Jesse’s Som Tam! Spicy Thai Papaya Salad.

"This spicy green papaya salad comes together quickly once you've prepped all the ingredients.  It really should be seasoned to taste, so please feel free to adjust the amount of chili, garlic, fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice as you go."

Ingredients
2 small or 1 large very firm green papaya
2-5 cloves of garlic
fresh hot chilis, green or red
half a bunch of long beans, cut into 1 1/2-2 inch lengths
10-15 cherry tomatoes, halved, or 3-4 small tomatoes, cut into small wedges
limes
fish sauce
sugar
roasted, roughly chopped peanuts

To prepare ingredients:
Peel papaya.  Then, you want to cut the pale green flesh into long strands.  You could use a mandoline to do this, or even just grate it, though that wouldn't give quite the texture you want.  Without an special tool, cut off thin sheets of it and then slice into matchsticks.  Set aside.

To build the salad:

Stem and deseed chilis, if you want to moderate the heat. Put garlic and chilis into a mortar (or large bowl) and pound with a pestle or wooden spoon.  You don't quite want a paste, but you want to do more than bruise them.  You can add sugar at this point to help with the process.


Add long beans, and pound with the pestle to bruise and lightly split them open.  Add tomatoes and do the same; they should hold together but be softened up.  Then add shredded papaya, 2 Tbsps fish sauce, juice of two or three limes, and sugar (if you didn't add sugar with the chilis and garlic).  Pound papaya with the pestle to bruise and allow it to start to absorb some the seasoning.  In terms of consistency, you don't want mush but a tender, well-mixed and highly seasoned salad.  Add additional fish sauce and lime juice to taste.

Serve chilled or at room temperature, with sticky rice if you have it.

Delicious Thai Fish Cakes

“I love Thai fish cakes but never thought I would be able to make them so easily.  This recipe is really easy and through Jesse’s idea to try the local lime leaves, we have discovered another local ingredient that is free and tastes amazing!  The recipe calls for fresh Kaffir lime leaves which are not locally available so we grabbed a few leaves from the tree in Alice’s garden and shredded them with a knife.  The effect was simple quite amazing!”

Ingredients 
500 grams white fish meat, minced or chopped (we used the milk fish that you can get in any of the stores such as Aveina or Flymart) but Phil had to fillet them first which was a bit of a hassle.  We used the meat from 2 fish (plus one mahi mahi steak that I had in the freezer), the end result was 10 delicious fish cakes.

1 egg

1/2 cup local string beans, chopped finely
3 tbsp. fresh lime leaves, minced or chopped (find someone who has a lime tree)










1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. of red curry paste (Sometimes they have this in Laufou but not at the moment so this is a good thing to bring from off island.  I used green curry paste and it worked fine).  You can also make Thai curry paste from scratch.
3 cups cooking oil for frying

Preparation:
Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well knead by hand until it sticks.  Don’t worry if it seems sloppy.  I thought mine was too sloppy but if you form the cakes in your hand and drop them straight into the hot oil, they cook fine.
Form patties (about 3" in diameter) and deep fry in vegetable oil until golden brown.  This takes 3 – 5 mins for each fish cake.  I drained them into kitchen paper to get rid of the excess oil.

Serve with sweet chilli sauce or cucumber relish.

Ingredients for Cucumber Relish:
1 cup diced cucumber
1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar or rice wine vinegar

Preparation:
Mix sugar and vinegar in the pot and heat.
When the mixture comes to the boil, remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Spoon into a cup, add diced cucumber, tomato and top with ground peanuts.

Jesse, Phil and Lucy do Thai!

Thai food

Thai is my favourite food and I don’t eat enough of it!  Last week, Jesse came around and we decided to make a few recipes that we have been talking about for a while.  In particular, I have been thinking of Som Tam since I arrived here 3 years ago but never had the courage to make it!  Jesse is a great cook so he prepared a delicious Som Tam.  His recipe is below and I recommend that everyone should try it.  I made Thai fish cakes with some help from Phil which turned out surprisingly well.  We had a few extras too but you will have to ask us in person about those!  I am going to put the recipes separately in the next two posts! I hope you will also try them.  I am planning to try Leslie’s Pad Thai this week.  Mmmmm.

Stuffed Bitter Melon Soup

Having never cooked bitter melon but long being curious, I was excited to see it at Fly Mart (as well as TSM and Family Mart). People tend to love it or hate it, but I found it pleasantly bitter. It's also purported to have medicinal properties, and is especially suited for hot, humid weather...read more here.

