Stomachs on legs are proud to present

It has been two months since I landed in the frozenland.

After having lived on compromised choices of food for several days, such as:

Absolutely horrible mapo tofu at an American Chinese place, and


a tacos plate that does not taste as good as it looks...


I have started cooking in the limited kitchenette shared with several others:


No full stove.
Just two induction cooktops that use magnetic heat.
There was only one right after I arrived, and I insisted to the landlord that we need one or two more.

One of the first things I cooked was chana masala:


I get the MDH spice mix at an Indian/Latin American grocery store.

Pretty soon I started attacking the bulk section of the Whole Foods Market and a European style bakery that has French and German style bread.

Tomato-based chick pea soup with German rye bread:


Tabbouleh with green lentils:



Chana masala again, with carrots/green lentils/raisins salad:


No picture, but I have also been cooking green split pea soup, 16-bean soup, red lentil dhal, and tofu dishes.

I am having a lot of fun with beans and peas, yes.

In honour of our latest member, Nong A here is a post about a restaurant in Chanthaburi.....the province from which her family hails.


People always say that Chanthaburi is yummy.....and I believe them. Not that I have ever done a serious eating tour of the town but on our way to Trat recently we stopped for a quick lunch at Dream Thai restaurant, near the bus stop.

We had wing bean salad, fluffy fried cat fish with green mango salad. A really yummy crab, crab egg and coconut dip with crudite



And, I accidently ordered two soups, one chicken and cardamon soup and another prawn with that Thai vegetable that looks like a pumpkin flower...... I've heard it referred to as ivy gourd leaves but I don't know what the Thai name is. No matter, they were both good and got the thumbs up from all dining participants.


I told Nong A and she informs me that that restaurant is just a a basic truck stop cafe, nothing special. But it was in my book delicious.

I hope that in future I can refine my palate further in Chanthaburi with Nong A's guidance.

I used the River Cafe cook book as a basic guide for this.

Soaked white beans over night and removed their skins.

Cooked white beans in simmering water for about an hour with whole head of garlic and old herbs (thyme, marjoram)

Sauteed onion, garlic, carrot and celery, flat leaf parsley and added canned tomato and simmered. Added beans, some mushed up some whole. Added lots of salt and pepper and then torn up old bread.

Served.

When I went to eat it I realised that the soup is both delicious, with the bread adding a creamy texture, but it was also entirely vegan friendly. Definitely hearty food for tough times

sorry...I can't help it....i laughed so hard tears came out of my eyes

...translates literally to "house of crab" in Thai, and although I'd like to make some jokes here to amuse Phil about "riding the tide of shit" or pooh as it were, it wouldn't be fitting for what is an excellent eating experience.

Baan Phuu (House of Crab) is located in Trat province on that mainland eastern seaboard of Thailand on Cape Ko Phuu (cape of Crab), all along this cape is aquaculture farms and crab processing factories. It is in short a good place to go and eat crab.



I had been here around 6 years ago on a family holiday and had ever since tortured Hock with stories of giant fresh crab, the crispiest freshest soft shell crab: "think Kentucky Fried Crab but with Asian seasoning, crunchy deep fried and fresh with cripsy shells you just bite straight through" I would tell him and watch his face contort with a mixture of both excitement and resignation to the idea that it may be some while until we had the time to take a leisurely 5 hour drive from Bangkok to Trat to eat crab.



Being somewhat nostalgic and over enthusiatic I booked two nights at Baan Phu Resort, thinking that it would be the perfect quiet holiday retreat to eat crab, lounge by the pool and relax in their rustic accommodations. Unfortunately 6 years had not done this very quiet and unpopular resort much good, We checked in to a horrible old stale room, with musty bed spread, moldy bathroom and mosquito friendly floorboards set amongst a mangrove forest.



