cooking with moderate success!

This is a vast improvement on previous weekends' cooking stories.

I made laksa. I have TRIED (and failed) to make good laksa before. Once an Indonesian version from Hannah's mum (no good, I think I watered it down too much), and a couple of times following instructions from a real Thai lady ('go to Coles, get a jar of laksa paste...') all with little success. But then last week I was at the dentist (I am now the proud owner of a filling) and reading a Gourmet Traveller (Dec 2006?), or more specifically that 'Fare Exchange' section at the beginning where people write in and ask for restaurant chefs to share certain recipes. And there was this one for a laksa from Sydney. And I thought maybe it would be a good one to try, seeing as it's a recipe from an actual chef, and someone liked it enough to bother requesting it. So I tried it, and it was good! Nice and fresh and healthy tasting. Easy too, and you can make the pastes earlier so that cooking it at the last minute doesn't take long. Not a 100% success (see notes below), but tasty enough that I will make it again, and can see how it could be made easier and better quite easily.

Here's the recipe! It's probably in a bit of an odd order because I jotted it down as quickly as I could. Sorry I can't remember who the chef is or which restaurant it comes from. I'll try and figure it out next time I visit the dentist.

1. Make laksa paste. Process: 1/2 an onion, 2 cloves garlic, 1 tablespoon of chopped coriander (leaves, stalks and roots), 2 teaspoons of grated ginger, 2-3 small chillies, the rind and juice of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons of chopped lemongrass, 1 teaspoon of shrimp paste, 1 teaspoon of ground coriander, 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric. Fry this paste in 100ml of vegetable oil for 5 minutes.

2. Make sambal paste. Process 50g chillies, 50g garlic, 50g ginger together. Heat 50ml of vegetable oil and add paste and fry for a bit. Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable stock powder, 1 teaspoon of fish sauce, 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of brown sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of chilli flakes, and stir.

3. Make laksa. In a saucepan combine 750ml chicken stock, 1/2 cup of laksa paste (ie. the amount you made), 375 ml of coconut cream and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and add 8 grams of tofu.

4. Cook other ingredients. In another saucepan blanch 1 stalk of finely chopped celery, 2 carrots julienne, 250gm of chinese cabbage and 1 bunch of baby bok choy. Drain. Cook 200g rice noodles. Cook 500g chicken breasts.

4. Put together. Arrange veg and thickly sliced chicken on top of noodles. Pour soup over the top, and garnish with Vietnamese mint, and coriander. Serve sambal paste separately.


Notes on what I did and discovered, and suggestions to simplify things.
1. I didn't process anything - not having any kind of processing machine. I chopped everything finely, and then bashed it up in a mortar and pestle. This was fine, but I imagine a processor would be quicker if you have one (although would create more washing up).

2. Next time, I will double the quantity of laksa paste and soup (I was feeding 5 people). We ended up with massive bowls full of noodles and vegetables with the soup barely coming half way up the bowl.

3. 100ml of oil seemed a lot for the laksa paste. Next time I will use less, because it's not really adding anything - it just bulks it up a bit.

4. The sambal paste is important. Don't skip it! It made the flavour of the soup go from a bit bland, to super-tasty yummy laksa. If you're worried about the spiciness, use big mild chillies. This is what I did, and it wasn't hot at all.

5. The quantities called for in the sambal paste are a LOT. I made it with 30g of garlic/ginger/chillis because I ran out (30g is a whole head of garlic, 6 large chillies etc.). This was a fine amount, and there was a little left over.

6. I made the laksa paste and the sambal paste a day ahead and refrigerated them. This was fine.

7. I cooked the vegetables separately, as per the recipe, but I think it would work ok to just blanch them in the soup itself. This would cut down on pots, and I suspect it's only separated this way in the recipe because that's how they'd do it in a restaurant.

8. I think I would also buy pre-cooked chicken breasts. I hate cooking chicken, and I don't think it would change the flavour at all.

9. I used hokkien noodles, not rice noodles. And I didn't measure the amount. Still good.

Update: summary here of how these adjustements went on Laksa version 1.2. (The short answer: well!).

taking pretentious photos.

You may have noticed the new header. I think there's something wrong with my camera - unless the flash is on, the shutter speed is too slow and the pictures always come out blurry. I guess that's what you get with a happy snaps digital. That and, in this case, a lot of pictures of a blurry leaf and crystal clear grass. One of these days I'll learn how to make the background blur away while the foreground is still in focus.

Anyway. New header. Here is the last one for posterity. The new one is a picture I took, the old one is one of T's. The nature theme is incidental.

Also, I ordered a Macbook on Friday! Hurrah for salary packaging!

tolerably well.

Excellenté! This one is a good one.

