You like salt in your food, she doesn’t. You like real spice in the dish (not the toned down versions touristy joints are noted for), she cannot take that.

Well, if you are doing the cooking and your joy is in seeing her enjoy the food, doing it your way just takes all the joy out of it. So, knowing how to work in compromises is the key here. I’m still learning, to be honest.

Serve It On The Side

If something can be served on the side, then that is an easy one. Salt obviously can be added at the table, though some will argue that it is not quite the same as adding it at a precise point in preparation or cooking.

Ah, perfection – where would we be if we could not slip your grasp? In a quiet and lonely place I would suppose, eating the perfect food we cook that only we like.

Hold the lime! Yes, she does not care much for lime or vinegar either. No problem, slices of lime can be passed on the side.

Temper It.

And the spice? Cloves and cinnamon can’t be passed on the side, they have to go into the dish at the appropriate time, and that is not a nod to perfection, just reality. But, chilled slices of cucumber and tomato on the side will temper the spice and heat of any dish.

In South-East Asian cooking, especially the one-dish meals, cucumber and tomato slices are very commonly included. Think chicken rice or fried rice for example, or mamak fried noodles. No, the chef was not lazy or unimaginative. There is usually chilli on the side, if not in the dish, and these vegetables help when your tongue is burning - from the chillies that you mistakenly or otherwise, tucked into with gusto.

Reduce It or Mask It

Some people dislike gamey tastes, as in oxtail, lamb shanks and duck. If cooking oxtail soup, an initial boiling and discarding of the water helps.

Lamb shanks lose their gamey taste with an appropriate choice of spices in the masala. Herbs can have the same effect.

But be warned, if you are taking the ’spice route’, that freezing leftovers moderates the spice effect, and the dish will be gamey when re-heated. This one I found out the hard way - she loved the original, could hardly eat the re-heated dish.

It’s all about recognizing that tastes and tolerances differ, and finding a way to accommodate everyone that you cook for.

It can’t be done successfully all the time, but to me it is worth a try. And that is why, with cooking, as with the rest of life, we live and learn.

Last night I cooked my usual Pork Vindaloo, but thought I’d give it a bit of a tweak for a change.

Nothing dramatic, just cut back on the dried chillies from 20 to 12, and added 1 heaped teaspoon of Garam Masala.

It turned out quite nicely, mellower due to the reduction of the chillies and with a deeper flavour due to the addition of the Garam Masala.

 It will be interesting to see how it freezes (I froze 4 portions), as typically the chilli heat diminishes in the freezer and a richer flavour develops.

Time will tell.

Sometimes in your travels, you come across a great dish that you cannot forget. Trying to re-create it at home can be a challenge, but it is worth the effort.I first came across the dish on one of my regular business trips to Jakarta. Staying at a hotel that was popular with the locals and not tourists meant that the food there was pretty authentic. I quickly developed a selection of favourite dishes from the menu that became dinner must-haves.

One trip, I noticed the menu had changed and on it was Ikan Bakar Colo Colo. I decided to try it, and was struck by how simple it was and the great taste. They used a nice thick seabass fillet in that hotel, though they did say that restaurants outside would grill whole fish, rather than a single portion fillet. One of the things that made it special was the colo colo sauce, some call it a sambal, which because it was served in a small quantity, did not overwhelm the fish.

So, the dish went onto my list of must-haves. Some trips it was not so good, I suspect because the chef who got it onto the menu was the expert and if he was off, then another chefs efforts did not quite measure up.

Re-Creating The Recipe.

When I got back to Thailand, I searched the net and downloaded a recipe. I tried it as is, and it was a veritable disaster.

So, I had to content myself with having the dish whenever business took me to Jakarta. One day, waiting for a flight at an airport out in the provinces, I came across a cookbook at the airport bookstore. In it was a recipe for Ikan Bakar Colo Colo, so I bought the book on the spot.

Soon after, I tried the recipe as is. It was good, but not exactly what I had in the hotel. So, the next trip when I got to eat the dish, I made a careful comparison of ingredients and taste, to the best that one can tell by looking at and tasting the finished dish.

The difference came from the green chillies, which have a unique taste, addition of bird chillies which give a ‘kick’ to it, a little garlic and I believe the Indonesian kecap manis, or sweet soy sauce, which has a taste rather different from Chinese Sweet Soy Sauce.

And so, all set, I cooked the dish back in Thailand. It was wonderful!

As I no longer travel to Indonesia on business, I cannot readily get kecap manis, but I do intend to ask anyone who travels there to bring back a bottle.

Article / Recipe

It’s hard to get bored with food if you always tweak the recipes you use. I do that, even with my own creations. If the result is great, I’ll share it as an update, which is what I am doing today.

In May, I posted an article and recipe for Fusion Duck Curry. At the time I was eating the curry, I made a note that I would like to try it with the addition of curry leaves and garam masala.

Well, some time has passed and I was asked if I would cook the dish again. As I did that, I saw my note to try the variation. So I added 3 sprigs of curry leaves at the same time as the sliced onions, and ½ teaspoon garam masala together with the other spice powders. I also reduced the water to 1 cup, and reduced the heat to get the barest of simmers. Cooking time was the same.

