Soup to cheer up an Invalid

I have an ill husband - and despite my teasing, it's definitely not man-flu!  He has a 48-hour feverish thing going on; he had it once before, and it will most likely be gone by tomorrow, but I suspect he's in for an uncomfortable night (I am debating whether the ill or the well partner should move to the spare room in situations such as these...).  Anyway, he says he's not hungry and is feeling a bit queasy, but I couldn't very well not feed him at all, so I've just made what I hope is a cheerful soup.

It's cheered me up anyway as I have saved myself from feeling too daft for having accidentally bought another bag of carrots this afternoon, completely forgetting that I already had a bag in the fridge (a hazard, I have discovered, of having a gigantic fridge!). And I've also used up 2 half-empty things that were lurking in the back of the aforementioned gigantic fridge.

The colour's pretty darn cheery too!

Full of vitamins, soothingly smooth and rich, with a slight kick of chilli heat.  Perfect (I hope) for anyone in need of a little restorative sustenance.  I'll be enjoying it too.

'Thai' Carrot Soup

Chop 3 large carrots into rough chunks and simmer until tender in a pan of chicken stock (about 500ml I guess).  Stir in a heaped tablespoon of Tom Yum Paste (or however much you can scrape out of the jar), and about 100ml of coconut cream (made up with half a packet of coconut cream powder).

Blend until smooth, taste and season as desired.  Mine was extra thick (it also had several chunks of chicken meat in it from the homemade stock), so I thinned it with a little extra water.  I'm sure some chopped coriander on top wouldn't go amiss, as well as complementing the vibrant orange colour.

Basil Cookery School, Chiang Mai

Nowhere is 'cookery tourism' more popular than in Thailand.  I was quite simply astonished by the number of cookery schools just in Chiang Mai offering courses varying from a half-day to a full week.  Thai food is generally pretty simple to make if you have the right ingredients, and it's become very popular around the world.  The sheer variety of schools made making a choice quite tricky...  but I think I chose well!

Quite simply I picked the one with the nicest leaflet.  It was also written in good English, and gave clear menu choices with great photos.  I've since found out that it has a great website, and lots of 'likes' on its Facebook page, so it appears I'm not alone in being a fan. 

I struck lucky in that it was quiet season, so I was the only student for the morning.  1-to-1 tuition!  Boom, the ever-smiling teacher, picked me up from my guesthouse in the cookery-school van and we went straight to a local fresh market to pick up some ingredients for the morning.

I took the opportunity to quiz Boom over what the many and varied vegetables are.  I often find myself standing gormlessly in front of the fresh produce in Bruneian supermarkets, wondering what on earth the various greenery.  It's hard to tell when it's only labelled in Malay.  I think there are a few new vegetables that I can try now.

I also saw some things that I had never seen fresh before.  These are bamboo shoots.  I buy mine in tins!

After our shopping trip it was back to Basil to start cooking.  The school has been open since 2009, and Boom has clearly learnt well from her years teaching at the famous Baan Thai cookery school.  Basil is well laid-out and seems to run incredibly smoothly.

Inside was a kitchen with a large central 'island' for food preparation, plus a row of 6 gas-rings for cooking.  Class-sizes are set to a maximum of 6 so that even when full, everyone can have attention from the teacher.  There is also an adjoining dining room where you can take your dishes to eat fresh as soon as you have cooked them.

Straight onto the cooking for us:  Dish 1 - Drunken Noodles.

I felt that Rob and I were a little short on nice noodle dishes in our cooking repertoire, so it was great to learn this easy dish.  No alcohol involved though!

Dish 2 -Tom Yum hot and sour soup.  This was made with prawns and oyster mushrooms.

When we've made this at home we sometimes add a splash of coconut milk too, to make it slightly less astringent, but this was great as it was.  You end up with a lot of detritus in the bowl at the end though - kaffir lime leaves, chillis, lemongrass and galangal.

Dish 3 - Laab.  An old favourite.  I guess I shouldn't really have chosen it as I make it pretty well at home, I just didn't think.  Never mind, it was still delicious, and good to see that I've been doing it 'right'!

Before we started on dish 4, Boom showed me how to make fresh coconut milk.  At the market she had bought a bag full of fresh grated coconut.  She put 100g into a muslim bag, then we poured on a cup of boiling water, let it cool and then kneaded the bag in the water.

A few minutes later the bowl was filled with coconut milk, and my hands were beautifully soft thanks to the coconut oil!  This coconut milk was used in the curry I was about to make, and the dessert.

Dish 4 - Red Curry with Bamboo Shoots.

