Memes and marmalade pudding

I don't want this blog to turn into a series of food memes, but since I am all about the 'trying new things' at the moment, when I rediscovered the "Omnivore's 100" from Very Good Taste, I thought it might be worth posting to give me some added inspiration (not that any is necessary so far!) as to new things to try.  Alongside the Omnivore's 100, I also came across a few cuisine-specific variants, such as Appetite for China's "100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die", and "100 Japanese Foods to Try" from JustHungry.  In the interests of keeping memeage to a manageable level, I'll save those for another time.

Before we proceed with the memery, though, and speaking of trying new things, here's something new I tried back in Week 2 but forgot about when making that week's list: a Marmalade Pudding Cake from Nigella Lawson.

My friend Rachel, who is an excellent cook and consummate hostess (I can cook but am less good at the hostess part, usually being caught when guests arrive running around in a panic with flour in my hair, but that's a subject for another post), often invites us round for dinner and, to contribute to the occasion, I sometimes volunteer to bring dessert.  This requires both some bravery and some foolishness -- bravery on the part of the other guests, and foolishness on my part, because I am Not Very Good at desserts.  I think this is because these days, I'm just not that into sweets: when browsing a restaurant menu, it's always the tasty-sounding main dishes or even more interesting starters that catch my eye, and at choose-your-own-adventure restaurants, I'd almost always rather have another bite of savoury food than dessert.  When I was younger I used to be a real sugar-head, and my passion for desserts made me correspondingly better and more inspired when it came to making them; nowadays I feel I've somewhat lost my touch.

So, the day of a dinner usually finds me wondering what on earth I can make for dessert, and frantically scanning cookbooks and food websites for ideas.  (That is, when I remember at all: there have been occasions when I've invited people around for dinner and suddenly realised half an hour before they arrive that I've entirely forgotten about afters!  Luckily Tesco is just round the corner, their ready-made puddings aren't so bad, and my friends are generously forgiving...)  This time I knew I wanted something classic, comforting and easy to make: proper puddingy, in other words.  And who better to turn to for such a thing than Nigella?

An added bonus of this recipe was that I didn't even have to leave the house to buy any extra ingredients.  I only needed it to serve 4 rather than 8, it had to be transportable by bus (let's not talk about the Great Bike Bag Cheesecake Pie Catastrophe), I only had SR flour rather than plain, and I didn't have a suitably sized baking dish, but what would a recipe be without some modifications?  The amount of leftover marmalade in the jar in the fridge was just right to make a cut-down version suitable for a loaf tin.  I used a bit of brandy in the glaze along with the marmalade and juice, transported it separately in a jar and poured it over before reheating for about 15 minutes in the oven, which was still warm from the divinely tender and delicious roasted shoulder of lamb we enjoyed for our main course.

Nigella's Marmalade Pudding Cake, adapted by me

1/4 cup plus 1 tbs caster sugar and light brown sugar, mixed*
125g butter
1/4 of a (1lb) jar of marmalade, divided 2:1
1 scant cup self-raising flour
2 eggs
zest of 1 orange, juice of half (eat the other unjuiced half!)
1-2 tbs brandy

Preheat oven to 160C.  Cream butter and sugar together until smooth and fluffy; beat in marmalade and half of orange zest; stir in flour, then beaten eggs (or just crack them into the bowl and whisk them about a bit before mixing them in with the rest) and juice from 1/4 of the orange.  Spoon into loaf tin, spreading out evenly, and bake for about 30-40 minutes until top just springs back when lightly pressed.

Meanwhile make glaze: combine remaining marmalade, juice from another 1/4 of the orange and brandy in a small bowl (or, if you are using up the last of the marmalade, directly in the jar!) and microwave for a minute or two until heated.  Stir until smooth, heating a little more as required.

(Optional extra step: As soon as loaf tin is cool enough to handle -- since you're already running late but you really don't want it to melt through the bottom of your carrier bag -- wrap tin in foil, put lid on jar of glaze, pack both hastily but carefully into bag along with a carton of custard, and take on bus to Didsbury!  Receive curious and somewhat envious looks from fellow passengers as cakey orangey fragrance wafts throughout bus.)

When ready to serve, pour glaze over cake in tin and return to oven for a few minutes or until warmed through.  Eat with custard, scraping all the last bits of caramelised orange glaze and crumbs from around the edge of the tin.

