น้ำปลา - Num pla

Anchovy fish extract
Water
Salt
Sugar

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You get 57% of your Daily Value of sodium in a single tbsp serving.

Question: What is indispensable to Thai cooking, yet has such a pungent smell? Fish Sauce

Here's a piece of advice from the Chef: ensure your fish sauce does NOT spill during your move. Don't let it spill on your clothes, in your car or on any of your stuff. You will regret it.

Chef's Note: Check out that Sapporo beer can in the background! Good stuff!!

Phuket Prawns

6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 lb. tiger prawns, shelled (I think I had about 1.5 pounds - too much, really)
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
1/2 cup thinly sliced green bell pepper
1/2 cup thinly sliced red bell pepper
1/2 cup thinly sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup thinly sliced onion
1/2 cup Thai basil leaves (I had to omit these, as the City of Leduc enacted a rationing of these goods. Just kidding. Seriously, there's nowhere in Leduc to get any of these)
2 tsp. curry powder
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tbsp. oyster sauce
3 tbsp. sugar

serve with steamed rice - I cooked 1.5 cups of Japanese sticky rice - enough to feed 4
***

Well, I busted out the Thai cookbook tonight. Actually, I busted it out last night, and took out the shrimp so they could thaw for tonight's meal. Honestly, it takes maybe 30 minutes. And most of that is just waiting for the rice to cook. Pre-cut the vegetables and your cooking time is down to about 5 minutes - if that. So wait until your rice is done before you start the shrimp and you are laughing.

Well, here are two memories I have of Phuket:

Yeah, that's Darcy's (he of TDWaterhouse-infamy) armpit. And just above and to the right is this hot Russian chick's bum-bum. Yeah, she was there good-looking but a little pale. Still, I'd wager a princely sum that the view to our left was way better than the view to our right. We had about three fifty-something year-old french women without their tops on and who were as brown and leathery as saddlebags.

That's Chef Jeremiah playing in the water. I look like one of those constipated kids who sits in the shallow end and piles sand on top of themselves, don't I? But I don't usually get constipated. In fact, we had the opposite problem our second night there...

Well, there are a few other things I remember. Like seeing that Israeli guy who was getting out of the tuk-tuk at his hotel with a latex-clad (Thai, female) nurse and a latex-clad (Thai, female) cop. Maybe he wanted to discuss Thai health-care and Thai law enforcement?


Back to Phuket. So, this dish is Phuket Prawns, and as mentioned above, you can cook it up in a snap! Mere minutes is all it takes.

Chef Jeremiah was, of course, nearly overtaken by the fish sauce. I mean, that stuff really assaults the ol' olfactory glands, but it sure adds flavour. Yum! And the oyster sauce, too! CJ hasn't cooked with that stuff for months. No question it was worth the wait.

The vegetables weren't overcooked - still crisp. With the shrimp being done maybe only 20 seconds too long. I often overcook those little crustaceans, so I was pleasantly surprised the way they turned out - not chewy at all. Even the sauce was done well, slightly sticky and a little sweet - and with just a hint of curry. Someone very wise once told me that it's all in the sauce... Darn well near perfect!

Here are the prawns (honestly, is there a cooler accent than that? The answer is "No", of course). But that's not the type of prawn you see below:

Day-um! Judging from the focus, Chef Jeremiah needs to upgrade his camera from the BlackBerry Curve 8330..

And the Jeremiah-sized serving:

Yeah, Chef Jeremiah and his crew even ate it with spoons. No farang here!

Grade: A solid 8.4 out of 10. It's a great quick dish.

Chef's Note: You won't see anymore photos from the Chef's kitchen. In fact, a move is imminent! Soon a new kitchen will be established in the Land of the Lutherans. So my little sous-chefs, don't fret if you don't see an update for a week...