The pool didn't look very inviting, the tv channels didn't work and the hotel was very run down, slightly depressing and altogether stingy with its service and amenities. We upgraded to their brand new garden wing at an extra cost of 35 dollars a night and consoled ourselves in the restaurant...Suan Phuu



The restaurant makes up for everything that the hotel lacks, good service, friendly staff, stunning views, and reasonable prices for what it is. I think in fact that the resort and restaurant are run seperately because the hideous breakfast at the resort did not seem to emerge from the Suan Phuu kitchen. Suan Phuu is set right out over the mangrove forest and offers spectacular views of the bay, of local birds and wildlife and of course great food.






It seems to be popular more amongst the locals who converge on the restaurant in large families early in the evening to celebrate special events. Unlike many of the tourists who we sadly observed ordering one dish per person and not sharing, the tables full of large Thai families sat down to steaming soups, plates of crab and traditional curries.

The first night we sat down to

crispy soft shell crab deep fried with shallots and garlic



One of the best wing bean salads I have ever eaten


crab egg and pineapple curry


Whole fish in ginger soup with parsley leaves and Chinese plums (umeboshi). Not enough ginger too much parsley leaves but still yummy.


The next day I did a border run to Cambodia - another funny story in itself - and we drove along the Trat coast and found untold empty beaches and cute little Thai beachside huts that were largely devoid of lounging Thais which they were built to serve



In the evening we headed back to Baan Phuu to survey the sunset and sample the crab (not as meaty or as large as last remembered)



shrimp meang and more crispy soft shell crab


an unmemorable deep fried fish and a very Khmer soup of fermented fish paste and vegetables that was not at all to my liking but Hock seemed to enjoy it

The price each night came to around 700 baht for two of us
You can bring your own wine


Banpu Resort
199 Moo 1, Tumbol Nongkansong, Moung
Trat
Thailand

Generally speaking I'm not a big pot fan. I used to be. In fact I smoked so much pot as a youngster growing up in NZ that I liken myself to Obelix from the Asterix cartoons, I fell in the pot when I was young and have had enough to last me a life time....in case you're wondering many NZ kids are the same....(shock horror, no your teenagers are not still tired at 3 pm in the afternoon from playing playstation). Anyways, the first time I had pot again was years later in Cambodia. The first time was unintentional. We ordered a pizza from a place called Happy Pizza. I had no idea until 3am that morning, when I still couldn't get to sleep, let alone stop talking. I put 2 and 2 together and figured it was the strange green herb sprinkled on our "margarita"

I smoked pot a couple more times in Cambodia during my stay. Unlike pot in most other places in the world where it has been hydroponically grown and manipulated to basically knock your head off, Khmer pot is still natural, smooth and above all relaxing.....

So I was unsurprised to hear the other day when Hock told me that many women in Cambodia will traditionally make a chicken soup with gunja when it is that time of the month. Apparently, in Cambodia men drink rice wine, the women smoke pot.

Recipe for Khmer Gunja Soup

- make chicken soup
- spinkle with gunja
- have a lie down

Another good meal we had in Singapore was here. It's on Hok Lam St.



They serve an excellent bowl of Teo Chew (Chaozho in Mandarin or Chiuchow in Cantonese) beef noodles.



The noodles are somewhat similar to a bowl of pho bo but much much richer with a far more deep fragrant herbal broth, my guess is probably more cinnamon, more star anise and probably some shaoxing wine.

Teo Chew cuisine is renoun as a herbal almost medicinal version of Cantonese food. Other famous Teo Chew dishes include a herbal pork anise stew, a great steamed fish in herbal ginger broth with wolf berries and chinese prunes, and dishes such as what is known in Thailand as goong woosen, frangrant glass noodle and prawn claypot, goose feet noodles and fried oyster omelette. Teo Chew people hail from Northeast Guangdong, they are the original rice smugglers and triads (yes the original gangstas) of China and make up the majority of the Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia, thus most of Southeast Asia now has regional variations of Teo Chew dishes, I'm thinking of Thailand's Khai Paloo and Singapore's Ba Ku Teh. Thailand also has a beef noodle dish that is similar to above said noodles, but it's sweeter and they put Thai basil in it.

My Thai/ Chinese side of the family are Teo Chew, that's how come I know this shit.