* Measuring out 37.5g of each kind of sugar seemed like way too much trouble!  I filled the 1/4 cup measure about 2/3 full with brown sugar, poured in caster sugar to the brim, then added an extra tablespoon of caster sugar.  Good enough.

And now, the meme!

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (once, in Paris; delicious but oh-so-rich)
5. Crocodile (a few times, including at an open-air dinner under the stars in the Central Australian desert)
6. Black pudding (whenever I share a cooked breakfast with Lee, who doesn't like it)
7. Cheese fondue (Best hangover cure ever: Emmental fondue, one morning after the night before in Switzerland)
8. Carp (once or twice at Chinese restaurants.  Not as nice as barramundi.)
9. Borscht (First time, made with tinned pickled beetroot as part of choir camp catering.  Second time, at high-end restaurant in St Petersburg.  Needless to say the second was much better!  I've enjoyed it many times since.)
10. Baba ghanoush (Oh yes.  See here for one of my many I-love-eggplant stories.)
11. Calamari (What would life be without salt'n'pepper squid?  I know, squid =/= calamari, not exactly, but I've had -- and love -- both.)
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (it's the experience, not the taste: Gray's Papaya in New York)
16. Epoisses (at very French, very nice restaurant that I was lucky enough to be taken to in Leeds)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (Our ex-barmaid Angie makes her own wine from all manner of things; the blackcurrant one was particularly nice.  And now so do we: strawberry in the cellar, elderflower and black cherry on the go -- but they are from kits, so slightly cheating.)
19. Steamed pork buns (What kid doesn't love char siu pao?)
20. Pistachio ice cream (My favourite gelateria anywhere: Gelatomassi, on Sydney's King St)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (In Australia, blackberries are an introduced weed and are often sprayed with pesticides, meaning you never know whether the berries you stumble across are safe to eat.  Here you can pick them right off the brambles and put them straight in your mouth.  I last did this at Trefor Pier, standing in my drysuit!)
23. Foie gras (my ex-downstairs neighbours made a fabulous Christmas dinner with foie gras to start and then roast goose.  Amazing.)
24. Rice and beans (obviously I've eaten rice, and I've eaten beans, and I've sometimes eaten them together, but the proper Southern rice'n'beans is something I have yet to taste. EDIT: oh wait, I just read the Wiki article in the link; if we're talking about the South American generic rice-served-with-beans as part of staple diet, Chef Olga served this up pretty much every other day at the Payamino research station.  So yes, I've had rice and beans!)
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (My friend Kim's Colombian housemate introduced us to a dessert called Romeo and Juliet: dulce de leche, which she made by boiling an unopened can of condensed milk, spread onto slices of sharp cheese.  Sounds odd, tastes incredible!)
28. Oysters (most recently just this week, when I steamed up a few leftover oysters with ginger and spring onion sauce)
29. Baklava (I miss the baklava shops on Sydney Rd, and the cheese pies from A1 Bakery.)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (chowder yes, in Boston; sourdough bowl no -- it came with oyster crackers.  Which don't seem to have anything to do with oysters.)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (No. Ugh.  But perhaps I should try one?)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (There have been requests for my 'eggcup scones' on this year's canal boat trip.  I never used to be any good at scones but clearly, I have improved!)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (I refuse to call it Jell-O.)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (and also curried goat brains, courtesy of my friend Lusty Will)
42. Whole insects (in China, where else?)
43. Phaal (Never heard of this before but now really want to try it!)
44. Goat’s milk (My sister was 'diagnosed' by a naturopath as being allergic to cow's milk, when we were kids, and she had to drink goat's milk and soy instead.  Later, tests revealed she was even more allergic to soy!)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (it was on my must-do list for my first ever trip to Japan last year.  Somewhat underwhelming but I survived and can say I've tried it!)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (Unagi-don, how I love thee...)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (Japanese plump orange uni is delicious, but I'll always remember with fondness eating freshly opened 'erizos del mar' from the top of a barrel outside a little delicatessen in Cadiz.  The fishermen had just brought in that day's haul, a bagful of spiky black urchins, and when we indicated our interest in trying them, they pulled out a half-dozen and opened them on the spot with a knife.  The proprietor brought out teaspoons and they showed us how to scoop the tiny, delicate sliver of purplish roe from the inside of the shell to our mouths.  A true 'spirit of place' moment and a taste to remember it by.)
51. Prickly pear? (I'm actually not sure if I've had genuine prickly pear.  I've eaten cactus leaves and I have a bottle of prickly pear liqueur from Malta on my shelf -- pink, slightly tart, slightly sweet.  One to check and try again.)
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (Belgium, where else?  Maredsous 10% is my favourite; I think we tried one at about 16%!)
59. Poutine (On the list for planned trip to Canada this year -- though I think I'm going to the wrong side)
60. Carob chips (Along with naturopathy, my family was into health foods when I was younger...)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs (As a child, on a visit to Malaysia I saw in a street market frogs being gutted, skinned and dismembered alive.  It was horrific.)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (First as 'Spanish donuts' from the van that used to park out the back of the Vic Markets in Melbourne; then 'con chocolate' on my first visit to Spain -- Valencia, in 2005 -- and subsequently!)
68. Haggis (A few times, on Burns Nights and sometimes with breakfast, as during my trip to Edinburgh last week.  The first time I went to Edinburgh I was too scared to try the deep-fried haggis from the Cowgate chip shop but I'm determined to get round to it at some point!)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe (first time, in Prague, in a tiny and wonderful bar where we spent hours drinking, nibbling and entertaining the waiters by trying to speak Czech, and that we've never been able to find again...)
74. Gjetost, or brunost (On a sandwich last year in Oslo.)
75. Roadkill (Maybe I'm just not adventurous enough...)
76. Baijiu (Er-guo-tou translates loosely as "two-pot-head".  This apparently derives from the distillation process, not the effects the morning after, but you could have fooled me...)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (I don't know where to get these here but will look out for them on my next US trip.  I've had a Twinkie -- does that count?)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (Lee calls this "BBQ tea".  It's the closest I get to having a cigarette.)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum (at Thai restaurants, in Thailand, and now at home)
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I wish!  On the list...)
85. Kobe beef (in Kobe, no less)
86. Hare (I've had rabbit; don't think I've had hare)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (We discovered an incredible basement food-hall deli at one of the department stores in Helsinki and loaded up with all sorts of wonderful goodies.  The fresh seafood was awesome but we also sampled a sort of bastourma/bresaola-type thing made from horsemeat.  And reindeer pie!)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox (the first thing I ordered when I got to New York; a little disappointed to find it was just a form of smoked salmon)
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I make that 23 or 24 (I clearly can't count!) new things on this list for me to try.  I shall be on the alert for opportunities!