Drunkard's Noodles

4 oz. dried rice noodles
2 tablespoons oil
1 onion
1 clove garlic (Chef's note: I didn't have any garlic, so omitted this... :(   )
4 small red chilies
1 small red bell pepper
1 small green bell pepper
1 tomato
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
6 basil leaves (Chef's note: I used Hot Thai Basil - that's what the package read from Lucky 97)
4 kaffir lime leaves (Chef's note: I used 6 leaves)

***

Well, I hadn't made this dish since May or June of this year. Not because I don't like the dish, but because it's hard to get lime leaves. At least I haven't been able to locate any at any of the grocery stores here in Leduc. I doubt they'll have any in Camrose either... <hurrrrrrrrrrr>

So, after finally remembering to get to an Asian food market while in E-town yesterday, I picked up some groceries and made sure to get the lime leaves. They smell so good. I think I might bring some into work to freshen things up.

Back to the task at hand - The dish really doesn't take very long (cooking time is less than 5 minutes), most of the time is spent cutting up the vegetables. And waiting for the rice noodles to soak. I let them soak for 10 minutes in cool water. They were still a little hard when I threw them into the wok, but you just keep adding water tablespoons at a time until they are done. In hindsight, I may have let them soak for about 2 - 3 minutes longer.

The other problem with the noodles is that they didn't separate very well, so it was difficult to dish out.

As you can see below, the dish is quite colourful:

As for taste, I had forgotten how hot it was. I wasn't crying, but it was darn well near burning my lips. I wish I had one of these to cool my palate.

Overall a 7.5 out of 10. I suppose if you like hot food you'll be more inclined to rate it higher.

Chocolate Banana Coconut Cake with Mango Lime Sauce

2 ripe mangos, peeled and seeded
2 tablesoons lime juice
1 cup mango juice

See previous post for cake recipe.

***

At my new place of employment, we don't take coffee breaks all week. Until Friday afternoon. On that day we take 1 hour of the afternoon off to chit chat, and someone has to bring in a cake or dessert to nipple, er, I mean nibble on. (Speaking of which, one of my friends <cough>Dylan<cough> complained that I didn't have nearly enough boobies on my blog. So this is for him). So I signed up for this Friday and I brought a double whammy of the Maple Apple Blueberry Crisp and Chocolate Banana Coconut Cake with Mango Sauce.

Well, it was okay with the sauce. It wasn't as yummy as I was anticipating, but it still played of the rich moist chocolate cake pretty well. It was basically like thick mango juice. Oh well, better I make it than have Booster Juice charge me $5 (CAD) for it. Regardless, a respectable 7 out of 10.

Good news, everyone! It looks like we'll be heading out for NFL picks and brunch tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have a restaurant review for all my little sous-chefs to read.

Chocolate Banana Coconut Cake

1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup dried, unsweetened shredded coconut
Chef's decision: 1/2 cup chocolate chips

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I tell you, nothing is better than warm chocolate cake. Except maybe warm pie. Hmmm...

This was from my farang-Thai cookbook I had mentioned previously. It's basically a yummy chocolate cake:

Not much to it. I didn't make any icing for it or anything. The author recommends that you serve it with a mango-lime sauce, so I think I'll bake the cake again later this week when I have to bring in some dessert into my workplace on Friday. I'll provide a new blog update with comments on the sauce. I think a chocolate icing would have worked just as well.

Regardless of the no-icing, no-sauce status of the cake, it was warm and moist and delicious. You can't smell the nutmeg at all, so it doesn't remind you of Christmas, or your best friend getting sick from rum and eggnog. All-in-all, a very good 8.3 out of 10.

Here's an individual piece for you to feast your eyes upon...

Banana Ginger Squares

1 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon lime juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped candied ginger
3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

***

Well, I busted out Mr. Hyam's ol' Thai cookbook this afternoon, after I had finished my revisions to my week 3, Module 1 CASB assignment....

Regardless, I was thinking I should use up some of those bananas we had. Yes, banana bread would be a great idea, but how else can you combine bananas, ginger and coconut?

Mummy and I had some warm Banana Ginger Squares while we watched some episodes of season 4 of Homicide. Good stuff. Really, I should have added a little pad of butter to it, so it could melt and find it's way into all the nooks and crannies of the bread....  Indeed, another option I was considering was adding chocolate chips to the batter before it goes into the oven.

Here's the whole pan, at a 3/4 view:

...and now a side view. You can see the banana see clearly mixed in. Tough to see the ginger, but believe me, it's in there:

Overall, a quick and easy bread to make. My tastebuds give it a 7 out of 10.