Lancashire black peas

I just wanted to share with you a local/regional discovery. In spite of having lived in Lancashire for 12 years+, I failed to realise one of the old traditional food of Lancashire is bl;ack peas. They were featured at Accrington food fair and I did not miss the sampling. They taste very much like mushy peas, slightly different, and they are to be sprinkled with salt and pepper. My opinion? I really liked them, and the pot they were in was way too small!

Thai Chicken Galangal soup

This is one of my favorite thai soups.

I learnt to do it a long time ago, when I was taking Thai cooking classes. The recipe stayed with me and I cook it regularly. It's very delicate and quite easy to make, and very healthy.
I live close to Chinatown, so I am pretty spoilt, but I reckon many of you will find it difficult to find fresh galangal, and all the other ingredients I always have at home. I'd say you could replace it by either fresh ginger or pwdered galagal, however, it wopn't quite be the same. Thai food is best eaten with fresh ingredients. Other than that, the other ingredients should be easy enough to find in normal supermarkets, in Britain anyway.

You will need for 4 people (or two greedy ones):
- 200g chicken Fillet, sliced into mouth size pieces
- 5 slices of fresh galangal
- 2 cups of Coconut milk (a tin of Chaokoh coconut milk will be perfect)
- 1 cup chicken stock or water
- 2 sticks of fresh lemongrass sliced diagonally
- 3-4 Kaffir lime leaves, fresh if possible, dry is ok
- 2 tblsp thai fish sauce
- 1 to 2 tablspn Lime juice
- 5 bird eye chilis, (2 if you are a bit sensitive), sliced diagonally
- 2 sprigs of fresh coriander
- 200g fresh mushrooms, prepared and cut in half

Heat the coconut in a pan, dilute with either chicken stock or water , and once hot, throw in the galangal, mushroom, lemongrass, kafir lime and then the chicken.
Season with the lime juice and fish sauce, the chilis
Simmer for one minute only and then add the coriander to garnish.
Serve right away and enjoy.

This soup is great to warm you up in winter, and obviously can be apreciated in hot weather as well. It
feels very light and satisfying.

It is a typical soup you can find in Thailand, in restaurants or as street food. The photo at the top was taken at my favorite streetfood stall in Koh Samui: John's stall as I mentioned in an earlier post.

The soup can also be made with prawns or seabass instead of chicken.
Also, the same soup can be made without the coconut milk (only chicken soup), but it would then be a Tom Yam soup, very delicious as well.

The best coconut milk available in our shop is the chokaoh brand, as it is made of young coconut scrapped.

I have inserted below a few photos I took during a stay in Thailand, where I visited a coconut harvest at a plantation, near Chiang Mai:

Making coconut milk


Bunny Rabbit coconut grater

Source: My Thai cook teacher Chorchaba, photos: myself.

Traditional Iranian bread

Today as I was walking through the Satwa quarter in Dubai, I came across an Iranian Bakery, intrigued I approached, and the two bakers invited me in the shop, to see how the bread was made, They were really kind and wanted me to discover the process.
You bet, I was up for it! I only had my telephone on me at the time (I know, I did not carry my camera. Shame on me!) so all the photos were taken with my Sony Ericsson. I will return with my SLR, I promised myself!
The balls of dough prepared are flattened,
Then the flat disc of dough is flapped between the hands very quickly,
Then stretched in an instant on a convex shape covered with the cloth.
Then the bread is thrown very abruptly on the inside of the oven where it will stick and cook, forming bubbles. It is then taken on and reserved under a cloth.

The result tastes like a gorgeous crispy crepe! The guys wanted to give me a few of them, and refused that I pay them, so I definitely need to go back to pay for a second lot!

I found that on this stretch of road, people were incredibly kind and interactive, and they are very happy to have their picture taken, I asked every time and they all thought it was crazy but posed for me nonetheless!
I’ll definitely have to come back next week! (my last week in Dubai)…

Hong Kong Markets - Wanchai meats

Imagine: you are a chicken in Wanchai market. Absolute horror. You are in a cage and see the different stages of your future. ouch! Humm, unfortunately, you don't know that you will be cooked in fantastic dishes....

Anyway, Wanchai market was superb for meat and fish too, even though I'd say the real show goes for fish and shelfish, fresh, superfresh, varied...

And the cute froggies, on top of each other, waiting for their fate!

I must admit, I felt for the poor turtoises. These guys are getting rare and because maybe I'd never seen a cut one before, they seemed incredibly vulnerable under their shells... But let's be fair, a life is a life and I should not make a difference: the life of a cow, an insect or any living being (I include plants in there!) is as worthy as that of a tortoise.....