Anyway, if your interested in learning more wiki has some info although I'm not sure about the fruit carving comment, this is prevalent everywhere in asia, not specific to Teo Chew people

Although not as much as these guys

But I have been cooking up a middle eastern desert storm lately

Last Friday I made this seriously labour intensive but very yummy chicken, mint, burghul and yoghurt soup with chili cumin sauce



Recipe from Gourmet Traveller but adapted by me

Chicken Stock
- a chicken carcass, a whole chicken or 2 chicken breasts or whatever
- onions say 2 chop in half skin on, it doesn't matter too much at this point
- celery stalks
- half a head of garlic
- 1 - 2 chilis halved lengthways
- 1 cinamon quill
- 1 - 2 cloves
- 1/2 a lemon
- water

Make stock or you can just get premade chicken stock and a flavour with the lemon, garlic, cinamon and cloves and chili and then poach a couple of breasts in the stock by bringing it up to boil adding the breast, put on a heavy lid, take off the heat and leave the breasts to cook for say 40 mins...
If making stock from scratch remember to start from cold water and wash chicken well to get a nice clear stock.

Once chicken is cooked shred it and put aside. Strain the stock if it is a bit scumy.

Now make the chili sauce
30 gms of dried chilis deseeded and then hydrated in water (be careful and don't touch your eyes or anything when doing this)
Pulse the hydrated chilis with 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1 tsp each of ground corriander seed and cumin and a big pinch of salt.

Assemblage of Soup
Pulse/ Blitz 2 tbspns/ big gulp of olive oil, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 tspns of dried mint (or fresh) into a paste
Soak 100 gms of burghul (cracked wheat) in water until soft
Combine 500 gms of plain yoghurt, 1 beaten egg and 1 tbspn of cornflour in a little bowl
Fry onion paste until fragrant 5 mins or so and add stock (around 4 - 5 cups of stock) bring to the boil then simmer
Once simmering add your yoghurt mixture slowly while stirring and let simmer for 10 mins (do not boil)
Add burghul, salt to taste, squeeze of lemon juice and shredded chicken
Garnish with shredded fresh mint and some thinly sliced chili (optional)


Then Abla Amad's lamb shanks with chickpeas and rice



Recipe - inspired by Abla made tastier by me

Soak 1/2 cup of chickpeas overnight
In a heavey based pot fry lamb shanks until brown on the outside
Add some onion, leek and garlic (1 onion, a leek or more and a good amount of garlic 4 cloves perhaps) and fry until soft
Cover with some chicken stock and add chickpeas, bring to the boil and then simmer on low heat for 1 - 2 hours
Add rice maybe 1 - 2 cups depending on how many people you want to feed, add salt, 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, 1/2 tspn fresh ground pepper and 1/2 tsp of allspice (plus a bit more)
With the lid on continue to simmer until rice is cooked
Stir through some butter (optional)
Serve with yoghurt and the chili sauce you made for the soup

You can add carrots at the onion stage and lentils at the rice stage also


Later on this week I made zucchini fritters from recipe in newly acquired Greg Malouf's Saha book accompanied by babaganoush, tabouleh and humus.



And then I also made some felafels to freeze as quick study dinners. I can give you the recipes if you like

My job would be easier if I could get hold of an Ol'eb Felafeler - a felafel maker in plain English.

I had a look around on the web for one and found this gold felafel maker - for the arab who has everything



If this is too flashy for your liking you can instead go to the Jerusalem Depot online and pick up a plain stainless steel one, along with a pair of "down with the people" rootsy Biblical Sandals - it all adds to the authenticity you know. Although you probably couldn't wear them when making felafels if you owned the souless monster that is the Felafel Robot, safety factor aside, mass produced felafels and biblical sandals just don't go together .

If you have the disease where you like to eat different things all the time, monthly Japanese home-maker's magazine Orange Page is a useful solution since many of the recipes are quite simple preparation-wise and have some very good inventive combos of Japanese and Western style cooking... like endless varieties of wiener-asparagus-egg dishes (at least one per issue).