Week 3 round-up

Almost 1/17 of the year gone already!  Three weeks into 2013, I thought I'd do a quick review of how I'm doing with my New Year's Resolutions so far.

The updating at-least-once-a-week-on-average is going well -- this will be my sixth post for the year, though I guess it's kind of cheating to count a round-up post towards my total.  As always, it's time and energy rather than ideas that are the rate-limiting factor for my creative efforts: I have lots of topics in mind for new posts and still quite a bit of restaurant-review content that I haven't got round to writing up yet.  These things are only likely to become scarcer once term begins for real, but hopefully the resolve to post regularly and the safety net of 'on average' rather than every single week will help to keep this up.  I may also have to learn to think less and post more!

As for trying new things, in Week 1 (as I recorded already) we had sous-vide cooking and a new restaurant.  In Week 2, we tried out Olive, an Italian restaurant where Lee used to know one of the waitresses and -- more successful in bringing in custom than passing acquaintance with the staff -- I'd received a 50%-off-food voucher.  This week, Week 3, I made kimchi stew and stock for its own sake, in the slow cooker, and tried not just one but three new restaurants while I was in Edinburgh.

So far, so good.  I wonder what to do this week?

Kampong Ah Lee, Edinburgh

I have never lived in Malaysia.  Sure, I've been there: visiting family, perhaps a dozen-odd times in all, a cumulative total of probably somewhere between 3 and 6 months in my entire life; not nearly enough for it to be somewhere I've lived.  But, perhaps because of its association with family albeit not home, or through some kind of inherited nostalgia, I do have a special place in my heart for Malaysian food.  (It doesn't hurt that it's mostly delicious.)

Malaysian cuisine is, I feel, somewhat under-represented amongst UK restaurants in general.  Manchester has one Malaysian restaurant in the city, much-vaunted in these parts; on my visits so far, I've generally been of the opinion that it's very nice but doesn't quite match my expectations of Malaysian food -- honed not only by countless visits to the famous hawker food centres of Penang, which prides itself on being Malaysia's food capital, but also by the Proustian power of childhood memory.