This began with making the red curry paste from scratch.  Red and green curry pastes are made in exactly the same way, the only difference being the colour of the chillies used.  There was a lot of chopping before we got onto the grinding...

And then an awful lot of grinding!  "Just another 5 minutes" said Boom chirpily as I showed her what I thought looked like a very respectable mortar-full of curry paste...

Still, the aching biceps were worth it when I tasted the finished curry.  Excellent, though I say it myself!

Dish 5 - Chicken with Cashew Nuts.

This is a favourite of mine at our local Thai restaurant, but we've never quite managed to recreate it perfectly at home.  I realised that one of the main things we were neglecting to do was fry the dried chillies in order to get that lovely 'toasted' flavour.

This is definitely one I'll be trying again at home.

Dish 6 - Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk.

I'm a big rice pudding fan, but this was probably my least favourite dish of the day.  However, this may have been because it was the 6th and last dish I had cooked and eaten during the morning; I'm not sure I could even have squeezed in a wafer-thin-mint at this point!

At the end of the course I received a certificate and - most usefully - a recipe book containing all of the recipes I had cooked, plus many more. 

I'll type up some of the recipes at some point, perhaps as I try recreating them here in Brunei.  I'm looking forward to trying!

Thai Food - Chicken with Basil

On our very first trip to Hua Ho supermarket in Brunei we found, in the vegetable and herbs section, a huge bunch of Thai Basil.  We were SO excited - it's difficult to find in the UK, but it's quite an important flavour in Thai cuisine.   It doesn't taste much like its near-namesake - it has a very distinctive aniseed-like flavour, and I wouldn't use Basil and Thai Basil interchangeably, they're just too different.

Anyway, we bought the Thai Basil and went away merrily convinced that we would have a ready supply of it whenever we fancied... But of course we hadn't seen it since!  We've now realised that this is often the case when shopping here in Brunei.  The supply-lines from various other countries seem a little erratic and often you can go looking for a particular ingredient which you know is always in stock... and it's nowhere to be found.  Ah well, it's all part of the excitement!

This was a preamble to the huge excitement of finding Thai Basil for the second time in our 6 months here!  Yes, it was back in Hua Ho last Saturday so we bought a large bunch and then set about creating a week's worth of meals around it.

We have recently discovered a great Thai restaurant in Delima, thanks to our friends Chris and Yvonne.  It doesn't have a vast menu, but is seriously cheap and cheerful.  One of the dishes that either Rob or I often order there is Chicken and Basil with rice, which costs all of $3 - a perfect lunch!

We ate this dish often whilst in Thailand in December and have been keen to recreate it ever since.  However, the lack of Thai Basil was obviously an issue, but also the lack of a suitable recipe.  Our Thai recipe book gives fish sauce as the main ingredient in the sauce, but we felt that that wasn't right - the dishes we'd had in Thailand, and in our local Thai restaurant, definitely didn't include the distinctive taste of fish sauce... so I set about creating my own version.

We decided that Oyster Sauce and Soy Sauce should be the basis, plus a generous spoonful of grated Palm Sugar.

I fried 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, along with a small  onion, sliced into half-moons.  Then I added a finely chopped chicken breast (not quite minced, but chopped into little pieces).  The green beans and mild chillies followed once the chicken was almost cooked through.

Then the sauce - Oyster Sauce, a little chicken stock (from concentrate), then a slosh of Soy.  The sugar was stirred in now too.  I tasted it and remarkably it was perfect!  Exactly as we have eaten it so many times in restaurants!

I stirred a handful of Thai Basil leaves through at the last minute, just giving them time to wilt, and served with a mound of rice.

We also made a huge batch of Green Curry as Thai Basil is a great addition to this, and we have frozen any leftover Thai Basil leaves...  just in case it's another 6 months until we find it again!

Thai Food - Pad Thai

The archetypal Thai street-food, we ate plenty of this on our last trip to Thailand, particularly in Bangkok.

Cheap and cheerful and always freshly cooked in front of you, it's a guaranteed tasty supper.

Back at home in Brunei we decided to try it ourselves...  and let me tell you, it's not quite as effortless as the ladies on the stalls make it look, even when you lazily use a sachet of paste!  However, it's not difficult and we'll certainly make it again.

We wanted a vegetarian meal, so used firm tofu instead of meat.  This was delicious, and something I'll definitely use next time I make this dish.

Thick rice noodles soaking in cold water before boiling:

Lots of vegetables; this is a healthy dish!  Several chillies went in too, plus a beaten egg.