Nothing funny to say about it really but here's a 'simple soup' I pulled out of last month's Orange Page, you'll love it.

Simple Soups: Broccoli Bacon Soup (serves two)

1/2 broccoli head cut into bite sized florettes
3 strips of bacon with most fat removed & cut into 3cm pieces
1/2 red onion cut into slices
2 cups of water plus a teaspoon of high-quality western style stock powder (I used half a sachet of kombu stock powder and a quarter of an organic vege stock tablet, but guess two cups of good chicken stock or whatever would be even better)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper
parmesan

Saute the onion and bacon in the olive oil, then when cooked but not too browned, add the broccoli and saute for about a minute. Add the stock & water and simmer until the broccoli is as tender as you like it. Reduce the heat and if necessary skim off any fat. Add lots of freshly ground black pepper and if necessary a little sea salt. Serve and grate a scant tablespoon of parmesan over each bowl.
Later if I can be bothered I'll scan a picture from the magazine so you will be convinced of how yum this actually is!
Erik says it's now his 'lieblings suppe'

Few foods inspire absolute devotion in me like hotpot. There's just something about it that appeals to my very core: sitting around a table with a boiling pot in the middle and leisurely dropping in soup ingredients is one of my life's true pleasures. It is interactive, leisurely and social. It doesn't take much to prepare (mainly chopping). It is generally healthy, yet full of flavour. Oh the virtues of hotpot. Below is a review of some of my all time favourite hotpots. All recipes require a hotpot - gas or electric, chopsticks, soup spoons and little bowls at a minimum. Most should be served with rice.

Sukiyaki/ Shabu Shabu
When I was little my Dad occasionally travelled to Japan and when he did he would bring home new and exciting culinary treasures like sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a strictly beef affair

Recipe
Sliced beef enough for all diners ( approx 100 gms each. Get your butcher to partially freeze and then slice on a slicing machine, must be paper thin. Alternatively you can buy in the frozen section of most Asian supermarkets have presliced beef) thaw and arrange attactively on a plate (I used to make beef roses until one of my guests pointed out that it looked disturbingly similar to a chacha, so maybe not that attractively)
Vegetables and other accompaniments sliced into bite sized pieces
- leek
- spring onion
- onion
- mushrooms (fresh and dried shitake)
- chinese cabbage
- other green pot herb like spinach or whatever
- tofu pieces (fried and soft if you like)
- carrots (optional)
- shirataki noodles or vermicelli noodles or even udon (don't put in until the end because otherwise they suck up all the broth

Soy Broth
- 1/3 shoyu kikoman or other japanese variety
- 2/3 water
- big gulp mirin or sake
- heap of sugar
(add more water as the broth evaporates and becomes salty)

Put broth in hot pot, serve raw ingredients at table and dip......don't burn your mouth.

The "authentic" way of eating it, which I do cause I'm so down wid it, is to serve with a raw egg. Diners stir the raw egg with their chop sticks in little bowls and then dip pieces of cooked meat into the raw egg and eat. It's yummy trust me, I don't ever eat runny eggs but I eat them like this. The piping hot beef kinda cooks the egg and cools it down. Its all gooood

Shabu Shabu

- the same but use a konbu dashi stock instead of soy broth
- add sesame dipping sauce and ponzu dipping sauce (you can buy at the supermarkt pre-made or you can make yourself)

Ponzu Sauce
- generally speaking is japanese soy sauce and ponzu juice (aka citrus)

Sesame Sauce
- tahini or sesame paste 1/2 cup
- rice vinegar (japanese) 2 tablespoons
- soy sauce (japanese) 2 tblsp
- miso paste 1/2 cup
- sugar 1/2 cup dissolved
- garlic powder 1/2 tsp
- sesame oil 1/2 tsp

Mongolian Hot Pot

One of my most memorable meals is of having Mongolian hotpot in Beijing on my honeymoon. I've never made it before but it is like Shabu Shabu, in fact I suspect that Shabu Shabu is the Japanese version of Mongolian hotpot, except monglian hotpot traditionally uses thinly sliced sheep and the broth is simply water, but similar sesame dressing. The highlight of Mongolian hotpot is the little wheat buns they serve with it. If you go to Beijing you must hunt some down. I can't tell you where we found ours because it was the result of random wandering and a chance encounter with a friendly chinese microsoft worker who directed us to the restaurant.