Roti canai with curry dipping sauce

And that, I suppose, is the problem with the "food of one's heart": how can reality live up to an ideal that is not just about flavour and texture and smell but is invested with significance precisely because it is an ideal?  It doesn't matter how closely a restaurant here can replicate the dishes precisely as they taste there; it will always be here and not there, and not the same because of that.

But even here, it can still taste pretty good.  On Friday I found myself in Edinburgh for the night with no particular plans: a chance to relax, read a book... and try a new restaurant.  Browsing around for possibilities, I stumbled on a recommendation for "Kampung Ali".  An opportunity for Malaysian food was definitely not to be missed, even if it was a one-mile walk away on an icy, snowy night.  But wait, the website mentioned a "first restaurant", the original Kampong Ah Lee... where might that be?  By blessed coincidence, just a couple of blocks away, around the corner from my hotel!

From the outside, it looks like a rather unprepossessing takeaway, with its garish photos and neon sign.  The menu, however, lives up to the 'delight' promised by the sign, with a selection of classic favourites including satay, won ton noodles, prawn soup noodles and mee goreng.

I was particularly pleased to find on the menu achar, a spicy vegetable pickle with peanuts that I remember eating from jars at my grandmother's house when I was a bit too young to handle the chilli comfortably but loved the sweet-sour peanutty flavour so much that I suffered the burning mouth for it gladly.  The version here contained carrot, cabbage, green beans, cucumber and pineapple (the latter addition new to me at least).  It was a little on the sweet side, more similar to the version I've tried to make at home than my grandmother's achar -- which has never heard of a low-fat diet and is deliciously saturated with chilli oil and ground peanuts, intensely tasty and the vegetables retaining a much firmer crunch as a result.  Still, this version was more than adequate (and can any restaurant dish really live up to our memories of our grandmothers' cooking?) and something I'd be happy to eat any day.

There aren't quite as many food bloggers writing about Edinburgh as London, but I was able to find some reviews to give me an idea of what to expect ahead of time.  According to nearly everyone on this site, the roti canai (pictured above) was a must-try.  While it's actually more of a breakfast item in Malaysia, this slightly chewy, slightly crispy griddled flatbread is worth eating whenever you can.  When you order it from the 'roti man' (the street vendors selling roti are always men and always Indian), he takes a ball of firm-but-pliable dough and stretches and pushes it out flat on an oiled surface, so thin it's translucent, oils it again and then folds all the sides in on itself to create a neat rectangular package that is then flipped onto the hot griddle.  The oiled dough forms thin layers while the surface of the bread in contact with the heat puffs up in places and produces uneven brown char-spots that are a perfect crunchy contrast to the tender layers inside, which soak up and help to retain the thin curry sauce which is the traditional dipping accompaniment. 

You can get all sorts of roti variants -- roti with egg, roti with onion, roti with egg and onion, roti with sardines, roti with spicy minced meat (murtabak), sweet roti with sugar or banana -- but plain with curry sauce is my favourite; simple but so good.  The Kampong Ah Lee version came as two generous round (not rectangular) breads: crisp, tender and flaky, almost impossibly light.  If pushed, I'd admit the texture was less thin-chewy-layers and more like a paratha, but they were so good regardless, I couldn't possibly fault them.  The curry dipping sauce was spicy and coconutty; a little thicker than normal but with a taste that was bang on.

Curry laksa...

The various soup noodles on offer, including the prawn noodles (har mee), beef curry noodles and some more Chinese-style offerings such as roast duck noodles, are grouped together on the menu under the heading "Big Bowl Noodles".  The menu's not wrong; my curry laksa contains generous amounts of calamari, prawn, chicken, slices of fish cake, a stick of surimi (though this I could have done without), both thick egg noodles and thin rice vermicelli -- the only correct mix for curry mee, in my view -- and crunchy beansprouts, swimming in a veritable lake of spice-rich coconut soup.  The creamy soup looks a little on the tame side at first but that's easily remedied by another indispensable feature of Malaysian hawker-style soup noodles: a little dish of roasted chilli sambal on the side, which when spooned into the soup creates that pleasing slick of fiery red droplets of chilli oil on the surface. 

... now with added sambal!