It worked wonderfully, with a thicker, more flavourful gravy. Try it, you will not be disappointed I assure you.

One of the undoubted favourites in Thai cuisine, leaving aside touristy stuff, is grilled chicken. It is usually served with som tam (Thai papaya salad) and sticky rice (glutinous rice).

Getting a good recipe is difficult. I have 3 from my collection of Thai cookbooks, and they can be best described as not having any commercial potential. So, I have been experimenting, with a fair degree of success, but still not at the point that I can say “This is it”.

Last night I made another change to my recipe, and instead of grilling the whole chicken, I just roasted it. To be honest, I was lazy to set up the rotisserie and just used the smaller oven. The fan supposedly gives the effect of a rotisserie, but moves the air around the chicken instead of moving the chicken - so the manual claims, doubtless with input from the marketing department.

Anyway, I decided to try the circular heating element in addition to the upper and lower elements, and this time I positioned the roasting tray on the lowest rack level. This positions the chicken so that most of it is directly in front of the fan. Not a good idea. Within 20 minutes it became apparent that spots were going to char long before the chicken would be done. I dropped the temperature from 180°C / 360°F to 160°C / 320°F for 10 minutes and raised the rack 1 level so that only the top third of the fan blew directly at the chicken.

When I was comfortable the chicken would not char, I raised the temperature to the original setting. By then my calculated timing was out of course, and I was flying by the seat of my pants. No matter, at least I had things under control. (For more on the circular element and timings, please see my earlier post under category “roast chicken”).

The chicken was done 10 minutes later than I expected, though I must say that I was deliberately trying to get the breast meat to the point where it just crosses from ‘moist’ to ‘not moist’. You see, Thai grilled chicken is usually served with a dipping sauce that is bottled and sold commercially under various brands, and it is a real treat. So, having the breast meat just ‘not moist’ would I thought go well with the sauce. Of course, leg meat remains moist even so, but that is OK.

We ate it with jasmine rice and raw vegetables, with the dipping sauce of course.

I ate most of it with a knife and fork, but as with all good grilled or roasted chicken, at a certain point you are better off using your fingers, which is what I did. I enjoyed it very much, and pretty much picked the bones clean.

And the crying dogs? Apparently in Thailand when you pick the bones clean and leave no meat for the dogs, some people call it “making the dogs cry”.

I mentioned in the post that I would give an update on how well the dish took to freezing.

Well, I’m pleased to report that it does keep well and taste and texture do not suffer as a result of freezing.

I defrosted only in the microwave, as I am not a huge fan of microwaving vegetables and the like. Then to complete reheating, I put the thawed braised pork and cloud ear fungus into a shallow bowl, which I then put in the electric rice-cooker. The one I have includes a steamer insert, so once the rice is cooked and it switches to keep warm mode, I put in the insert and the bowl. It heats through in about 20 minutes.

If you do not have the steamer insert, you can also put the bowl directly onto the cooked rice. In any case, just be sure that you use oven mitts to handle the bowl when removing, as it gets very hot. 

And if you do not use an electric rice-cooker at all, or if you are reheating a large portion, you can always reheat gently on the stove top.

Only two points are firstly, I wish I had more gravy, it is delicious and more would be nice. Secondly, there was a very slight powdery feel to the mushrooms, which only I noticed, and this is perhaps because there was not enough gravy to submerge the mushrooms in the freezer. Nothing too obvious, as I was the only one who noticed it. And the overall taste was great, just like curries and stews which improve with freezing.

So, all told a good candidate for bulk cooking and freezing.

Despite the rather unappetizing name (Rats Ears Fungus, if the Thai name is translated), this is a really delicious species of mushroom that originates from China. You can see it in cooked form at the top of the photograph. As I often do, I had bought a pack of this on impulse when I came across it in the supermarket. Put it in a drawer in the kitchen and forgot about it. Then the other day I had to look for more cumin seed, and when I dug in the drawer, found the pack. It would expire soon, so I thought I’d better use it.

What to cook was the question. I had a pack of 2 cuts of pork shoulder, with a reasonable amount of fat, making it ideal for a long braise.

So, decided on pork braised in five-spice flavoured sauce, with cloud ear fungus. The Thais will know the sauce as palo sauce.

I cut the pork into 2 cm / ¾ in chunks and marinated it for about 40 minutes in dark soya sauce, five-spice powder and honey.

Brought a decent sized pot of water to the boil, took it off the heat and put in the dried cloud ear fungus to reconstitute for 20 minutes. Please note that it increases in size several times when reconstituted, so use a large enough pot.

Meantime, I prepared a paste of garlic and shallots, to which I added 3 segments of a star anise and a dash of sugar. I also made an additional sauce base of dark soya sauce and salt.

When pork and cloud ear fungus were ready, I fried the garlic-shallot paste till it turned a golden brown, then added the marinated pork and fried it until it changed colour. I put in the additional sauce base, stirred well, and then added the reconstituted cloud ear fungus.