Another recommendation from my brother; my only problem with this book was that it was needlessly long (over 1000 pages) and therefore a little physically unwieldy - although the length is in keeping with the style, and I didn't at any point get bored.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the story of two 19th century magicians who bring magic back to England. It's one of those books where everything is realistic except those things which are not. In this book, for example, it's typical early 1800s, and events feature like the Battle of Waterloo (real), but there's magic (not real). I'm sure there's a fancy word for this, but despite my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR DEGREE I don't know what it is. Tom says is it magic realism? No it is not, but you get the idea anyway.

Although it's a modern book, it's written in the style of the times. Like Jane Austen, but without the marrying off, like RL Stevenson without the dark and crazy, like Dickens but without the heavy, like Conan Doyle but without the detective. But I didn't find it was at all difficult to read - more it just seemed quaint and cute when Susanna Clarke spells things like 'headach' and 'surprized'. She didn't do the thing with the exclamation marks in the middle of sentences though, which I really think we should bring back.

Anyway, the STORY. Well, it's a bit hard to describe it in enough detail but without giving too many things away. Also, the story does twist in a couple of different directions, so what you think is the overarching plotline at the beginning, is not where the book ends. Which would be a problem normally, but I didn't find it so in this book - I never caught myself bored or confused as to where it was going.

Basically it's about two magicians who want to bring magic back to England (Northern England had previously been ruled over by a fairy king), at a time when the only 'magicians' left are rather scholars of magic. Mr Norrell begins it all, but he is a recluse who, despite wanting fame and fortune, is jealous of his unique position and hoards all the magic books in England and won't teach what he has learned to others. Mr Strange is quite the opposite. He is a typical young hot-blooded lay-about landed Englishman, who takes up magic because his future wife wants him to choose a steady profession. Quickly he realises that he's good at it, and becomes Norrell's pupil. Together they set about bringing magic back, although they have personality clashes, and eventually Mr Strange goes to the continent to help (magically) fight in the Napoleonic Wars. This is the background for what happens but things get more interesting when people start getting abducted by fairies. There is a lot more to it; lots more quirky characters and events, but I think that's about all the background I can give, without giving away too much.

Yes, I liked this one, and would thoroughly recommend it. It's written well - it's not difficult to read, but has a lot of substance. It's well paced - slow enough that you're not on the edge of your seat the whole time, but fast enough to be engaging. Magical and imaginative, but not scary or illogical. The story is good, as is the interplay between characters, and it's a novel premise for a book. Good good good.

not a tuuuuba.

My threadless tshirts arrived the other day. My 'if it's not metal, it's not music' tshirt is indeed very cool, with the sweet sweet felty type. I wore it to last night's Carousel rehearsal pain session. (Which actually wasn't so bad after all.) I don't think anyone got it though. My sense of humour appears to be rather... individual.

I just realised it would be that much funnier if I were a brass player.

Oh well.

blind.

Sneaky me. I read another book at the same time as the others. Normally I don't read more than one book at a time, because I find it confusing. But I read this one on the internet (here), and because that makes things difficult for bed-time reading, I broke that rule out of necessity.

I can't quite remember how I came across Two Years in the Forbidden City by Princess Der Ling - probably looking for pictures. I'd never read a book on the computer before - remember years ago when everyone worried that books would soon be a thing of the past and that by now we'd all be reading EVERYTHING online? Well, there's a reason we aren't. It sucks. It's hard and uncomfortable, and you get sore eyes quickly. I won't be doing it again, and I wouldn't recommend it.

The book itself is a couple of years worth of memoirs of the royal Chinese court, written by a Chinese lady who was brought up in France, being the daughter of a diplomat. In the early 20th century, she became the first-lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager Cixi who ruled China from 1861 to her death in 1908. The book seems to have been written in large part to counteract the common (Western?) impression of the day of Cixi as a devious and ambitious despot (which as far as I can tell still remains even in China - when I visited the Forbidden City, Cixi was referred to as 'the Dragon Lady'). I'm not totally sure if the book itself is successful of dispelling this impression of Cixi though. The book doesn't go into her politics or effect on the country much, and as a person she comes of as someone who is equally capable of being very kind and generous, or finicky and cruel. (Although I guess it's hard to know what to expect from rulers. Apparently Prince Charles still has someone squeeze his toothpaste for him.) Also, the 'two years' in the title is a bit of an exaggeration. The book basically covers one year, and in the conclusion chapter the author basically states that her second year at the Palace was the same as the first.

It's an interesting book, because it describes from the inside daily life at the palace during this period, but by someone who understands what elements need to be explained to Westerners. When I visited the Forbidden Palace, I found it fascinating and beautiful, but ultimately quite an empty experience, because you can't go inside the buildings - you can only peer through dark windows at the few rich furnishings that remain. I guess it would be like a Chinese person trying to get an idea of how the British royals live by looking at the outside of Buckinham Palace. It would still be awesome, but not lead to much insight. This book does give you a good idea of what it was like to live there, and what the place looked like etc., as the furnishings and events are described in great detail.