There are numerous regional versions of laksa in Malaysia, and I'm not nearly enough of an aficionado to know the different characteristics of each.  Most of the common ones are coconut curry with prawns and chicken, but a notable exception is Penang assam laksa, which has a sour fish broth laced with prawn paste and fresh mint and is one of the things I always make sure to eat while in Malaysia, as it's relatively rare on menus outside the country.  Curry laksa, on the other hand, is a popular classic at Malaysian restaurants everywhere, and is therefore something of a benchmark.  I've had laksas that are so decadently creamy that it's like drinking straight coconut milk (the curry laksa at Nyonya in Lygon St a notable example); laksas that had flat rice noodles in a curry-powder tasting sauce (not a real curry laksa in my book); and, once in Hobart, a laksa that was like a tom kha gai with rice vermicelli in it: delectable but not the curry laksa I'm used to -- though for all I know, authentic in some other part of Malaysia!  This one... was just right.  I slurped the noodles with great satisfaction and spooned up the tasty soup down to the last drop.

Between the huge bowl of noodles, two large roti and the side dish of achar, I had more food than I really needed or could quite manage, and it was with some regret but knowing it was the wise decision that I left half of the last roti uneaten.  The bill for all of this, plus a glass of wine?  Just £15.30.  One of the commenters on the reviews page I read reported that he enjoyed the beef rendang and that the "Only problem I had was that I was paying 4 times the amount it cost me in Sydney".  I want to know where he was eating in Sydney!! Pound-to-dollar devaluation notwithstanding, I can't think of anywhere in Australia, let alone Sydney, where one can get a beef rendang for the equivalent of £2 -- that's around $3.20 in Australian New Dollars, and was still only $5 or so before the GFC (Great Fall in Currency). 

Overall, this place was a bargain and well worthy of calling itself a 'Malaysian Delight'.  And even though it's not quite Gurney Drive, little touches like Malaysian signs for the toilets ('tandas') and Visit-Malaysia posters on the walls made it feel more homely -- for a place I've never called home, that is.  I will definitely be back next time we have an excuse to go to Edinburgh for work!

Kimchi Jjigae

Everyone has one of those foods.  You know what I mean, the "can't have in the house or else I just can't stop eating it" kind; the one that meets whatever your own permanent inner craving is; the one you can't resist sneaking a guilty bite of whenever you go past the fridge or cupboard, if there's some in there.  For some people it's chocolate; others, crisps or peanut butter.

Mine is kimchi.*

Yeah, I know.  Kimchi is one of those "eew" foods for more than a few people, something to be left discreetly at the side of the plate or at best tolerated in small quantities by most others.  Spicy, sour, pickled Chinese cabbage fermented with anchovy paste?  Presses most of the "eew" buttons that people who are prone to the "eew" factor tend to have (brassicas, pickles, fermentation, fish).

I, on the other hand, love anything pickled, most things crunchy, all brassicas in all forms, many fermented foods (not to mention drinks) and seafood generally, and am a chilli addict.  Kimchi may just be my perfect food.

I buy it in hermetically sealed packs from the supermarket.  (The most recent batch I bought, I forgot to put in the fridge for a couple of hours and when I remembered and went to put it in, the bag had inflated as tight as a balloon from the gases produced by its fermenting contents.  Mmmmm.)  Once open, you can store the rest of the kimchi in an airtight container, in a jar or in a bowl with clingfilm over the top; it doesn't matter, your entire fridge will smell of kimchi however you store it.  In fact not just the fridge but the area surrounding the fridge will be permeated with the delicate aroma of kimchi, making it even more tempting every time you pass the kitchen to have just a little bite.  This problem is, however, also its own solution: kimchi may smell up the fridge while it's in there, but in my fridge it seldom lasts longer than a day or two, so the smell doesn't stay long!

The propensity of kimchi to disappear rather fast in my presence is possibly the reason I've never made this dish before.  Various recipes I've seen all indicate that kimchi jjigae is a way of using up leftover, old kimchi that has become too strong to eat on its own. At my house, kimchi is never around long enough to get old and leftovers aren't a problem!

This souped-up, spicy, hearty concoction did sound irresistible, though, so this time I exerted serious willpower and saved some of my kimchi nearly a full week until I could try my hand at making it.  I had a lump of frozen pork mince that had been around for *cough* longer than it really should have, and that needed using up, so that went in instead of pork belly; I threw in some extra cabbage for crunch and freshness; and there was a carton of 'firm' (not actually very firm!) silken tofu in the fridge.

