Friday 28 March - Pad Thai

I've not made Pad Thai for years, but found a lovely looking recipe in one of Rick Steins books, We now also have the advantage of a local Thai grocery store so all the ingredients were easy to get hold of - even the correct type of noodles. The only ingredient that took three shops to find was the bean sprouts.

Here are all the ingredients laid out before, and after preparation.

Once prepared it was simply a case of adding them to the wok in the correct order.

Starting with the garlic, chilli and raw prawns

Next the eggs

and finally all the noodles, vegetables and flavourings

Served with a squeeze of lime juice. The flavour was lovely, although we felt a bit more colour would have been nice.

For afters my new favourite thing - tapioca, but for an Eastern twist, cooked in coconut milk.

I cooked it very slowly over a heat diffuser, with a spoonful of sugar and some added whole milk.

Once cooked it was cooled and some cream was stirred in. I then layered it with another of my current favourite things - ready pureed Mango that I buy in the Indian Grocery store. This also makes brilliant sorbet with no other ingredients required!

Possibly one of the nicest things I've cooked in a long time - and plenty left over for the next couple of days too.

Saturday 8 March - Tonka Bean Icecream

Another recipe from my new egg book - I'd never heard of Tonka Beans before, and a bit of online shopping was required to get my hands on some.
They arrived this week, and despite a long day out in the garden putting up my new greenhouse, I decided to make this to use up some cream we had in the fridge.

The beans looks a bit like dried rabbit droppings, and as soon as we opened the jar we were hit by the aroma - a bit like a cross between cinnamon and vanilla.

One and a half beans were grated into a mix of milk and cream and this was heated up. The recipe said to infuse for a couple of house, but as I didn't have time to do this, I made the custard with the grated beans in the liquid and we sieved it once the custard had cooled.

 

I made the custard using whole eggs and a spoonful of cornflour as I feel it's a bit of a waste using just egg yolks - this is despite having 6 or 7 eggs a day at the moment!

Once the custard was strained we churned it in the ice cream machine.

The resulting ice cream was a huge hit with visiting teenagers - not unlike vanilla but something a bit different - definitely a flavour to try other things with.

Tuesday 4 March - Indian Pancakes For Pancake Day

Despite my promise not to buy anymore recipe books, I spotted a book about eggs in The Works this weekend - A Good Egg by Genevieve Taylor - Recipes from an Urban Hen Keeper. As we are currently getting 6-7 eggs a day from our chickens I thought this one was justified!

The first page I opened had a recipe for pancakes filled with potato curry that looked amazing - so a version of this was perfect for Pancake Day.

I did change the filling as the recipe in the book used curry paste, and I don't like the harsh flavour, so I replaced this with my favourite potato and mustard seeds from a Madhur Jaffrey Book.

The pancake batter was a basic wheatflour one, but with the addition of mustard seeds and turmeric - it came out a lovely colour!

The filling was made up - fried mustard and cumin seeds, then in with the onions when the seeds start popping.

To this spices were added - cumin, coriander, turmeric and some chilli powder, along with cooked cubed potatoes and some fresh chillies. I also added peas to this to pad it all out a bit. A splash of water and a bit more cooking and finished off with chopped fresh coriander.

 

A chutney to serve alongside was made from chopped tomatoes, chilli, coriander along with some garlic, sugar and lime juice.

The pancakes were fried, I tried to make them as thin as possible.

Then to serve, the pancakes were spread with a bit of mango chutney and the potato and pea filling, and then rolled up. Served with the coriander chutney