The finished Pad Thai - made entirely according to the instructions on the back of the packet!

We seasoned it at the table with a splash of fish sauce and a squeeze of fresh lime. 

Laab Burgers

Do you ever get a culinary idea in your head which you can't seem to let go of?  This happened to me recently after a barbecue we went to on New Year's Day.  We took along some home-made beef burgers which we really enjoyed, but it got me thinking about doing something a bit more unusual.  As we're still fairly preoccupied with cooking Thai food, I decided to use some of these flavours to make a burger loosely based on one of our favourite dishes, Laab. 

Pork mince, toasted ground rice, chopped mint leaves, spring onions, lime juice, chili and a splash of fish sauce, all squelched together in a bowl.  I also added some finely chopped lemongrass and some shredded lime leaves, because I had some in the fridge, and they seemed to be a positive addition.  We have a burger-press which makes short work of the job, and neat round burgers to boot.

Because I had toasted and ground rather too much rice, I ended up using some of it to make a kind of crispy coating for the burgers, pressing it into the surface of the meat just before they hit the hot pan.

I fried them until they had a golden crunchy crust, but kept checking to see that they were still juicy - but not pink - inside.

A soft white bread roll, some Chinese leaf and a generous dollop of sweet chili sauce.  Delicious.

Thai Food - Som Tam

Many people associate Thai food with curries - Green, Red, Yellow, they're all delicious and increasingly popular in the UK.  But I think my favourite style of Thai meal is the salad.  Don't go shaking your head, thinking I'm talking about some limp lettuce leaves here, Thai salads are strong-flavoured, filling and satisfyingly savoury, despite being made with fruit.

One of the 'star' meals of the trip was this incredible Pomelo salad that I had one evening.  Already I am struggling to remember what was in it (I really should have written it down straight away, as I did ask the waiter about it), but it included Pomelo of course (the huge citrus fruit, tastes a little like grapefruit but is less juicy), toasted coconut and fried onions.  It was topped with some shrimp which were lovely, but the dish wouldn't have suffered without them.

Another exciting salad we ate was this one - Banana Blossom salad!

I've seen banana flowers for sale in supermarkets here in Brunei, but wouldn't have had a clue what to do with one, so I was keen to try this salad.  OK, I still don't know what I'd do with a banana flower, but this was really tasty - crispy, sweet, savoury, spicy, topped with fried dried chillies...  fantastic.  A project for another time.  I'll do some research.

Perhaps the most well-known of the little-known Thai Salads is Som Tam - Green Papaya Salad.  This is made with unripe, or green, papaya along with pieces of raw green bean and cherry tomatoes.  I had this dish 3 times during our holiday...  yes, it's delicious but it also had the benefit of making me feel like I was eating healthily to counteract the unhealthy amount of Beer Chang that we were drinking!

The dressing is a powerful mix of raw garlic, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar, and chopped fresh chillies are also added.  The dish is topped with a handful of toasted peanuts (or these can be stirred through).

Som Tam - Thai Papaya Salad

Make the dressing first - in a bowl mix together 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp lime juice, 1 tbsp palm sugar, 4 cloves of garlic (crushed) and 1 red birdseye chili (finely chopped, but not deseeded).

Peel and shred one medium green papaya (although I have used a much riper, but still firm one before now to no ill effect).

Chop a handful of green beans (we use long beans here, but French beans will be fine) and about 8 cherry tomatoes (or 2 medium tomatoes).  Add the beans and tomatoes to the papaya.

Pour the dressing over and stir to coat all the fruit and veg.  Sprinkle over a handful of toasted, roughly chopped peanuts.  Or even easier, just use some salted peanuts.

This can be served with rice, but I like it on its own as I don't feel that it needs anything alongside (other than one of those beers...!)

I see from this picture that I also added slivered onion and Thai Basil leaves when I made this in November.  Both were a positive addition.  As you can see, the papaya I used was already orange,  but it was firm enough not to be too sweet and held it's shape when shredded.

Thai Food - Tom Yum Goong

So much for promising to post again soon about Thai food.  It's been the usual start-of-term hecticness (which is not a word, but should be) and somehow I find myself in the middle of the second week back at school.  Despite my lack of blogging there has been plenty of Thai cooking going on.

Our first Thai meal when we arrived back in Brunei was Tom Yum Goong.  This hot and sour soup was never a favourite of mine...  until I had it in Thailand.  Now I'm a convert.