I was loosely following the norecipes.com recipe in terms of seasoning, but when I tasted the soup it seemed a little weak (perhaps my kimchi wasn't quite old enough) and lacking in umami and sourness, so I added some fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce, and some chinkiang vinegar.  That improved the taste considerably but I still wanted just a bit more heat and sharpness.  Fortunately, the results of my recent hot sauce tasting reveal that hot and vinegary is exactly the flavour profile of Tabasco sauce!  A few shakes over the bowl and it was perfect.

Kimchi Jjigae

golf-ball-sized amount of pork mince
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1-inch piece ginger, finely chopped
1 small (or 1/2 large) onion, sliced
1 1/2 cups kimchi
~1/4 cup kimchi juice (or however much you have)
1 tbs light soy
1 tbs white miso
1-2 tbs gochujang
2 cups water
black pepper
1 cup shredded white cabbage
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs chinkiang vinegar
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 block silken tofu, sliced
sliced spring onions, to serve
(optional) extra Tabasco sauce

Heat medium saucepan and fry pork mince, garlic and ginger until meat is cooked.  Add onion and kimchi and continue to cook for a few minutes.  Add kimchi juice, soy, miso, gochujang and stir to mix; add water, a grinding of black pepper and cabbage; bring to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes.  Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary with fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar.  Just before serving, add slices of tofu and simmer very gently for about 5 minutes to heat through.  Serve topped with sliced spring onions and with extra black pepper and Tabasco shaken over if you like.


*Another can't-resist food of mine, although not as compelling, is parmigiano; I'll shave a thin sliver off the block and just pop it in my mouth -- instant flavour hit.  I suspect I have chronic amine deficiency or something...

Yum yum tom yam

When I was little, the rhyme of choice for "yum yum" was always "pig's bum".  The humour stemmed, of course, from the dual naughtiness of the word 'bum' (ooh-er missus!) together with the inherent ridiculousness of the idea that a bum was something you'd ever consider in the food context.  Older, wiser and more humourless (less humourful?), I now consider pork butt (which, ok, isn't actually a pig's bum anyway but let's not worry about that now; some day I will post about my glorious slow-cooked-BBQ-pulled-pork recipe and you will forget such anatomical pedantry) to be a god-given gift of deliciousness when cooked right.  I've also, however, discovered other sources of yum-yum that deserve to be credited as such.  One of these is Thai hot and sour soup... otherwise known as Tom Yam.

I posted a few months ago about a quick'n'dirty recipe for Chinese style hot and sour soup (suan-la-tang, in my appallingly bad pinyin rendering), and commented that the Thai-style version just required too much effort to make when one is sick.

Well, one has been sick again (GAH!) but is able to take some consolation in being able to report that (YAY!) provided that one has some frozen stock (thank you Christmas turkey) and other necessary ingredients on hand, Thai-style hot&sour soup actually requires very little effort to pull together.  If you just happen to have some lovely aromatic Asian ingredients in the fridge and some vegetables in the crisper, then having some prawns in the freezer becomes virtually optional.

And yeah, I went to Chinatown to buy the lemongrass.  It's just round the corner.  I have no excuses.

Thai-Style Hot & Sour Soup
Note: This is just about as inauthentic a recipe for Tom Yam soup as you can get.  I know smushing the ingredients into a paste isn't the recommended method; I know you should use galangal instead of ginger; and I'm pretty sure turkey stock is in no way authentic.  Cut me some slack; I'm sick!

1 small red onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic
2-inch piece of ginger
1-2 red chillies (depending on hotness, to taste), roughly chopped
3 sticks lemongrass, tender part chopped, tops reserved
6-10 kaffir lime leaves, roughly torn
1.5-2L stock (I used turkey.  YMMV.)

Blend onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and lemongrass into a rough paste.  Heat a drizzle of oil in a medium saucepan; fry paste and lime leaves gently, stirring, until fragrant (a couple of minutes).  Add stock and bring to a gentle simmer; season to taste as below.

To season:
fish sauce
lime juice
white sugar
(chicken stock powder)
(bottled tom yam paste)

The idea is to balance the salty, sour and sweet flavours (it should already be adequately hot from the chilli but if not then you can add extra) together with the umami taste.  Fish sauce is somewhat umami but is quite salty; if you find the soup needs some extra zing! then it's not cheating (really!) to use a dash of chicken powder; and I usually add a teaspoon to a tablespoon of bottled tom yam paste, just to intensify the flavour.  Add a bit of sugar to taste, just until it really brings out the salty and sour flavours (I usually find about a tablespoon is enough) and squeeze in fresh lime juice (one or two should do it).