Ingredients

2 bitter melons (look for larger ones)

1/2 lb ground pork

3-4 dried wood ear mushrooms, soaked and cut into strips

small handful of bean thread noodles (optional)

3 cloves garlic, minced

a shallot or 1/2 onion or 2-3 scallions, minced

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

6 cups of a combination of broth and water, seasoned with fish sauce

lime, cilantro, and scallions for garnish

Soak bean thread noodles in hot water until soft but not cooked through, and chop into 1/2-1 inch pieces. Combine with ground pork, mushroom, garlic, onion, fish sauce, sugar, salt, and pepper. Mix well and set aside.

Bring broth and water to a boil. Feel free to use all broth--I use about 3 cups broth and 3 cups water with about 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. You can use just water, but be sure to season liberally with fish sauce.

Trim ends off bitter melon, and slice into roughly 2-3 inch lengths. With a paring knife or a spoon, remove and discard the white pith and seeds, leaving a hollow cylinder. Stuff bitter melon with pork mixture and add to broth. Lower heat and simmer until the melon is tender.

Serve with chopped cilantro and scallions and lots of lime.

Condensed Milk Substitute

SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK SUBSTITUTE
2 eggs 1 c. brown sugar (i've also used half white sugar when I ran out of brown sugar) 1 tsp. vanilla 2 tbsp. flour 1/2 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt Mix all ingredients and use as a substitute for sweetened condensed milk in recipes for pies, bars and desserts.

Cheesecake

Ingredients

• 7 graham crackers, crushed (or pre-made crust from cost-u-less $1.99)
• 
  
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (See post for condensed milk sub if not available)
• 1/4 cup lime juice (or Rose's Sweetened lime juice from cost-u-less in liquor section)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Spray the bottom of one 9 inch pie pan with no fat cooking spray. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs on the bottom of the pan. (or just use pre-made crust tin from cost-u-less)
2. In a mixing bowl beat the cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in the condensed milk until smooth. Add lemon juice (or lime juice) mixing well. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
3. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 40 to 45 minutes or until center is set. Cool and then chill. Keep cake refrigerated. (it takes things too long to cool here so I like to just stick it in the freezer). then move it to the lower fridge if serving the next day.

Add flavors

-to make lime flavored, set aside 2-3tblsp of cheesecake mixture and add up to 1 tablespoon of lime juice. Mix until smooth. frost top of cheesecake before serving.

-to make chocolate swirl, put chocolate chips (from cost-u-less) on top before baking. after 5 min in oven, use a stick/chopstick to swirl the melted chocolate around. follow the rest of the directions. more chips = more chocolatey.

-you can also make chocolate frosting the same way as the lime frosting but just with however many chocolate chips you like depending on preference.

-or you can melt a lot more chocolate chips into the whole mixture on low heat to have a more chocolatey cheesecake.

Chuka don (Chinese rice bowl)

Ingredients:

1 small carrot

4 pieces of green beans

5 leaves or more of lettuce

1/4 cup of dried fungi ($0.95 at TSM mart)

1 onion

7-8 oz shredded turkey

2 tbsp of oyster sauce

1 tsp of soy sauce

1 tbsp of sesame oil for frying, 1 tsp of sesame oil to sprinkle

1 1/2 cups of water

2 tbsp of corn starch and 2 tbsp of water (mix)

black pepper

2 cups of rice

Preparation:

- Hydrate the dried fungi in a bowl of luke warm water for 30 min. then wring them.

- Cut all the vegetables in the similar sizes so that they'll be cooked evenly.

Direction:

1. Stirfry all the vegetables and meat with 2 tbsp of sesame oil.

2. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce, and pepper, to a little stronger taste than you think good enough, then add 1 1/2 cups of water.

3. Let it boil, then add the mixture of corn starch and water while stirring the stirfried food. Make sure corn starch is well dissolved.

4. Stop the heat, and sprinkle 1 tsp of sesame oil for the aroma.

5. Serve it on the bed of rice, and enjoy!

*Serves 3 people

Note:

- "Chuka" means Chinese and "don" means rice bowl in Japanese. We normally serve this food in a big bowl with rice on the bottom and stirfried thing on top of that rice. Don't ask me why it's called Chinese rice bowl in Japan!

- For the lettuce, I just used the leftover vegetable, so any leafy veggie is fine. Ideally, cabbage or Chinese cabbage since I want to save the lettuce for the fresh salad. Use it a lot since they lose the volume easily with the heat which means you can consume a lot of vegetables.

- For the meat, again, I used the leftover turkey meat, but I normally prefer using pork. Slices of chicken or beef are good alternatives too. Can be strips of bacon or lunch meat too. Baically, any meat is great, seafood is even better.

- You can add any other vegetables or eggs. I usually try to make it colorful.

- You'll add the water to make it thick with cornstarch, so you can put a little more spice/sauce than you think enough - the water and the corn starch dilute the whole thing eventually.