When I first met Rob he had an ancient jar of Tom Yum paste in his fridge (he had a lot of ancient foodstuffs in his fridge and cupboards actually...) and I recall him making us Tom Yum soup for lunch one day.  It was vile!  It was so hot (temperature-wise) that you had to slurp it off the spoon (which incidentally had to be stainless steel as the soup would tarnish silver cutlery) and as you slurped it it hit the back of your throat, and the heat (of the chillies) induced a violent coughing fit!  Even when it cooled down it wasn't pleasant; too 'abrasive' in its flavours.  Not our most successful meal.

Perhaps it's one of those dishes that can be adapted to personal taste, but I've found a way that it works for me.  Maybe it's not traditional, I don't know, but it needs coconut milk.  Not too much - I find the richness of coconut milk can be too heavy - but just a little to take the edge off the strong flavours. 

The first time we had it was actually on Christmas Day, in the evening.  We sat at a waterfront restaurant and enjoyed a fantastic meal.  Rob had the Tom Yum, and I had a Green Curry.  My curry was delicious, but I have to admit that my meal was slightly spoiled by the fact that I thought Rob's was better!  I hate it when that happens.  I ate as much of his as I dared, but demanded that we return to the same restaurant later in the week so that I could have a whole portion to myself.

On our return visit we both ordered it, and it came in this great steamboat with a burner underneath to keep it warm.  Again it was delicious so we determined that we would recreate it at home.

While other people may go to Bangkok to hit the bars, we went to hit the supermarkets!  We bought several sachets of various Thai pastes with which to cook at home.  These pastes are very good - all the ingredients are natural, they just save a lot of work with a pestle and mortar!  When we arrived home we found that we already had a sachet of Tom Yum paste...  Remember those 'ancient foodstuffs' I mentioned earlier?  Well, this sachet had a 'use by' date of 1997.  That's got to be a record, surely?!

The antique one is on the left.  Believe it or not I actually tried the old one - just mixed it into boiling water and had a taste - but the overriding flavour was of stale oil, so I tipped it down the sink and started again with the new sachet.

It could hardly be simpler - just follow the packet instructions.  The packet said to use 2 cups (500ml) of boiling water, but I used about 150ml of chicken stock and about 50ml of coconut milk (made from powder - perfect for small amounts).  The recipe on the sachet said to simply add prawns and mushroom, but I went a little further and threw in large (and very mild) chillies (sliced), chopped spring onions, chopped coriander leaves, thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves (what an amazing flavour they provide), and oyster mushrooms (cheap and plentiful here), as well as some raw shrimp.

We served it with wedges of lime to squeeze over, and fish sauce to taste, as well as the obligatory mound of jasmine rice.

The paste ingredients include lemongrass which is an important flavour for this soup.  I pondered adding some more fresh lemongrass but in fact it didn't need it as the flavour came through strongly enough.  It was hot but didn't blow your head off - just right (bearing in mind that our tolerance for chilli has increased dramatically since moving to the Far East!).  We'll definitely be repeating this meal.

Back from Thailand

We got back to Brunei last Friday - but as it was back to work on Monday, of course our holiday is fast becoming a distant memory!  Isn't that always the way.

However, we did have an amazing time.  Spending time in 2 very different places was perfect - we enjoyed a few days of the busyness and bustle of Bangkok (oh so different to sleepy Brunei!) but then had the contrast of total relaxation on a beach on Koh Samet. 

We spent Christmas itself on the beach - a lovely idea... although we were a little surprised that we both felt rather odd about it.  My Australian and New Zealander colleagues disagree of course, but Christmas in the heat just feels wrong!  It's clearly just how we're conditioned - 33 Christmases spent in England plus 1 in Canada means that in my mind the festive season should be about getting cosy inside when it's chilly outside. 

This didn't mean that we didn't enjoy it - it was an incredibly beautiful place - but we did both visibly relax once we got to Boxing Day and the mental pressure to feel 'Christmassy' was over!

After 5 nights on Koh Samet we headed back to Bangkok for a further 3 nights.  Our hotel for this final part of the trip was great,  right on the back of the river so we could escape the nightmarish city traffic and hop on the water taxis to get around.  We did the tourist sights - the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, etc - as well as a bit more shopping (mainly Birkenstocks and fairy-lights!).

And of course - and there will be a LOT more to come on this topic - we ate lots of lovely Thai food!  We've always eaten quite a lot of Thai dishes, but are now inspired to cook them much more.  We live in Asia so sourcing the ingredients isn't too much of a problem, and we're determined to make the most of it.

Happy New Year to you all!

The Empire Hotel

It might seem strange to go 'on holiday' a mere 20 minutes' drive from home... but that's exactly what we did last weekend! 