For each serve
4-6 prawns
handful beansprouts
handful mushrooms (I used enoki, just because I love them)
chopped coriander
chopped fresh chilli
lime wedges
chilli oil

To prepare soup for serving: add prawns, heat gently to a simmer and cook until prawns are pink and just opaque all the way through; remove prawns to serving bowl(s). Add beansprouts and mushrooms, heat for a couple of minutes until wilted.  Ladle soup into bowls, sprinkle coriander and chilli on top, squeeze in a bit of extra lime if you think it necessary and add a dollop of chilli oil (roasted by preference) to deepen the flavour and increase the heat.

Slurp and enjoy!

Hot Sauce Taste Test: Mk1

One of the (few) downsides of living in the city centre is the relative paucity of 'real' supermarkets.  While one could argue endlessly over whether supermarkets themselves can ever be said to constitute 'real' food shops, it is undeniable that a Tesco Express or Sainsbury's Local is not even a real supermarket.  This means that instead of having multiple varieties of a given kind of product to choose from, with the exception of the most common and popular products such as bread, what you get is one type of each thing, or sometimes no types of some things (why no brown sugar, Sainsbury's Local? why?)

I know, I know -- this is #firstworldproblems taken to the extreme; how can I complain about a lack of choice in, not even the foodstuffs but the different brands of the foodstuffs available to me, when I have never once in my life been hungry because of an actual shortage of food?  And yet anyone who has ever weighed in on the Pepsi vs Coke argument knows that, when we have the luxury of food being more than a matter of survival, when food can be an interest, a pleasure, a hobby, an adventure, variety really is the spice of life.  So, with a deep and sincere gratitude for the social and economic privilege that allows me to appreciate, care about and compare different types of a foodstuff that has almost no nutritional value, I present: the Hot Sauce Taste Test!  (Mk1 because I am sure there is scope for tasting many more hot sauces in the future...)

My usual city supermarket doesn't stock hot sauce at all, so I took advantage of a recent trip to a Proper Big Supermarket out in the 'burbs to buy some.  Here are the suspects, lined up for inspection:

I decided to focus on Tabasco-style hot sauces; while there is oodles of room in my chilli-loving heart for all sorts of chilli sauces (sweet chilli sauce foremost among them!), pastes, relishes and the like, it would simply have been too vast a job, not to mention comparing the metaphorical apples and oranges, to include all the varieties.  I also decided to stick to the 'classic' or 'original' versions of each brand; while I was sorely tempted by the "Smoky Chipotle" and "Extra Hot Habanero" Tabasco varieties, it seemed like they would be better compared as part of a Tabasco-specific tasting, rather than in a brand comparison.

Two wild cards did slip in, however: Heinz "Tomato Ketchup with Indian Spices", purely because it was reduced in price from £1.58 to £1; and Blue Dragon "Wasabi Shot", because much as I have my doubts about Blue Dragon as a brand, I just couldn't resist the idea of a wasabi hot sauce.

My tasting methodology was to glop a bit of each sauce out onto a spoon for inspection, before inserting the spoon into my mouth with care (by which I mean, into my mouth rather than into my eye or the side of my face) and savouring the different flavour characteristics of each sauce.

As you can see from the picture below, there were marked differences in consistency and appearance between the four sauces.  The Cholula was liquid enough to pour from the bottle smoothly, but held its shape on the spoon in a deep orangey-red blob. Frank's and Tabasco were both quite watery and, probably because of this, appear lighter on the spoon although a darker red in the bottle; in fact, the two looked almost identical when shaken out.  The Encona was by far the thickest, a textured sauce with detectable fragments of chilli pulp and seeds.

As for the taste results, here's what I thought about each:

Cholula Hot Sauce: This had a decent, complex fruitiness in which I could taste the flavour of the hot peppers (arbol and piquin, according to the label) that went into it.  It was only mildly tangy and salty with very little heat (I rate it 2/10), which probably accounts for why I've used up nearly the entire bottle in less than a week... 

Frank's Red Hot: This was both sharper and quite a bit saltier than Cholula, but again didn't rate high on the heat scale (again, 2/10).  The flavour was red-peppery rather than fruity; the bottle lists the ingredients as "Aged red cayenne peppers (35%), vinegar, water, salt and garlic powder".  I couldn't detect much contribution from the garlic.