That being said, the author unfortunately is not a great writer. The interest comes from the events and surroundings, rather than the way they are described. Princess Der Ling basically just describes day to day life, and important ceremonies and events, but there is no overarching thread or story. I've read reviews of this book on amazon, and some people argued that one of the things that helps this book is the pictures, which were absent from the internet version that I read.

If you were going, or have been to the Forbidden City, I think you would find this an interesting book to skim read, or to look at if you had a version with the pictures. It might also be a good companion book to Catherine A Carl's 'With The Empress Dowager of China' - a similar sounding book by an American painter who took Cixi's portrait during the same period. It's an interesting historical read, but unfortunatly, not a great story.

*Note: Normally I make an effort to show the cover of the edition which I read, but here, because it was an e-book, I just picked the prettiest cover I could find.

cooking lots and eating less.

Another mildly unsuccessful cooking weekend! Maybe I should rename this blog to reflect the frequency of this. (It would contrast to all those blogs raving about the amazing food people manage to concoct - am I really that bad, or are they lying?). Maybe I should rename my life. Pictures because this place was starting to look dull.

On Saturday I made:













- a risotto with the World's Biggest Mushrooms,
- this chocolate gelato,
- this red velvet cake,
- a made-up salad of rocket, trevicchio, pear, pancetta and parmesan with a white balsamic dressing.
- Sunday I tried this pad thai.

Of it all, the salad was excellent, and so was the gelati (but I knew it would be because I'd made that one before).

The risotto was decent, but not my best (I think the secret is to use lots of dried fancy mushrooms, and for this I recommend chopped shitakes from the Asian grocer, because they're way cheaper than porcini at the continental grocer and seem to do as good a job if not better, although this may just be because you can afford to use more). Re., the picture - my hand is stretched out as far as possible, and I have really big hands for a girl. Kind of goes with the bassoon turf. They are BIG OLD MUSHROOMS.














The red velvet cake was ok but not mind blowing unless you count in colour (fyi: 6 tablespoons of red food colouring = 1 and a half bottles). The icing was very good and I may use it again on other cakes. I thought I was being really fancy making this cake which I'd never heard of, until Dad told me you can get them at Woolies.

The pad thai approximated restaurant pad thai, but was not as good as the recipe promised, being kind of grey, gluey and generally gross. Grrr. gLuckily, gI gonly gmade gone gserve.

On the basis of this, we have two new maxims:






Emily's cooking maxim #3:
Learning to cook is less about finding the good recipes as it is weeding out the bad ones.

Emily's cooking maxim #4:
A recipe you've pulled from your proverbial has as much chance of being tasty as one from a book, the internet, etc.

At the asian grocer, I also found these excellent guavas, and some cute little (100% natural food) rosebuds going for a song, and some fujis that look like they were grown in someone's GARDEN. Yum-O! I also took Mum to this pho place (don't know its name, but it's a couple of doors south of the Lucky asian grocer on Prospect road) because she'd never had Vietnamese beef noodle soup before. I'm pleased to say the place was very standard (read: pretty darn good food with plastic tablecloths and cutlery), and the people very friendly, and she liked it!


And finally, here is a gratuitous picture of some presents I wrapped for a friend who is having her wisdom teeth out, using said rosebuds Rowan Atkinson style, included here because I'm a bit vain and smug about my present wrapping (fyi: it looks better than my poor photography illustrates). And ok, vain and smug are not so good, but I think good wrapping is important. It shows you mean it, and you didn't just buy a gift because you felt obliged. I still haven't quite figured out what I'm supposed to do with my life, but sometimes I think maybe I should open a wrapping shop. I think I could do quite well around Christmas, Valentines, etc. It seems like a better bet than the world's most unpredictable cafe anyway.

figuring it out.

I LOVE the raita at Beyond India - so much better than all the other raitas I've ever had (except maybe the smoked eggplant one I had at the Snake Charmer), but I've never been able to figure out why it's so delicious.

And then I figured it out. The magic ingredient.

Sugar.

Of course. It's always that simple isn't it? The sugar (icing sugar is best) is definitely it, becuase it doesn't seem to matter what else I mix in with the yoghurt it still tastes excellently better than before, and with my raitas (and everyone else's from what the internet tells me) that's a good thing, becuase they tend to be a bit of a mixed bag of whatever I can be bothered putting in: some combination of yoghurt, onion, garlic, ginger, cucumber, banana, mint, coriander, cumin, fennel, coriander powder, cinnamon, chilli powder, lemon juice etc etc etc.

Sugar.