Just take a short drive west along the highway from where we live, and you reach the Empire Hotel.  Built 10 years ago as a pet project of the Sultan's brother Prince Jefri (now discredited and ostracised after some financial scandals in the 1990s), this hotel is marketed as having 7 stars - 5 stars is so 'last year'.  Look in the dictionary under opulence, and this should be what you see...

The Atrium by night - 25 metre high marble columns...

decorated with gold leaf.

Beautiful orchids in the Lobby.

Everywhere you look there is marble, gold, semi-precious stones, inlaid mother-of-pearl...  no wonder it took US$1.1 billion dollars to build!

Astonishing.

And yet the place is nearly empty.  I suppose this shouldn't be too much of a surprise - Brunei has never really made it onto the world-stage as far as tourism goes, and - sad, but true - I don't think that it ever will while it maintains its status as a dry country.  Many people just wouldn't consider a holiday where they couldn't relax by the pool with a cocktail, or have a glass of wine with supper.

However, the fact that there seems to be more staff than guests only adds to the extravagant feel of the place!

It is possible to become a member of the Empire Country Club and therefore use all their facilities.  The most appealing thing about it (for me anyway) is the swimming pool and lagoon where you can sunbathe and swim to your heart's content, whilst looking out over the South China Sea.

But we're not members.  It's astonishingly expensive, and as we both work full time there is no way we'd make enough use of the place for it to be worthwhile.  I can see why people join - if you're used to paying a monthly gym membership in the UK this probably doesn't work out as that much more money, and likewise if you are a member of a golf club in Britain then again the price is probably comparable (the golf membership package is a lot more than the basic membership), plus you get great facilities here, including the use of the pool which is members and hotel guests only.  But it's not right for us. 

Another reason we've found for not joining is that, on the occasions that we do visit it seems really special - I don't think I'd like to get too used to this kind of luxury; I mean, nothing else is ever going to measure up is it?! 

Many of our friends are members and as part of the membership deal you get vouchers for a couple of free nights stay in the hotel.  We were offered one of these vouchers at a very reasonable price so snapped it up, which is how we ended up staying there last weekend.

Our room was lovely - well, this was the second room we were offered after we complained about the lack of view from the first one!  I think it's worth being fussy in a place as posh as this.  The bed was HUGE with beautiful Egyptian cotton linens; so comfortable.  It's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but the bathroom was wall-to-wall marble.  It was fabulous to relax in the bath looking out of the window at the sea view too.

We ate out at a local Thai restaurant on Jalan Jerudong on Saturday night - I fear that the hotel's restaurants are a little over-priced, and we were keen to try some of the Thai places nearby.  We had an excellent meal, but then came back to the hotel and enjoyed a walk around the grounds by night.

The next day we did eat in the hotel, starting with a superb buffet breakfast.  We were glad we had gone out to Bukit Shahbandar for a pre-breakfast walk in order to work up a good appetite!

I think we managed about 4 buffet-visits each!  The hot selection was particularly good - here's my plate of fried rice topped with a fried egg, corned beef hash (bizarre) and 'crumbed cauliflower'! Plus some other things I can't remember - I tried a sample of most dishes.

 The sweet selection contained a few comedy items... the ubiquitous brightly-coloured cubes of desserts (the green and white one was like cold rice-pudding topped with a coconut milk-jelly), and the round bun was bread topped with grated cheese and sugar!

The coffee was excellent and importantly (and unusually for Brunei) served without sugar.  We ate plenty so didn't feel the need to have lunch.

Feeling very full we headed down to the pool to relax and read.  I really like the little 'pods' they have by the pool - and the covers are very useful when it rains, which it did briefly on both the Saturday and Sunday.

We sat there sheltering in the pod laughing about how it was just like being in England... except even when it's windy and raining it's still hot enough to be sitting around in a swimming costume!

After getting through an entire novel and swimming several laps of the pool (an exhausting day!) we decided to head back to the hotel for Afternoon Tea.  This is about the best way for non-members to experience the Empire, particularly when they have the buffet tea at the weekends and when it's 2 for the price of 1!  It's still $30 for two people which is a lot more than you'd pay for your average meal here in Brunei, but you do get to eat in enviable surroundings.  And eat until you feel sick!  (Must learn when to stop...)

Visit 1 to the buffet...

Having filled up on sandwiches and wontons, it's on to dessert...

By Sunday evening it really felt as though we had been away for much longer than the 36 hours that we had spent at the Empire.  As we come to the end of a very long term, it was a much-needed break!