Tabasco: More vinegary and less salty than Frank's and with a fair bit more chilli kick (I'd say a 4-5/10).  A somewhat one-dimensional -- well, all right, vinegar and peppery heat could be counted as two-dimensional -- taste, but that's the classic Tabasco flavour.  Not surprising when you consider the ingredients, numbering just three: red peppers, salt and vinegar.  To me it tastes of bright orangey-red, the flavour equivalent of a swift kick in the pants or a tequila slammer! 

Encona West Indian Original Hot Pepper Sauce: A good balance of salty and sour, with an almost funky note of fruitiness and a heat level comparable to Tabasco, but that unfolds more gradually as the other flavours develop and fade.

 Flavourwise, I actually like the Cholula best; the fruity notes made this sauce almost good enough to eat on its own, and I suspect some of the Bloody Mary's I've made with it this week have, due to careless mixing, been more Cholula than tomato for the last few sips and none the worse for it.  Its only failing, though, is that it doesn't do the main job of a hot sauce, which is to make things hot!  A mix of Cholula and Tabasco would probably be just the trick -- in fact, perhaps I'll go test that now...

... [some time later]

Oh yes, the two wild cards.  Well, the "Tomato Ketchup with Indian Spices" tastes just about exactly like you'd expect: classic Heinz mixed with stereotypical curry flavours.  I'm not sure I am a fan; I love Heinz red sauce and I love curry, but the combination tasted somewhat artificial and sickly.

The Blue Dragon Wasabi Hot Sauce got a moderate thumbs-up: wasabi always tastes -- and looks -- artificial (unless it's the real finely grated deal which you hardly ever get, even in good restaurants; did you know, the green modelling-clay-type paste is made out of starch, flavouring and colouring and contains no actual wasabi root at all?) so the fact that this sauce was a bright electrifying green and tasted of wasabi flavour flavour was less offputting than it might have been.  There was a nice mix of sweetness and pungency with just a little tanginess and salt, and the consistency was somewhere between Cholula and Tabasco.  The only reason I might not buy this sauce again is that it was relatively expensive and I think I'd get exactly the same result by using bottled or tube wasabi diluted down with some rice vinegar and sugar.  Meanwhile, though, I have been enjoying it shaken liberally onto slow-cooked eggs with just a drop or two of soy sauce.  Mmmmm!

Happy 2013!

New Year's Eve: fireworks from our window

I gave up making New Year's Resolutions some years ago.  At the time I thought it was because I was finally wise and sensible enough to implement life changes whenever they were required and no longer needed the impetus of a number ticking over on a calendar to encourage me into better habits.  Ha.  In retrospect however, I think I was going through a blissful (but sadly finite) period of everything in my life being sorted and satisfactory to the degree that I didn't really need to make any changes, or if I did need to change things, I was sufficiently in control of the general situation to be able to do so with little real effort.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, I'm now thinking that this year a 'Return to Resolutions' might just be in order.  And while there are many areas of my life that could do with some attention (health: drink less, get more sleep, eat regular meals instead of holding out until ravenous and then devouring whatever vaguely food-like substance is lurking at the back of the fridge; money: try to be sensible with; work-life balance: get one), this blog is devoted mainly to my interest in food -- cooking, eating, learning about, experimenting with.

So, here are a couple of Foxe's Foods resolutions for 2013:

1. Try something new foodwise once a week -- a new recipe, ingredient, technique, or restaurant, or even a new dish at a favourite restaurant where I usually always order the same thing.  I'm always reading about exciting and novel food ideas; time to test some of them out!  If I have 50 new food experiences in 2013, my life will be that little bit richer and by the end of the year I might have some interesting stories to tell...
2. Update this blog once a week (on average!)  I've noticed that Foxe's Foods is starting to get a tiny trickle of traffic that isn't just me looking up how to make one of my own recipes.  Welcome, new readers!  I will try to make this a more interesting place for you!  Having a new food experience to post about every week will probably help with generating content -- though given the backlog of review and recipe posts I've got lined up, finding time and motivation is just as much of an issue.

I'm pleased to report that in Week 1, I have managed to do two things that satisfy Resolution #1: on New Year's Day I tried sous-vide cooking for the first time (rib-eye steak, as the main course of a special dinner), and the following day we went to Hunan, a restaurant I've been eyeing up for some time but not got round to visiting previously.

More details on both of these at some point perhaps, but for now I'm going to fulfil Resolution #2 just in time for the end of the first week of 2013 by hitting the Publish button!