Cooking The Books

Nua Pad Prik (Thai Beef with Chili)

Stir fried beef wouldn't be my first choice, my mum had a tendency to overcook beef when stir frying it and the chewy strips (sorry mum, you make some lovely food too) have haunted me since.  Watching Jamie Oliver's show last week though the beef stir fry they were teaching each other caught the girlfriend's eye and a request was put in.  Over the couple of days between the show and the weekend the request metamorphosed into a Thai beef dish and here's where we ended up. 

This is a really simple dish and as much as it looked tasty I was slightly dubious before it went in the pan.  The sauce contained a lot of palm sugar and I worried that without some lime to make this sweet-sour it would be a bit too much.  I resisted the urge to alter the recipe though and was rewarded with a fantastic dish that wasn't at all overly sweet - hot and fragrant with Thai basil and garlic and the deep savoury Thai flavour only fish sauce impart.  We destroyed the 450gr of beef (supposedly for 3-4 people) with no trouble.

Macaroni Soup with Spam and Fried Egg

This is probably one for the open minded or those that grew up in Hong Kong.  I fail on the latter but I'm definitely in the former camp so as soon as I heard of this seemingly strange combination (from Hollow Legs Lizzie) I was intrigued.  There's something about pasta in broth, whether it's noodle soup or tortellini en brodo it really lets the flavour of the pasta shine through whilst providing a soothing savouriness.  I can't say I eat a lot of Spam but cured pork is very rarely not tasty.

The dish was good.  The macaroni and broth are as expected and the Spam really, really tasty - it's not the most appealing thing straight from the tin but fry it up and there's a good strong bacon flavour.

The Mixed Grill

I get a lot of my dinner inspiration from food forums.  There''s nothing like chatting about food to make you hungry and once some dishes are in your head you just can't get the out.  One such dish (well meal really) was the mixed grill, discussed earlier today and making it to the top spot in the race to be eaten by me.  I didn't really have an idea as to what my perfect mixed grill was but after reading everyone else's thoughts I settled on this.  Chips came up on most too but the sheer volume of meat seemed enough to me so I made like I was on the Atkins diet and headed to the supermarket.

It's one of those dishes that's a free for all, whatever takes your fancy or fits the theme (a lamb mix maybe?), but here's a recipe nonetheless.  It was a gorgeous meal but with 480gr/1lb 1oz of red meat per person it probably shouldn't be eaten too frequently.

Macarons

One of the nicest things about Paris for me is the cafe culture.  People sitting around drinking coffee and chatting and, even though I don't do it myself any more, having a cigarette.  The cafe is even better when it has a pâtisserie attached.  It was in one such establishment, just at the bottom of the funicular down from Sacré Couer, where I had these macarons.  They weren't even the nicest macarons, being a little overcooked, but it made for a nice rest and snack - plus I think they're really photogenic.

I've been meaning to try my hand at these for a while.  When I do I'll now have something to compare them to.

A Paris Market

I don't know what to think of Paris food.  This is a nation that many, themselves included I imagine, would consider has the finest food in the world but whilst tasty and generally well executed I was far from blown away.  Maybe it was my choice of three brasseries - rather than bistros - but the food was very plain, lumps of meat with chips, simple salads or cold shellfish.  They proved they know how to hang a piece of meat, how to season it well and that minimum cooking can go a long way but give me Kuala Lumpur's food scene over Paris's any day.

I was still very keen to see more of it though so Sunday morning headed off to find one of Paris's many food markets.  Originally we were heading over to the market at Bastille Square but on the way to the Metro station (Place D'Italia) we found one a mere few hundred metres from the hotel.  A quick walk through here showed me what a nation of food lovers the French are and has made me want to explore what their country has to offer further.

With markets it's all about the photos, I don't think they're as interesting as those from Phnom Penh but they're interesting nonetheless.