount that you can realistically make. So I often – with varying degrees of success – have to find other uses for those bits and bobs. This is particularly true of Thai curry pastes. They act as a kind of counterbalance to the law of diminishing returns, in that past a certain point, the less you make, the more effort you have to put in to get good results. Continue reading
I woke up on Sunday with a hankering for something fragrant, spicy and defiantly Thai. Not Chinese, not Japanese, Italian or Turkish. Not even Vietnamese. It had to be Thai. There’s something so comforting and yet explosive about the delicately balanced flavours and textures you get in a Thai meal. The heat, the sweetness and wonderful, dark, deep pungency. I love it. Continue reading