Korean Seafood Hotpot
I've never had this in a restaurant, I've only made it myself from the recipe in Shunju. It's good, it's spicy and seafoody. Think spicy korean boulliabase (I know a french chef who would balk at this suggestion, but that's the french for you)
Use seafood (crabs, prawns, oysters, pipis and cockles, clams, scallops, crayfish if you're feeling extravagant, firm white fish fillets) and the same veges as for sukiyaki, but make this broth:

Broth
- Litre water
- Korean chili bean paste (Kochu Chang) - 2 tablespoons or more to taste
- sesame oil 2 tblspns (virgin if you can get, meaning not roasted first, usually lighter in colour)
- garlic - 1/4 bulb bruised skin on
- dried chili powder preferably korean 1 tsp or so
- shoyu show me soy sauce 1/3 cup

again arrange all raw and cook at the table



Chongqing Spicy Hotpot
A boiling cauldron of evil pain. Anthony Bourdain compares it to a bad girlfriend which you know isn't good for you but you can't help but coming back for more. I had my first in a strange mainland chinese restaurant in melbourne that was wedged between two car yards in north melbourne. From the murky depths of the chili broth strange ingredients would occasionally emerge, pig's blood tofu, was that an ear???? tripe etc...It is hot, evil and good and I have no idea how to make it.

Thai Suki
If we are to keep with girlfirend (or boyfriend) anaolgies then Thai suki -MK
and Coca are to Chongqing spicy hotpot what your first going steady "relationship" is to a street walker of the night. MK and Coco are both hotpot chain stores in Thailand and sell a kind of safe, processed, family oriented hot pot that Thai's go crazy for. It's not that expensive, it's clean, and you can avoid the hot sauce. The former you would possibly take your mother to the later certainly not unless your mother happens to be Sichuan. I can see this analogy isn't getting me far. Anyway the point it that Thai suki is a basic version of the fairly tasteless japanese nabe with the exception of a few funky thai ingredients and a spicy Thai dipping sauce. It's safe and reliable but ultimately unexciting after the first few times. Here is a recipe, you can make most of the ingredients yourself or you can buy most of them including the the suki sauce premade at most asian stores.

Soup Chnnang Dtay
Is an oddity that I discovered at Soup Dragon in Siem Reap, Cambodia and became a regular haunt during my residence there. Only Hock and I were devotees however, none of our friends would take us up on the invites especially our friend Reneau of Abacus who would always screw up his nose in that unique way that only the french can do and pronounce "Ferk, nooo waayyy". He claimed they collected their cooking water off the roof. Cooking at the table was always a hazardous affair, little gas table top burners were used which contained old and rusting gas cans, which they would refill instead of buying new ones. The fact that our hotpot once caught fire at our table never put us off. I didn't care cause it was yummy.

It wasn't however very Khmer. Soup Dragon is Vietnamese owned.

Recipe - details are sketchy

Broth
- similar to Vietnamese beef pho stock (look it up yourself)

Bits and Pieces
- thinly sliced beef and beef balls
- veges entailed basically anything that was regularly available in Cambodia, which during the rainy season isn't very much, namely the ubiqitous oyster mushroom that agrisud taught a whole bunch of farmers in Banteay Meanchey how to grow and is the only locally available mushroom in Siem Reap
- mustard greens
- holy basil and saw tooth corriander
- tofu skin
- fat yellow egg noodles that Hock hates and complained continually that it was like eating fettucini
- egg

Dipping Sauce
was a make at your table with the condiments provided type of affair
- included locally made chili sauce (like siracha )
- tamarind sauce
- pickled bullet chilis
- shredded and dried lemongrass
- pickled garlic