Added 2 cups water, and as soon as the sauce came to a boil, I reduced the heat, covered the pan and simmered the pork for an hour.

The gravy was thick enough, but not too dry which is what you want. It is delicious, expect people to want spoonfuls of it on their rice, so do not make the mistake of preparing too little gravy, or allowing it to thicken too much.

As this is a strongly flavoured dish, which we would be eating with rice, I opted to have a simple minestrone soup to provide the vegetables.

Nice meal, and I had enough left over for a single portion, so I froze that. I’m curious to see how this dish does after freezing. I’ll post when I know.

Photograph and Glossary Listing - Cloud Ear Fungus (Mushrooms)

This was going to be an article about using chicken parts in chicken stews and curries, but somewhere along the line it became a bit more than that. A while back, I was reflecting on how we cooked chicken in the old days. We’d cut up a whole bird and cook it, bones and all.

Then supermarkets came into being, and we started to have the option of buying chicken parts. I thought that was great. I have always preferred breast meat, and being able to buy only this was a boon.

Today, it is almost difficult to find whole chicken in the supermarket. And yet, something has changed in the taste of the dishes I love. That wholesome, full-bodied flavour was gone. A curry or a stew with only breast meat just lacks something.

So, I have started mixing breast and boney pieces in chicken stews and curries. It would make no difference in a stir-fry or deep-fry, but when you simmer long enough, the bones make a difference. Try making a soup without stock, and you will know exactly what I mean. Sure, you’ll taste the vegetables and whatever else, but it will not be the same.

And so, Spicy Chinese Chicken Stew, a dish that I haven’t cooked in ages. The Chinese style sauces give it the base, the somewhat un-Chinese dried chillies give it the characteristic bite. The combination is heavenly, as the many Straits born cooks in Malaysia know very well.

The mix of sauces gives this chicken stew a sweet and salty flavour, the ginger adds a nice tang to it, whilst the dried chillies add spice. If you want more heat, by all means increase the dried chillies. Ten chillies give it a nice undertone, fifteen a more pronounced heat - by my standards at least, so please adjust to suit your palate.

The list of ingredients is short, and probably the most difficult part of cooking this dish is measuring out those ingredients. It needs so little attention when you cook it that I’d say it basically looks after itself.

The result? Everything I remembered about one of my childhood favourites.

Recipe : Spicy Chinese Chicken Stew

If you look closely at the photo, you will just see the blackening of the beef.

I took a classic French Beef stew and modified it with Cajun overtones, sort of. Firstly, instead of browning the beef, I seared it over high heat until it just started to blacken. No, it did not taste burnt, in the same way that blackened Cajun food does not taste bitter or burnt.

Then, rather than use herbs and garlic, I used chilli powder, cloves, a nice chunky cinnamon stick, and garlic for flavour.

The gravy consisted of browned onions, red wine and chicken stock, thickened with flour. Chunky carrots and button mushrooms went in for sweetness and flavour.

It went well with mashed potatoes and green salad. The only thing I would change the next time is I would cut back on the chilli powder. Whilst still well within limits, a more subtle chilli heat would have been nice. Unfortunately, each batch of chilli powder seems to have different heat, and this one is industrial strength.

And perhaps I would add paprika. More detail when I write the article and post it on my site.

I cooked this dish last night. It was an Indian curry, but unlike many that you find.

I tend to find that Indian Curry recipes sometimes go overboard on the ingredients, specifying large quantities that then overwhelm the palate. It doesn’t hurt to aim for a more subtle balance, and that was what I did.

The basic spice paste I used was dried chillies, shallots, garlic and just a couple of sticks of lemongrass. Proportions were about half the usual. Cut back drastically on the tamarind juice, as to me at least, this is one ingredient that most of the recipes positively go overboard on - you wind up with a sourish tasting curry, and wondering why on earth all the other ingredients went in!

I used a commercial curry powder and packaged coconut cream.

I tried frying the okra or ladies fingers whole first, to avoid the slimy texture it develops in curries. Well, there was no slimy texture, but they softened up anyway, so next time I will slice them and fry till crisp and add as a garnish. That should be nice, I think.

For the rest of it, it was just a matter of ensuring that I fried the spice paste until really fragrant, only then adding curry powder and mustard seeds and frying again till fragrant. In went the onion rings and curry leaves for a few minutes, then the tamarind juice, coconut cream and a dash of water to thin out the cream.

Simmered that for 10 minutes, then put in the tomatoes, ladies fingers and fish. Simmered uncovered for 10 minutes, then turned the fish, covered the pot, turned off the heat and let it stand for 20 minutes.

The result was lovely. I was using frozen fish, but with this cooking approach, the texture was nicely preserved. Flavours were well balanced, and the only regrets we had were the fish was on the small side (biggest available that day), and the okra was older than we would have liked. Okra is best when young, and the longer, older ones tend to stringiness.

But this is certainly an indication that aiming for subtlety in Indian curries pays off. More on this in future.

Update 16th May, 2008 - I have written a full article and recipe for this dish.