And at last the meats, again a large variety - and offals - available. I've always wondered and still wondered how it can exist in the heat. But it does and seems to do well....

I hope you enjoyed this walk through Wanchai Markets with me as much as I did myself!

Now follow me, let's have a meal at the Market Dai pai Dong!

New York day 1 - Vietnamese theme

On the first evening, back from Central Park to our hotel, we went to a small Vietnamese restaurant, in upper Manhattan, that was on our way, nothing worthy of a report I'm afraid (I think the restaurant was called Saigon, but I don't particularly want to remember it.. not very vietnamese really):

I suppose we were in the mood for Vietnamese food as we'd talked about a trip to Vietnam in the near future whilst on the plane.

Anyway,the next day we aimed at Little Italy and Chinatown after a walk on Broadway to hunt breakfast.... The weather was not very promissing: dark and rainy....

We started in Canal Street up Mulberry Street, in Little Italy. We did not fancy stopping at a restaurant in Little Italy as it seemed a bit too touristy to be trusted - and to be honest, after having been in Italy, I tend to avoid Italian resturants in other countries, It's never as god as the real McCoy I'm afraid...-

Anyway, the quarter was lovely with restaurants in the 'Lady and the Tramp' style.
Some Delis attracted my attention though with a great selection of Ialian products, homemade cheese and pasta. (Ah, the Deli theme seemed to appear rather early!)

Then we moved onto Chinatown, which we loved as it was so lively and busy, food everywhere!
We started watching carefully though as we were hunting for the Bahn Me Saigon, highly recommended by Mycookinghut.
We found it, a tiny little narrow shop with the Bahn Me counter at the back! We had our food radar on so we found it quite easily!

We walked to the park, where there was quite a few people, found a bench and started eating our foodie treasure. It started raining, but equipped with our umbrellas, we were only reasonnably getting wet, totally absorbed in a vietnamese food vortex: the Bahn me was as great as Mycookinghut promised!. By the time we looked around us, it was pouring so hard that everybody else had vanished from the park. It was quite funny, we stayed there in a sort of 'Hamlet' moment...

The make-do Phở (Vietnamese noodle soup)

I was talking to @lovingpho's and looking a his great website the other day, as was already thinking of the trip to Vietnam I am planning for the end of the year. I sent lovingpho's address to my friend Marjolaine (see previous posts there, there and there) who in turn sent me her recipe and encouraged me to make my first Phở. Impatient, and missing some of the ingredients, I decided to proceed nevertheless.

So my Phở is definitely not authentic, but was surely tasty. And it took no time to prepare.

Here are Marjolaine's instructions for a quick Phở soup:
Ingredients:
- rice noodles
- Beef slices
- stock (beef used if sliced beef used)
- nước mắm
- ginger
- star anise
- chinese 5 spice
- slices of red chillis
- lime
- ngò gai (culantro, or long coriander)
- Thai basil
- bean sprouts

Heat the beef stock with the spices, ginger, sliced onion and star anise.

In a bowl, place the chilli, herbes, beensprouts, lime, noodles and beef slices. Pour the stock on top and serve.

NOW. I ran out of nước mắm (but I still have some thai fish sauce. not quite the same though. they taste very different..) did not have beef slices, bean sprouts or thai basil, I had cilantro but not culantro, and I had rice flakes only as I also ran out of rice noodle.
BUT, it was lunchtime and I was hungry so decided to go ahead anyway. So here is my heretic alternative:

I used some chicken stock I had, in it I threw finely sliced shallot, 1 star anise, a pinch of chinese 5 spice and some rice flakes (they are flat square type noodles see in the next photos), and the ginger chopped .

In a bowl I prepared: the cilantro (coriander leaves), lime juice, diagonal slices of a bird'seye chilli

I used the vietnamese sausage I had in the fridge:

I cut slices in dice, but with hindsight I should have cut long thin strips.

Then I poured the stock mix on top of the ingredients...

Like for thai food, one of the big secret is the right balance between the fish sauce and the lime (adjust). The soup was great for a speed lunch, but I can't wait to make a proper one, as the flavour with the indicated ingredients will be more delicate of course. I already have quite a lot of the ingredients because I often cook Asian food, but I guess it demands some specialist fresh ingredients, and in the UK, even if it is easy to find them in chinatown (ahem, I live next door from it), in this recession time, some people might find it a bit costly to make.

I am looking forward to taste the original vertsion during my trip in Vietnam, can't wait!

Source: Marjolaine's recipe + my own heretic modifications